Rebecca Bush

Rebecca Bush is Curator of History & Exhibitions Manager at The Columbus Museum in Columbus, Georgia. She has led the Museum’s regional history program since 2012 and curated dozens of exhibitions about life in the Chattahoochee River Valley of Georgia and Alabama. Her research often focuses on social and cultural history of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Collaboration is a hallmark of her curatorial practice, and she frequently works with scholars and community members to develop interdisciplinary projects. In her role as Exhibitions Manager, she leads an interdepartmental planning team and oversees scheduling, budgeting, and contracts for all temporary exhibitions.

Rebecca is a co-editor and contributing author to Art and Public History: Approaches, Opportunities, and Challenges (with K. Tawny Paul, Rowman & Littlefield, 2017). Her research has been published in Winterthur Portfolio and The Public Historian, as well as the edited collections Alma W. Thomas: Everything Is Beautiful (Yale University Press, 2021), Where Are the Workers? Labor’s Stories at Museums and Historic Sites (University of Illinois Press, 2022), and Illustrated Sheet Music in the U.S., 1830–1930 (Bloomsbury, 2025).

Rebecca serves on the board of the Georgia Association of Museums and as a Lead Editor for History@Work, the blog of the National Council on Public History. She is an active member of the Southeastern Museums Conference and a frequent presenter at national and regional conferences. Prior to arriving in Columbus, Rebecca worked with house museums at Historic Columbia in South Carolina. She also served as an Elizabeth Bishop Perkins Fellow in Museum Practice and Research at the Museums of Old York in Maine and as an archival assistant at the 1st Infantry Division Museum in Kansas. Rebecca earned a BA in History from Kansas State University and a MA in Public History and Graduate Certificate in Museum Management from the University of South Carolina.