Perhaps it happens when the stories housed inside its walls become too expansive, too restless, too alive to remain confined to a single building downtown. Or perhaps it happens when a city itself changes so dramatically that the institution responsible for preserving its history must also evolve in order to remain relevant to the people it serves.
After 86 years as HistoryMiami Museum, one of South Florida’s oldest cultural institutions is entering a new chapter as the Museum of Miami, a rebrand that signals far more than a cosmetic shift in identity. Approved by its board of trustees in March, the transformation, announced publicly May 7, is planned to roll out gradually over the coming year. According to key players, the updated model rethinks how Miami’s history is collected, shared, and experienced across a sprawling, multilingual, ever-changing county, in overall approach as well as updated access.
“This is more than a name change, it’s a shift in how this community experiences Miami’s Museum as a living, breathing archive,” said Museum of Miami CEO Natalia Crujeiras, whose commitment to community building is palpable as she explains her vision.
Inside the newly-branded Museum of Miami
(Courtesy Museum of Miami)
Natalia Crujeiras, CEO of Museum of Miami
A LIVING ARCHIVE
“‘Museum of Miami’ perfectly emulates our strategy to embrace and present new experiences that provide everyone an opportunity to see themselves reflected in Miami’s past and active in its future.”
The timing feels particularly symbolic. As the United States approaches its 250th anniversary this summer, the newly renamed Museum of Miami will simultaneously launch one of the most ambitious periods of civic outreach in its history while hosting one of the nation’s rarest collections of founding-era documents through the National Archives’ “Freedom Plane: Documents That Forged a Nation” exhibition.
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One of the documents on the Freedom Plane tour
Together, the two initiatives suggest something larger than a rebrand or a traveling exhibit. They point toward a changing philosophy about who history belongs to, how institutions engage communities, and what museums might become in an era increasingly defined by fragmentation, digital connection, and public participation.
A MUSEUM WITHOUT WALLS
“We’re changing out the old model,” Crujeiras stated about the transformation.
“If people cannot come to us, we will come to them.”
That idea sits at the center of the Museum of Miami’s new “museum without walls” approach. Rather than focusing exclusively on exhibitions housed inside its Flagler Street location, the institution plans to expand programming directly into neighborhoods, schools, parks, and community spaces throughout Miami-Dade County.
The museum’s listening tour — which included conversations in Homestead, Hialeah, Little Haiti, Little Havana, Liberty City, Kendall, Miami Beach, and the City of Miami — revealed a recurring sentiment: the previous name no longer fully reflected the institution’s evolving role or the way many residents experience culture in Miami today.
Over the years, HistoryMiami has expanded well beyond conventional historical exhibitions, incorporating folklife programming, photography, art, oral histories, and increasingly community-centered initiatives. The new name attempts to instill a broader civic and cultural identity tied not only to preservation, but participation.
DIGITAL ACCESS AND COFFEE COMMUNITY
“I think the risk for any museum is in not being relevant,” Crujeiras said. “Part of the reason we’re doing this reimagining is to remind our community not only that we’re relevant, but that we’re a resource that can help bring people together at a moment where loneliness, distrust, and a need for connection are things we hear from our community.”
Upcoming initiatives reveal how literally the institution now interprets that mission. Among them is “Cafecito Stories,” a traveling ventanita-style storytelling experience designed to gather voices from communities across Miami-Dade County. A reimagined CultureFest will move beyond the museum’s downtown campus and into county parks, beginning with Tropical Park in early 2027. The museum is also developing digital kiosks, mobile outreach programs, and expanded educational access intended to bring collections and storytelling directly into local communities.
“We have 2 million photographs in our collection,” Crujeiras said. “It’s impossible to digitize everything at the same time, but we’ll do it thematically, and we’ll do it in collaboration with the community.”
That emphasis on co-authorship also shaped the rebrand itself.
“We intentionally built this brand alongside the community because we believed it had to be co-authored and co-curated by the very people whose stories we are entrusted to preserve,” said Michele Reese Granger, the museum’s senior director of marketing.
“What we heard overwhelmingly was that our community wants to see their neighborhoods, cultures, and lived experiences referenced in what we do.”
The museum’s new visual identity centers on a prismatic “M,” meant to represent the many cultures, generations, and perspectives that define Miami. Its new tagline hints at the institution’s broader aspiration to make history feel less distant and more personal.
“Our tagline is ‘Love This Story,’” Crujeiras said. “We want to enter through curiosity — discovering, learning, and eventually loving it.”
FREEDOM PLANE
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The Freedom Plane will make a stop in Miami.
At the same time the Museum of Miami is expanding outward into neighborhoods and public spaces, some of the nation’s most foundational documents are preparing to do something remarkably similar.
Beginning June 20, the museum will host the National Archives’ “Freedom Plane: Documents That Forged a Nation,” a traveling exhibition commemorating America’s 250th anniversary. Miami is one of only eight cities selected for the tour and will host the documents during the Fourth of July holiday itself. During the exhibition, museum tickets are free to the public.
The exhibition will bring original historical records — not facsimiles — to Miami, including George Washington’s Oath of Allegiance, the Treaty of Paris, early constitutional drafts, and rare founding-era materials that in some cases have not traveled outside Washington, D.C. in decades.
For Crujeiras, the significance extends beyond the rarity of the documents themselves.
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Aaron Burr's Oath of Allegiance, one of the documents of the Freedom Plane tour.
“This is an important moment of reflection as a country,” she said. “We’re turning 250, and one of the most dynamic and diverse cities in the country will host these documents over the Fourth of July.”
Yet she resists framing the exhibition merely as patriotic spectacle or historical nostalgia.
“These documents are not just artifacts,” Crujeiras said. “They are reminders of promises — promises we have made about the possibilities of this nation.”
That idea of history as unfinished in production, rather than settled, surfaces repeatedly throughout the museum’s new direction.
“Democracy depends on people knowing their story and taking an active role in the civic life and dynamics of their community so they can help make it better for the future,” Crujeiras said.
LOVE THE STORIES
To coincide with the exhibition, the museum will launch “America 250: Voices of the Future,” a countywide oratorical competition inviting high school students to reflect on the nation’s founding ideals and envision the future they hope to shape. The winning speech will be accessioned into the museum’s permanent collection and presented publicly during July Fourth celebrations.
“We think it’s very important to engage our youth in thinking about the country they want to build,” says Crujeiras. As a mother herself, she is clearly passionate about her vision.
The museum also plans to launch a large-scale digital mural inviting residents to submit their “Wishes for America,” creating a participatory installation accessible both online and in person. Like many of the institution’s newer projects, this blurs distinctions between archive and conversation, observer and participant.
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Attendees view historic documents, part of the Freedom Plane tour
In many ways, the Freedom Plane exhibition mirrors the Museum of Miami’s own transformation. Both involve history physically leaving centralized institutions and moving outward into communities. Both emphasize public access and civic participation. Both ask audiences not merely to observe history, but to locate themselves inside it.
“Miami is still very young,” Crujeiras said. “We’re still writing our own history, and we all have the opportunity to help shape it.”
For a city built through migration, reinvention, collision, aspiration, and constant change, that unfinished quality may be precisely what makes this moment feel so resonant. As Miami prepares to host some of the nation’s oldest founding documents, its oldest museum is simultaneously redefining what a museum can be in the future — less a static keeper of artifacts than a living civic network built through stories, neighborhoods, participation, and shared memory.
“If you ask me what success looks like,” Crujeiras said, “it’s a community that knows the Museum of Miami is a place where they can learn about the history of this place, about their connection to the larger story of Miami, where they can understand each other, learn about the many communities that call Miami home, and be inspired to build a better Miami for the future.”
IF YOU GO
Freedom Plane: Documents that Forged a Nation exhibition
June 20-July 4, 2026
Museum of Miami
101 W. Flagler, Miami
305-375-1492