Drawing from an empirical study undertaken by the author at two National Museums in Mexico, this paper examines the interactions of the museums' visitors, as agents that use their capacity and resources to interact with one another as well as with the knowledges and narratives displayed at the museums. Grounded in contemporary debates in the social sciences, the analysis aims at elucidating the dynamics and the experience of power relations as social processes; it presents the different forms in which history and other knowledge, as well skills and abilities, interplay in such processes. The study reveals the social nature of the construction of historical knowledge and its usage —or lack thereof — in the teaching of history and in the formation of national and cultural identities in state institutions such as museums.