August 12, 2008
Lincoln, Cooper portraits hit the streets at Astor Place
Abraham Lincoln and Peter Cooper made history down near Astor Place, and the New-York Historical Society doesn’t want you to forget it.
 Free-standing large-scale portraits of the two men have been installed in the Astor Place Triangle across from The Cooper Union, map, which is where Lincoln delivered the 1860 speech that made him a viable presidential candidate.
“In sharing the richness, diversity and stories of the New-York Historical Society’s permanent collection, this installation aims to teach visitors something new about their history and connect the past to their present-day lives,” Louise Mirrer, president and CEO of the New-York Historical Society, said in a statement about the portraits, which will be on display through August 24.
The installation of the 1860s and 1870s portraits (both replicas of paintings on display in the museum’s permanent collection,) is serving as a pilot program for a larger citiwide series the Historical Society hopes to mount next year to coincide with the celebration of the 400th anniversary of the founding of New York.
A year ago, London’s National Gallery did something similar with its Grand Tour by placing reproductions of some of its most famous paintings in the streets of Piccadilly, Soho and Covent Garden.
More information about the New York project is online. The Historical Society is also planning two major exhibitions about the same era in U.S. history : “Grant and Lee in War and Peace” (opening October 17, 2008) and “Lincoln and New York” (opening October 2, 2009.)
Picture credits: Photos by LaPlaca Cohen, provided to NewYorkology by the New-York Historical Society.
Earlier: Washington’s and Lincoln’s New York City haunts
New York opens Heritage Tourism Center
McSorley’s not showing its age?
August 12, 2008 9:21 AM in Cheap Stuff, Downtown, History, Kids, Museums, Upper West Side
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