Soon to be available on the PBS affiliate’s website for out-of-state viewing along with previous installments of Treasures, N-YHS should be incredibly helpful for anyone planning a trip to the City. Frankly, in the early 1990’s, it was somewhat doubtful whether the ailing N-YHS would make it into the Twenty-First Century. However, new leadership, including historically conscious board members Richard Gilder and Lewis Lehrman, turned around the Society’s fortunes. It has since staged a number of buzz-generating exhibitions, like the remarkable Hamilton exhibit and programming staged in 2004.
Viewers will also get a sense of some of the N-YHS’s surprising collections, including some of the world’s largest holdings of Audubon paintings and Tiffany lamps. The Society also boasts extensive ephemeral archives, such pamphlets, tabloids, and broadsides, considered rubbish in their time, but now invaluable for researchers. All of this is now much more accessible thanks to their ambitious restoration and reconstruction efforts, some of which are documented in Treasures. Evidently, refurbishing and installing the ceiling of Keith Haring’s Pop Shop in the museum’s entry hall was especially tricky.
(Photos: Platt Byard Dovell White Architects/Megan Thompson)
