The last time I visited the Museum of the City of New York was four years ago, and much has changed since then. The museum has incorporated improvement in technologies for a more interactive visitor experience. An example of this change is the World City, 1898-2012, exhibit on the first floor. This featured an interactive screen that invited visitors to find out more about the various characters in New York City during these years: notable people who came to or from this city and made contributions. I chose Patti Smith and followed her through her arrival in the city in the 1960s, to her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe, her singing career, and her eventual departure from the city. The exhibit featured important people places in the city in Smith’s life, and the option to learn more about them as well.
Gay in Gotham was an interesting exhibit as well, one that included artists who focused their art on a response to the anti-homosexuality of the 1950s. I wonder if some of the art is meant to have a shock value for this very reason.
Up on the 2nd floor, I revisited the Activist New York Exhibit, which takes one from the 1600s through today, emphasizing the historical power of organized protest in the city. This dates back all the way back to a dispute between Peter Stuyvesant and the Quaker residents of New Amsterdam. The Quakers wanted to welcome Jews facing persecution in South America, but Stuyvesant did not want to let them in. So, the Quakers appealed to the owners and –technical- head of the colony: the Dutch West India Company in the Netherlands. They overruled Stuyvesant This time around, of course, I especially focused on the 1960s: movements focusing on rights for the LGBT community and minorities. Still, it is inspiring and somewhat comforting to think of the long history of activism in New York City. Whether the very local activism of parents refusing to give up their children’s play area that Gil Fagiani spoke of yesterday, or the Black Lives Matter marches here in the city, they are all connected to this larger history.
Jerome Krase
March 29, 2017 — 4:43 pm
Fantastic! NYC as a cauldron. I grew up in the Red Hook Houses, a low-income “project,” and in my later years discovered that my mom had participated in demonstrations by irate (poor) tenants as services and maintenance began to be reduced in the 1950s and as the tenancy changed from white to black.