A new exhibit at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History features more than 200 pop culture artifacts, including Prince’s yellow “Cloud” guitar and clothing from a wide range of entertainment icons like Selena, Mister Rogers, and Nipsey Hussle. It opens to the public Friday, and marks the museum’s first exhibition dedicated to the history of film, television, theater, and music.

The scope of the new bilingual exhibit, “Entertainment Nation/Nación del espectáculo,” is somewhat mindboggling — the rotating set of display items comes from the museum’s extensive collection of 1.8 million objects. Some items, including Muhammad Ali’s boxing robe, were collected decades ago but have never been on display until now. Others, like the Handmaid’s Tale cloak, are more recent acquisitions.

The gallery is part of the museum’s new  Culture Wing on the third floor. The section also houses a rotating exhibit (currently displaying Richard Avedon’s photographs from 1946-1965), a new acquisitions section, and an installation about gaming history.

“If you were born sometime after 1880, this show is for you,” says Anthea Hartig, the museum’s director. “If your first language is English, if your first language is Spanish, if you’re a citizen of the world,  this show is for you. If you’re here in the DMV, and especially during the quieter months of December through February, we can’t wait to welcome you in.”

The third floor has been mostly closed during the pandemic, Hartig says, and she hopes this exhibit will provide a sense of hope for visitors. “Maybe we all need that breath of fresh air,” she adds. “Not to forget what we’ve been through, but to honor what we’ve been through together.”

Visitors will find widely recognized costumes from Sesame Street and Star Wars interspersed among artifacts that are much harder to look at — such as a 1965 flyer warning residents of New Orleans not to buy the “savage music” of Black musicians.

Indeed, “Entertainment Nation/Nación del espectáculo” does not shy away from a painful past. One of the exhibit’s three interactive “micro-galleries” dives into the history of racial stereotypes in comedy by illuminating artifacts used in minstrel shows. Footage of Judy Garland singing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” in Wizard of Oz is juxtaposed with the young actress singing in blackface a year earlier in the 1938 film Everybody Sing. (Dorothy’s ruby slippers, one of the Smithsonian’s most inquired about objects, will be on view once more — they’ve been on-and-off display since they were anonymously donated in 1979.)

The exhibit is wrapped by a wall that provides a chronology dating back to the 1850s, along with some context for the collection. Down the middle, a red carpet leads visitors on a winding path through items grouped thematically. One section focuses on objects belonging to “culture makers” who broke barriers; Ali Wong’s $8 dress from her Baby Cobra comedy special is on display near a cape worn by Puerto Rican astrologer and TV star Walter Mercardo.

The Smithsonian will inaugurate the larger Culture Wing in a ceremony Thursday, when the institution presents the James Smithson Bicentennial Medal to four musicians: Emilio and Gloria Estefan, Susan Tedeschi, and Dave Grohl.

A 10-day festival with musical performances, panel discussions, vintage arcade games, and film screenings will kick off the exhibit.

“It’s just a moment of celebration for the museum,” says John Troutman, the museum’s music curator. “It represents for us a surreal opening back up of our programs, of the types of dynamic exhibitions that we want to develop for the years to come.”