Most history is celebratory and museums have traditionally followed this norm. We honor achievers, establish role models, and explain technology. But the history of science, technology, and medicine has begun to change. Increasingly museum collections document complex stories that value context, give participants greater agency, explore traumatic events, and even delve into illegal activities. This paper will explore this new direction, one that paints a richer history yet one that can be difficult. Problematic History will focus on three collecting case studies at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History - the El Monte Sweatshop, the September 11 attacks, and the Imperial Food fire. All of these historical moments represent new collecting areas yet the opportunities, challenges, and public reactions in all three are quite different. Should institutions collect immediately or wait until the emotional connections to events have diminished? Should a museum add only to its standing collection categories or should it create new areas to represent new occurrences? Are registrarial and conservation concerns paramount or only problems to reckon with? How does one collect objects being held by law enforcement officials? Is a curator collecting a disaster a ghoul or a dedicated soul fighting to preserve the ephemeral threads of history? Broad philosophical concerns abound. What is the role of the media in collecting? Is transparency good? Should museums with overlapping interests compete? Do we privilege participants in understanding and preserving events? Is memory the same as history? The answers to these and similar questions are not always clear-cut. This talk will explore issues of professional autonomy, community involvement, and media influence in public history today.