In connection with West Berlin's 750th anniversary celebrations in 1987, Kreuzberg received funds earmarked for a permanent position to head a neighborhood museum.

[3] Martin Düspohl headed the museum from its founding until February 2017, when he left to join the curatorial team of the Berlin Exhibit in the Humboldt Forum.

In the 1970s and 1980s, partially in response to the New Kreuzberg Center, the alternative movement initiated broad protests against this form of urban renewal through demonstrations and widespread squatting, with eventual success.

The new version also sought to place greater emphasis on the establishment of immigrant, particularly Turkish, communities in Kreuzberg as guest workers settled in the neighborhood from the 1960s onward.

Beginning with this exhibit, the guest worker agreements and their implications for the labor structures and demographics of Kreuzberg assumed a prominent place in the museum's examination of local history.

Most recently the exhibit Alman Geschichteler – Gastarbaijteri erzählen (2016–17) by the Gegennarrativ collective delved into the ambivalence of guest workers’ experiences in Kreuzberg through in-depth interviews.

Particular emphasis was placed on forced deportation, flight, and expulsion during and because of the Second World War, as well as labor migration from Turkey to Kreuzberg and from Vietnam to Friedrichshain during the second half of the 20th century.

While some family members were able to emigrate to South Africa, others remained in Berlin and corresponded about their increasingly dire situation through written letters, which formed the basis of the exhibit.

[9] For the exhibit Holmquist interviewed people selling drugs in Görlitzer Park and Hasenheide about the specific cities, towns and villages they came from, as well as the stations of their journey to Berlin.

The exhibit consisted of 13 descriptions of these origin locations, each in the native language of the respective interviewee, juxtaposed with an extensive collection of media depictions of park drug sellers.

[11][12][13] The FHXB Museum's local historical archive contains photos, documents, files, and objects, and provides support and consultation for scholars, teachers and students, history workshops, and lay researchers.

In three projects funded by the European Union and the Berlin Senate, the archive was able to digitize its most important collections and publish a large portion of them online.

[15] On the ground floor of the five-story building is a historic typesetting room and printing shop, which are used for children's workshops[16] and adult education courses.

The museum offers walking tours of the neighborhood through the “X-Berg-Tag” program,[17] conceived of and led by young people from Kreuzberg to counteract the common media portrayal of the area as dangerous and problem-riddled.