Museum and auction shows explore identity and history

By late September 2026, museum and auction-house exhibitions from New York to Hong Kong are asking how identity is formed and whose history is told. The New York Historical opened “Irish Literature: History & Myth Since 1798” on September 18. The Rollins Museum of Art in Winter Park is showing La Vaughn Belle’s “The House That Freedoms Built” through January 3, 2027. Princeton University Art Museum’s “What is an American?: Artists Reflect” runs until November 8. Eden Theological Seminary in Webster Groves is hosting the Smithsonian’s “Exploring Human Origins” through December 15. Sotheby’s Maison in Hong Kong is presenting “PSYCHO: Identity Alienation Shadow Duality” through September 27. Scandinavian national museums still foreground warrior myths.

The New York Historical announced “Irish Literature: History & Myth Since 1798” on August 19, 2026, as a show of more than 135 rare books, manuscripts, broad sheets, playbills, drawings, prints and illustrations drawn from the Leonard L. Milberg Collections. President and CEO Louise Mirrer said the exhibition explores how Irish literature “provides a model for why art matters in times of crisis” and “functions as an agent of political transformation”. On view through January 17, 2027, the show spans from the 1798 uprising to the present, with authors including Maria Edgeworth, James Joyce, Speranza, W.B. Yeats and Eavan Boland, and a first edition of “Ulysses”.

On September 1, Orlando Magazine reported that the Rollins Museum of Art in Winter Park had opened The House That Freedoms Built by La Vaughn Belle, an outdoor installation on view through January 3, 2027, with To Imagine a Home opening later in September. Executive Director Leslie Anderson said the season centers on “art that thinks architecturally,” treating the built environment as an active medium. The museum will present Anne-Karin Furunes in January 2027 and Lilian García-Roig in June 2027 as it prepares for a new building opening in January 2028.

Princeton University Art Museum’s “What is an American?: Artists Reflect” brings together prints, drawings and photographs by more than twenty artists. The title comes from Jaune Quick-to-See Smith’s large-format work of the same name. Works by David Wojnarowicz, Minor White, Elizabeth Catlett and others address exclusion, protest and civic engagement, while six prints from the 1976 Kent Bicentennial Portfolio, commissioned by Lorillard, show artists complicating a patriotic brief.

STLPR reported on September 14 that the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History would open its traveling exhibition “Exploring Human Origins: What Does It Mean to Be Human?” at Eden Theological Seminary in Webster Groves starting Tuesday, September 15. The show, free and open weekdays through December 15, includes a variety of skulls from different time periods, interactive panels and a Neanderthal mother-and-child display. Eden vice president Mary Schaller Blaufuss said the exhibit corresponds to the seminary’s progressive theology and shows “what the relationship between science and evolution and theology is and can be”.

Hypebeast reported on September 18 that Sotheby’s Maison in Hong Kong is presenting “PSYCHO: Identity Alienation Shadow Duality” through September 27, ahead of modern and contemporary auctions on September 28 and 29. The show anchors its auctions with Mark Rothko’s “Untitled (Plum and Dark Brown)” (1964), estimated at $78 million to $128 million HKD, and Yoshitomo Nara’s “The Crated Room in Iceland / Drawing Room,” making its auction debut after more than 15 years. Works by Tetsuya Ishida, Lee Bul and others extend the examination of alienation and fractured identity.

Scandinavian national museums still foreground the male Viking warrior myth despite scholarship showing a more diverse past. The article notes that the new Norwegian Museum of the Viking Age is set to open in Oslo in 2027, and that curators often limit depictions of women to exceptional figures or domestic roles. Across these institutions, curators are balancing popular expectations against more complex histories, a tension the Viking exhibition analysis makes explicit.