Behind The Scenes

The hectic demeanor of Fifth Avenue, especially as holiday shopping season rounds the bend, would rarely be compared to the quiet, contemplative environment of a museum. But if you’re walking around Midtown check out Bergdorf Goodman’s windows for a  hint of history amongst the street’s craze. Bergdorf Goodman is honoring the reopening of the New-York…

Which bowler fell through a plate-glass window as a kid, leaving him with permanently curled fingers? Which cyclist was the highest paid athlete of the early 20th century? Did you even know pedestrianism was a sport? It’s for facts like these and more that the Bill Shannon Biographical Dictionary of New York Sports was born. With…

What was your proudest memento from your time at school? Is it the catapult you built for your physics class? The research paper that earned you an A? Your high school diploma? For many schoolgirls in New York in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it was their needlepoint.  Helping to hone skills in everything from manual dexterity…

Many objects in the Luce Center, where nearly 40,000 objects from the New-York Historical Society’s permanent collection are displayed, are beautiful to look at. But they are also intriguing portals into the past, making us wonder “Why these objects? What makes them so important?” The answer lies in not what they are, but the story…

Most people in America can trace their family back to some sort of immigration wave, whether their ancestors came over on the Mayflower or flew into JFK airport. And withNew York being large point of entry, many families of immigrants either settled here or spent time here before moving on.  With our large collection of…

On September 8, 2011, the New-York Historical Society opened its doors to our Remembering 9/11 installation. With photographs, newspaper clippings and audio accounts of the events of September 11, 2001, we wanted our gallery to be a place to remember and reflect on the events and the time that has passed. With that in mind, we’ve encouraged…

When the New-York Historical Society reopens in November, the 77th Street Rotunda will be adorned with four works from artist Richard Haas’ Cityscape cycle–paintings which depict a 360 degree view of New York City’s skyline. Originally displayed in the employee dining room of the Philip Morris headquarters in 1982, Haas tells us his goal was to…

Art inspires, and sometimes what it inspires is other art. When composer Nell Shaw Cohen first saw Thomas Cole’s The Course of Empire at the New-York Historical Society, she was inspired to write a piece that represented the story seen in Cole’s series. One of the defining works of the Hudson River School of painting, The…

Most people can tell you exactly what happened to them on September 11, 2011. They remember the weather, or what they had for lunch, or the look on their neighbor’s face as the two watched smoke billowing from downtown Manhattan. The attacks of 9/11 affected everyone differently, and that is what the New-York Historical Society…