Museum curators who document current events—like we do at the New-York Historical Society through our History Responds collecting initiative—experience the moment just like everyone else. And, when it comes to traumatic events like the 9/11 terrorist attacks or the COVID-19 pandemic, we sometimes face the very challenges that we’re describing through the items we collect. The past…

New-York Historical’s exhibition So Ready for Laughter: Bob Hope and World War II explores the legendary comedian’s work entertaining the troops and lifting spirits during the darkest days of the 1940s. But for decades, Hope was also known for another job: Hollywood’s consummate master of ceremonies. Starting in 1940, Hope hosted the Academy Awards a…

On the morning of December 14, 2020, Sandra Lindsay made history. The director of critical care nursing at Long Island Jewish Medical Center, Lindsay, 52, sat down in front of TV cameras and the media and became the first person in the United States to receive a COVID-19 vaccine. Like many across New York State…

Visitors to Meet the Presidents and the Oval Office will indeed get a chance to meet every president in American history—in 3-inch toy form. One of the highlights of the exhibition is a play set that features an expansive semi-circle of commanding—and collectible—plastic figures around a model White House. The semi-circle was recently expanded when…

Lincoln’s Second Inaugural: The Story of a Presidential MasterpieceRecorded Feb. 12, 2020 Shortly before lockdown, in February 2020, Abraham Lincoln scholar Harold Holzer joined us in our Robert H. Smith Auditorium and surveyed the 16th president’s majestic second “malice toward none” inaugural address. At the time, the speech generated entirely partisan responses—and even an assassination…

On January 13, 2021, President Donald Trump was impeached for an unprecedented second time by the House of Representatives in the wake of the January 6 attack on the Capitol by a violent mob of his supporters. What does history have to teach us about this extraordinary moment in American politics? Below are a selection…

All of us can recall playing “follow the leader” as children. The notion of a leader exists in every society; it is an intrinsic human characteristic fundamental to group survival. Western cultures often assume that the leader is the most powerful individual at the head of a society. Western culture also teaches people to recognize…

Stephen Somerstein was a 24-year-old student at the City College of New York’s night school and picture editor of the student newspaper when he photographed some of the most iconic images of the civil rights movement. With his five cameras in tow, he traveled by bus to Alabama in 1965 to document the Selma to…

A treasured artwork is on view again in the Museum. One of the signature works in the New-York Historical collection, Gayë́twahgeh is a striking oil-on-canvas portrait by F. Bartoli of the famed Seneca chief—who was also known as Cornplanter—that was painted in 1796. It is thought to commemorate his 1786 meeting with the U.S. Congress…