FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
65 Objects That Changed the World opens November 10 at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, exploring what encounters between Americans and communities around the world can tell us about America itself.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — September 17, 2026
This fall, the Museum of the Peace Corps Experience (MPCE) will open 65 Objects That Changed the World, a major exhibition exploring 65 years of Peace Corps history through the things people carried, used, made, exchanged, saved, and brought home.
Opening November 10, 2026, at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library in Washington, D.C., the free exhibition will remain on view through March 7, 2027.
For 65 years, Peace Corps Volunteers have lived and worked alongside communities around the world. They arrived carrying not only possessions, but expectations, skills, assumptions, and ideas about America. They encountered people with their own histories, knowledge, traditions, aspirations, and ideas about the United States. Those encounters changed communities, relationships—and often the Volunteers themselves.
65 Objects That Changed the World tells that history through ordinary things that became witnesses to extraordinary encounters.
“We often tell history through institutions, policies, wars, and political leaders, but societies are also changed through relationships,” said Zack Klim, Ph.D., Executive Director and Chief Curator of the Museum of the Peace Corps Experience. “Each object tells us a story of citizen diplomacy – who met whom, what they learned from one another, what was difficult or unexpected, and what each person carried forward from that encounter. At a moment when Americans are struggling to navigate differences domestically, these stories remind us that peace is not an abstraction. It is a social practice—built through the difficult, everyday work of knowing one another.”
Through 65 objects, photographs, oral histories, and first-person accounts, the exhibition presents stories of friendship and service alongside stories of identity and belonging, misunderstanding and discovery, cultural assumptions, power, and unexpected transformation.
The exhibition opens as the Peace Corps marks its 65th anniversary and the United States commemorates its 250th, placing Peace Corps history within a much larger conversation about American identity.
The Museum of the Peace Corps Experience celebrates America at 250 as seen through encounters with the world.
Rather than presenting America as a finished story, 65 Objects considers a nation continually shaped by encounters with others. Across generations, Peace Corps Volunteers carried American ideals and assumptions into the world and returned with experiences that questioned, complicated, and expanded their understanding of those ideals.
“Peace Corps history is American history, but it is a part of our history that Americans could never have written alone,” Klim said. “These objects allow us to see America in relationship with the world and with the ideals we are still striving to become.”
The exhibition asks visitors to consider being American not simply in terms of what the United States offers the world, but through the capacity to listen, encounter difference, question assumptions, build relationships, and be changed by what others have to teach us.
The Museum will celebrate the opening of 65 Objects That Changed the World on November 10, 2026, at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library.
Throughout its four-month run, MPCE will present conversations, storytelling, film, educational programs, and special events featuring Returned Peace Corps Volunteers, artists, scholars, community partners, and others. Additional programming and opening-event details will be announced soon.
Exhibit and event sponsorship opportunities are still available.
Following its Washington presentation, the Museum plans to develop 65 Objects That Changed the World as a traveling exhibition for museums, universities, and communities across the United States beginning in 2027.
About the Museum of the Peace Corps Experience
The Museum of the Peace Corps Experience is an independent nonprofit organization dedicated to collecting, preserving, and sharing the stories and objects shaped by Peace Corps service and cross-cultural exchange. Through exhibitions, collections, education, research, and public programming, the Museum explores the complex and enduring relationships created when people encounter one another across cultures.
The Museum is an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization and is not a part of the U.S. Peace Corps, a federal agency.
Media Contact:
Jennifer Erie, Board Member and Communications Committee Chair
communications@peacecorpsmuseum.org
Museum of the Peace Corps Experience
