November 11, 2011
NY Historical Society debuts $70 mln renovation
The New-York Historical Society, the city’s oldest museum, today reopens its doors to the public to show off a $70 million overhaul that dramatically brings more light into the first floor, adds a children’s history section, updates the auditorium, makes room for a restaurant and sharpens its goal to examine major themes of American history from the New York point of view.
Exhibits in the bright new lobby gallery range from an over-sized animation of New Yorkers toppling the statue of King George III on July 9, 1776, to the door of an FDNY truck destroyed Sept. 11, 2001.
Even before visitors leave the lobby they’ll take in a range of items, from Keith Haring’s Pop Shop ceiling mural, to children’s shoes salvaged from the sinking of the General Slocum steamboat disaster and Fred Wilson’s contemporary “Liberty/Liberte,” sculpture which mashes up items such as slave shackles and the iron balustrade from the original Federal Hall. Paintings, busts and other art cover another wall in a salon-style installation. Several touch-screen kiosks allow you to hyperlink like mad for more information on the artists, events and people depicted on the walls.
 The building’s new Central Park West entrance features a recessed glass entrance designed to let in the light from the park. It’s an “opening of the vault” NYHS President and CEO Louise Mirrer said Wednesday at a media preview, referencing the 1908 building’s original bank-inspired design.
That entrance has a new exterior staircase pulled “out as far as the DOT would let us,” said Ray H. Dovell, principal at Platt Byard Dovell White Architects LLP. Standing sentry on the new steps is a bronze statue of President Lincoln; Frederick Douglass greets visitors at the museum’s northern entrance. Both statues were fabricated by Brooklyn’s StudioEIS.
Downstairs, the NYHS has added the DiMenna Children’s History Museum with a $5 million donation from Joseph and Diana DiMenna.
Using an “American Girl”-model of storytelling, the museum-within-the-museum focuses on the lives of six children by putting them in historical context. “It makes the information come alive to them through the lives of children,” Diana DiMenna said. Children can learn about young Alexander Hamilton, James McCune Smith, the New York Newsies and others. “There’s nothing you can’t touch,” DiMenna said.
On the ground-floor gallery, the temporary exhibition Making American Taste: Narrative Art for a New Democracy has opened with a newly restored painting of “Return of the 69th (Irish) Regiment, N.Y.S.M. from the Seat of War, 1862-1863” by Louis Lang.
The second floor houses another new temporary exhibition, Revolution! The Atlantic World Reborn, which explores the connections of the American, French and Haitian revolutions. Among the artifacts on display include the Stamp Act, an original desk from Federal Hall (one of four in the NYHS collection, according to curator Richard Rabinowitz,) and the only remaining copy of the Haitian Declaration of Independence from its original 1804 printing (which a grad student happened upon in the National Archives in London in 2009.)
Much of the permanent collection can still be seen upstairs in the Henry Luce III Center for the Study of American Culture, such as the 1911 Gambling Wheel from Coney Island.
Screening on a loop in the upgraded auditorium, the new film commissioned for the museum, “New York Story,” is far from stodgy as it quickly covers New York City’s past and points out the contradiction of how important slavery was to setting up the economy that aspired to support great freedoms. With only 1,000 inhabitants, 18 language were already spoken in the young colony; later, the film notes 168 languages are currently spoken in Queens alone.
The film covers the drafting of the Bill of Rights at Federal Hall downtown and Washington’s inauguration there, the construction of the Erie Canal and how it increased the importance of the New York Harbor, leading the city’s population to double every generation. The Civil War Draft Riots, caused when the rich were allowed to buy their way out of service, remains the largest, bloodiest civil uprising in American history.
The film further covers the mass waves of immigration, the poverty in the slums, and the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist fire that later led to labor protections. Later, New York is at the center of the birth of mass media and a creative convergence embracing a “tradition of provoking change.” But as manufacturing and maritime jobs disappeared the city crumbled in the 1970s but “raw human vitality” remained (punctuated in the film by a Run -DMC video clip.)
The film moves on to New York’s post ’70s revitalization, the World Trade Center attack, and then another rebirth. “New York is an experiment like America is an experiment,” historian Kenneth T. Jackson says shortly before the film wraps up to the sound of Jay-Z and Alicia Keys singing “Empire State of Mind.”
The renovation will also bring a new restaurant to the museum.
The 74-seat Caffè Storico, which will open in a few weeks with chef Jim Burke, will feature Italian small plates, pastas and Italian wines. Chandeliers hang from the high ceilings, light streams in from the new northern-facing windows, and the bookshelves will feature items from the NYHS collection. Operated by restaurateur Stephen Starr, (which also runs Buddakan and Morimoto in Chelsea,) Caffè Storico will be open at least six days a week serving lunch and dinner plus brunch on weekends.
Caffè Storico will be the only dining option in the museum except for a snack cart downstairs in the children’s section (which will emphasize kids’ snacks and probably not make do for an adult’s lunch, a museum official told NewYorkology.)
Previously $12, the admission at the NY Historical Society today rises to $15 for adults. Admission for seniors and educators will be $12; $10 for students; $5 for children ages 7 to 13; and children under 7 are free.
The museum today resumes Friday pay-as-you-wish hours from 6 to 8 p.m., with extra late hours (6 to 11 p.m.) for the grand reopening Nov. 11. In 2012, Bank of America will sponsor a free Fridays performance series, Mirrer said.
The New-York Historical Society is located at 170 Central Park West, directly across W. 77th Street from the American Museum of Natural History.
Upcoming exhibitions will cover Beer in New York, (May 18, 2012 to Sept. 16, 2010;) New York in World War II, (November 2012 to June 2013;) and The Armory Show at 100, (October 2013 to March 2014.)
Update as of Dec. 12: Caffè Storico is now open for dinner, and as of Dec. 14 will also be open for lunch.
Picture credits: Amy Langfield/NewYorkology.
Earlier: Slavery exhibit to expose NYC’s tarnished history
NY Historical Society opens slavery art show
‘Slavery in New York’ explores city’s forgotten past
November 11, 2011 9:05 AM in Cheap Stuff, History, Kids, Museums, Upper West Side
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