For December, RECORD surveys a quartet of cultural projects that artfully navigate deep-rooted histories, socio-economic divides, and complex sites. They include a minimalist modern art museum situated in the fraught civic heart of an Eastern European capital city; an inviting expansion of a Southern Californian natural history museum that embraces the surrounding community; a performing arts complex realized (on a strict budget) as part of a larger reimagining of a sleepy industrial town in northern Italy; and a National Park Service-administered interpretive center—located deep within the rugged terrain of Maine’s Penobscot County—designed to foreground Indigenous sensibilities.