Abstract
This review examines Black Boston: A City Connects, a permanent exhibit at the Boston Children’s Museum designed to introduce young visitors to the cultural practices of Boston’s Black communities with roots in Cape Verde, the Caribbean, and the American South. Through reconstructed neighborhood shops, a carnival garage, and multimodal audio-visual prompts, the exhibit employs performative, hands-on engagement rather than traditional text-based interpretation. Visitors enact everyday activities—such as hairstyling, dancing, shopping, and playing games—to explore how local businesses serve as hubs of social, political, and cultural life, and how diasporic communities maintain transnational connections. While the exhibit minimizes explicit historical discussion of slavery, colonialism, or demographic context, it emphasizes embodied learning, cultural continuity, and the diversity within Black identities. The review situates the exhibit within broader trends toward participatory museum practices and argues that its performative environment effectively fosters cross-cultural dialogue, somatic understanding, and appreciation of contemporary Black urban experiences.