Who We Are
The New-York Historical Society was established in 1804 as New York’s first museum. Its eleven founders all lived through the turbulent years of the American Revolution and the British occupation of New York. These men believed that New York’s citizens needed to take decisive action to preserve eyewitness evidence of their own historical moment, which they recognized as important, fearing “dust and obscurity” would be the inevitable fate of accounts and artifacts if left in the hands of private individuals. “Without the aid of original records and authentic documents,” they declared, “history will be nothing more than a well-combined series of ingenious conjectures and amusing fables.”
It is in this tradition that New-York Historical has moved forward into the 21st century, offering to visitors on-site and online a vast collection of art, objects, artifacts and documents and an ongoing collecting program that aims to facilitate a broad grasp of history’s enduring importance and its usefulness in finding explanations, causes, and insights.
Learn more about us at nyhistory.org/about.
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"Long before Calvin Klein and Abercrombie & Fitch, J.C. Leyendecker brought ho******icism to Madison Avenue."
Learn more about our special exhibition "Under Cover: J.C. Leyendecker and American Masculinity," on view through August 13, 2023.
https://nbcnews.to/45THJL2
FINAL WEEKEND: Kara Walker's acclaimed prints and silhouettes show the brutality of slavery and highlight the omission of African American narratives from historical texts that emerged following the Civil War.
Walker's work challenges viewers to think more deeply about representation and misrepresentation in history and current events.
Visit the exhibition "Kara Walker: Harper’s Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated)" before it closes this Sunday, June 11th.
https://bit.ly/3XyC1Zu
brought to you by Thomas Cole ⤵️
In Thomas Cole's 5-painting series "The Course of Empire," civilization appears, matures, and collapses. Cole—an early environmentalist—had a more pessimistic outlook than some of his other Hudson River School peers. The fourth painting in the series, "Destruction," depicts the ruin of a civilization.
Cole's depiction brought to mind the terror and destruction wrought in New York by the Great Fire of 1835, just a year earlier than this painting. The Great Fire burned for 2 days, devastating 52 acres of Lower Manhattan’s business district and ravaging 19 blocks.
The motto Cole attached to the series was taken from a popular poem by Byron: "First freedom, then glory; when that fails, wealth, vice, corruption."
See Cole's full series on view in our exhibition "Nature, Crisis, Consequence" through July 16, 2023.
https://bit.ly/3GrCg35
🎨 Thomas Cole, The Course of Empire: Destruction, 1836, Oil on canvas; Gift of the New-York Gallery of the Fine Arts
Not all Tiffany glass looks as you’d expect!
Under the guidance of talented English glassblower Arthur Nash, many of Tiffany Studios’ younger artisans—often Irish, German, or English immigrants—thrived at creating Tiffany’s signature Favrile glass.
Favrile glass was a trademark Louis C. Tiffany patented in 1894 to mark the unique artistic style of his glassworks, frequently iridescent like this purple feather shade.
But there’s something else to notice here...can you spot the dragonfly? Often glass artists would etch Tiffany-esque motifs to cover up imperfections. Clever, clever. 🤫
Visit us and learn more. You can explore 100 illuminated Tiffany lamps from our spectacular collection—one of the largest in the world—on view on our fourth floor.
📷 Tiffany Studios, Favrile shade, ca. 1910, Glass. Gift of Dr. Egon Neustadt
What are we looking at here?
This work is called "Resilience: Living in a Pandemic since 1492" by Osceola and Genevieve Red Shirt (Two Guns Leather). Conceived of at height of COVID-19 pandemic, it features a leather plague doctor's mask inscribed with the names of diseases that have devastated Indigenous nations through history. These are overlaid with Indigenous medicinal plants. The mask is paired a war bonnet to honor Indigenous people as survivors and warriors.
Visit and this work on view in the special exhibition "Nature, Crisis, Consequence" through July 16, 2023.
https://bit.ly/3GrCg35
📷 Osceola Red Shirt (Oglala Lakota) (b. 1976), Genevieve Red Shirt (Rosebud Sioux, Chickasaw, Taíno) (b. 1978), Resilience: Living in a Pandemic since 1492, 2021. Wicket and Craig tooling leather, glass, metal, sweet grass, thread, hand-painted imitation eagle feathers, ermine pelts, red wool, red horsehair, buckskin leather, re-purposed Buffalo felt hat. Collection of Agnes Hsu-Tang, Ph.D. and Oscar Tang
The hero Gotham deserves.
“It's not who I am underneath, but what I do that defines me.” 🍩 🐈 Gotham's greatest superhero is the “Dependable Mouser”—protecting our beloved coffee shops and donuts from villainous rodents.
📷 Jack Margolin, “Dependable Mouser,” 690 Sixth Avenue, New York City, 1965.
J. C. Leyendecker was a prominent illustrator and commercial artist who specialized in depicting men in printed advertisements, magazines, books, and college posters. As a gay artist whose illustrations for a mainstream audience often had unspoken ho******ic undertones, his work is especially revealing for what it says about the cultural attitudes towards homos*xuality of the period.
In 1913 New York’s Sun newspaper declared Leyendecker the “champion” of men in art. His 1911 ad for Donchester dress shirts depicts two men in evening clothes leaning slightly toward each other, possibly to share an intimate story. Charles A. Beach—Leyendecker's model, business manager, and life partner—was the model for the man on the right.
"Under Cover: J.C. Leyendecker and American Masculinity" is on view through August 13, 2023.
https://bit.ly/443wrmv
🎨 The Donchester—the Cluett Dress Shirt, Illustration for Cluett advertisement, 1911. Advertising agency: Calkins & Holden. Oil on canvas mounted on board; National Museum of American Illustration
Support your child's learning year-round with "Let's Learn."
Tune in for our new episode on suffragists this Monday, June 5 with Living History Manager Cheyney McKnight, streaming online at letslearn.org from Thirteen WNET New York.
For today, learn about Hazel Ying Lee.
In 1943, Lee became one of the first women and one of two Chinese American women to join the groundbreaking Women’s Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) program. Lee and her brother both died during in World War II.
Their family hoped to bury them in a cemetery near their Oregon home, but cemetery staff told the Lee family they could not bury them in the “white” section of the cemetery. After vigorous protest, the Lee’s were finally able to lay them to rest overlooking the Columbia River.
WWII brought many new opportunities for Chinese in America. The U.S. repealed the restrictive Chinese Exclusion immigration laws in 1943 and many Chinese Americans enlisted in the armed forces. Yet as the Lee’s story shows, challenges and discrimination remained.
Please note: The Museum is closed on Mondays.
📷 1) Hazel Ying Lee, 1932, Wikimedia Commons. 2) Hazel Ying Lee reviews her performance after a session in a Link trainer, U.S. Air Force photo. 3) Hazel Ying Lee (right).
"New York is a diamond iceberg floating in river water." — Truman Capote
Happy ! Irving Browning snapped this photo in our archives of steamships in front of Battery Park and the Lower Manhattan skyline (circa 1920-1938).
In 1923, Alice Paul and the National Women’s Party put forth before Congress a short, three sentence amendment, the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), that would guarantee equality before the law regardless of s*x.
While the ERA has been reintroduced in almost every congressional session since 1923, the amendment has yet to be ratified. Learn more in a special installation from our Center for Women's History—closing soon on June 4, 2023.
https://bit.ly/3PHP4o2
🤩 There are no bad angles of the Chrysler Building.
This Art Deco masterpiece was *very briefly* the tallest building in the world when it opened in 1930. Designed by William Van Alen, the Chrysler Building is known for its terraced crown, grand eagles, and radiator caps.
Nearly 10,000 Japanese, Korean, and Okinawan women traveled to Hawaiʻi as “picture brides” between 1907 and 1919. Once on the islands, these women often worked on sugarcane plantations, putting down roots and transforming the island’s economy in the process.
Our installation "Bittersweet: ‘Picture Brides’ on the Hawaiian Sugarcane Plantations" uncovers the pivotal role that Japanese, Korean, and Okinawan women played in building—and protesting—a Hawaiian sugar empire.
https://bit.ly/3IAgdbc
"Far Eastsiders"
Artist Oscar yi Hou explores the complexities of identity—particularly those of traditionally marginalized groups, such as the q***r community and/or the Asian diaspora.
yi Hou combines street culture, symbolic motifs, text, and historical references in his work. The painting’s title calls attention to Asian New Yorkers—the Far Eastsiders living in the city’s Far Eastsides (analogous to the Westside and Eastside) of the city. Those pictured here are personal friends of the artist.
The motif of Chinese cowgirls and cowboys is a common once across yi Hou’s work. He associates East Asians with a symbol of the American Old West in order to draw attention to the ways in which Chinese immigrants—who were an integral part of that West, particularly through their labor building the Transcontinental Railroad—have been written out of frontier mythology. Consider, for example, that Chinese laborers were explicitly excluded from period photographs marking the historic meeting of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific Railroads at Promontory, Utah, in 1869.
Study this work up-close and in person at the Museum!
https://bit.ly/3GrCg35
🎨
1) Oscar yi Hou, Far Eastsiders, aka: Cowgirl Mama A.B & Son Wukong, 2021; Purchased through the generosity of Nancy Newcomb and John Hargraves.
2) Andrew J. Russell, The ceremony for the driving of the golden spike at Promontory Summit, Utah on May 10, 1869.
3) Installation view
🐘 How did elephants solve panic on the Brooklyn Bridge?
On May 24, 1883, the Brooklyn Bridge officially opened to traffic. At the time, it was the only bridge spanning the East River. Many people doubted that a bridge that large could hold.
This fear is what may have prompted a stampede a week after the Brooklyn Bridge opened, on May 30. A woman tripped and fell prompting someone to scream, crowds pushed forward, and people piled on top of each other. Twelve people died and thirty-six were seriously injured.
Earlier that year, showman and circus founder P.T. Barnum had suggested marching his elephants across the bridge in celebration of its opening. He was turned down, but with public trust of the structure still wavering, a display of the Brooklyn Bridge’s strength seemed to be a good idea. On May 17, 1884, Barnum marched 21 elephants across the bridge, along with 17 camels. The New York Times wrote, "It seemed as if Noah's Ark were emptying itself over on Long Island."
The animals made it across just fine, proving that the bridge was steady. At the time it opened, it was the longest suspension bridge in the world, and it lives on today as one of New York’s finest landmarks.
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