Planned by the Gilder Lehrman Institute in collaboration with the New-York Historical Society. October 16, 2009 marks the 150th anniversary of John Brown's doomed raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia in 1859. Brown, an ardent abolitionist who believed in racial equality, embraced violence as a means to end slavery. Executed in 1859, he has been both vilified as a murderer and celebrated as a martyr. This exhibition of rare materials from the Gilder Lehrman Collection and New-York Historical explores Brown's beliefs and activities at a critical juncture in American history and invites us to ponder the struggle for civil rights down to the present.

Planned by the Gilder Lehrman Institute in collaboration with N-YHS.
http://www.gilderlehrman.org/

October 16, 2009 marks the 150th anniversary of John Brown's doomed raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia in 1859.  Brown, an ardent abolitionist who believed in racial equality, embraced violence as a means to end slavery. Executed in 1859, he has been both vilified as a murderer and celebrated as a martyr. This exhibition of rare materials from the Gilder Lehrman Collection and N-YHS explores Brown's beliefs and activities at a critical juncture in American history and invites us to ponder the struggle for civil rights down to the present.

Although at first a casual circle, the group became tightly organized after FDR's nomination. After the election, they were publicly christened the "Brain Trust," and became the central component of the New Deal. This exhibition will focus on the three key members of the Brain Trust—Raymond Moley, Rexford Tugwell, and Adolph Berle—and two of the New Deal cabinet members with whom they worked to bring about FDR's radical changes—Frances Perkins and Harry Hopkins. Using contemporary photographs, cartoons, broadsides, articles and newsreels, this exhibition will be supplemented by audio reminisces from the collection of the Columbia University Oral History Research Office.

John Vanderlyn was among the first American painters to spend significant time studying in Paris, and while abroad around 1812 he created his masterpiece, "Ariadne Asleep on the Island of Naxos" (Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts). The painting was admitted to the Paris Salon that year—a triumph for a young American artist. But triumph turned to despair when Vanderlyn exhibited Ariadne back in the United States in 1815, where audiences considered the nude a shocking subject, and it failed to garner the public acclaim it deserved.

Many artists and critics, however, realized Vanderlyn's great achievement, among them the engraver and aspiring painter Asher B. Durand. In 1831 Durand purchased Vanderlyn's great work, along with an unfinished copy that is now in the Historical Society collection. Durand created an engraving of Vanderlyn's unappreciated masterpiece that was hailed by some as a great achievement, but the American public was still unprepared to accept a nude figure as a subject for art, so the print met a fate similar to the painting that inspired it. But there the two artists' fates diverged: while Vanderlyn became embittered and eventually died in poverty, Durand went on to become an accomplished portraitist and a highly acclaimed landscape painter.

A group of 22 paintings and two small sculptures will offer visitors a chronological journey through highlights of the New-York Historical Society's rich collection of New York views, including historical images of the metropolis and richly allusive images of its inhabitants and their lives. The installation will include a selection of city views, beginning and ending with two monumental cityscapes, Guy’s "Tontine Coffee House" of ca. 1797 and Jacquette’s "From World Trade Center," 1998. It will feature portraits of political and cultural figures such as DeWitt Clinton, who oversaw the development of the Erie Canal, and Peter Williams, the former slave who became a successful merchant and a founding trustee of the Zion Church for Negroes. It will also illuminate the everyday lives of New Yorkers through such works as Burr’s "The Intelligence Office," 1849 and Thain’s "Italian Block Party," 1922.

Tracing the career and achievements of a band that became one of the most significant cultural forces in 20th century America, the New-York Historical Society presents The Grateful Dead: Now Playing at the New-York Historical Society. The exhibition, on view from March 5 to September 5, 2010, represents the first large-scale exhibition of materials from the Grateful Dead Archive, housed at the University of California Santa Cruz.

Through a wealth of original materials, the exhibition will explore the musical creativity and influence of the Grateful Dead from 1965 to 1995, the sociological phenomenon of the Deadheads (the band's network of devoted fans) and the enduring impact of the Dead's pioneering approach to the music business. Among the objects in the exhibition will be documents, instruments, audio and video recordings, album art, photographs, platinum records, posters, programs, newsletters, tickets, and t-shirts and other merchandise. Highlights will include the band's first record contract, tour itineraries, backstage guest lists, decorated fan mail, rare LP test pressings, drawings for the fabled Wall of Sound amplifier array, scripts for the Grateful Dead ticket hotline, notebooks of Dead archivist Dick Latvala, life-size skeleton props used in the band's "Touch of Grey" video and large-scale marionettes and other stage props.

"Despite the Grateful Dead's close association with California, the band and New York have been an important part of each other's history from the first time the Dead played here in 1967 to the band's year-on-year performances in New York from the late 1970s through 1995," commented Dr. Louise Mirrer, President and CEO of the New-York Historical Society. "This exhibition not only celebrates the band's relationship with New York but its tremendous impact on American culture."

"The Grateful Dead Archive is one of the most significant popular cultural collections of the 20th century," said Christine Bunting, the head of Special Collections and Archives at the University Library at UC Santa Cruz. "We are delighted that the Historical Society is presenting this unprecedented exhibition, providing the public and the thousands of fans with such an exciting overview of the band's musical journey."

The Grateful Dead: Now Playing at the New-York Historical Society provides unique glimpses into the political and social upheavals and artistic awakenings of the 1960s and 1970s, a tumultuous and transformative period that shaped our current cultural and political landscape, and examines how the Grateful Dead's origin in northern California in the mid-1960s was informed by the ideology and spirit of both the Beat Generation and the burgeoning Hippie scene, including the now-legendary Acid Tests. The exhibition also explores how the band's refusal to follow the established rules of the record industry revealed an unexpected business savvy that led to innovations in a rapidly changing music industry, and also to a host of consumer-driven marketing enrichments that kept fans in frequent contact with the band.

Click here to read a curator's blog

Though legend has it that Santa Claus hails from the North Pole, he was actually a New Yorker who came into the world on West 23rd Street in what is now the trendy Chelsea neighborhood.

The modern Santa was born in the imagination of Clement Clarke Moore, a scholar who penned a whimsical poem about St. Nicholas, the patron of old Dutch New York, for the amusement of his six children at Christmastime. Soon after the publication of "A Visit from St. Nicholas"—popularly known today by its opening line, "Twas the night before Christmas…""—St. Nicholas became a popular feature of American Christmas celebrations. Moore's poem permanently connected St. Nicholas to Christmas, and led to our idea of Santa Claus.

Santa's popularity, appearance and many of the holiday traditions that surround him owe much to the imaginative work of two other New Yorkers: Washington Irving, the creator of Knickerbocker's History of New York, and Thomas Nast, an artist whose drawings of Santa were reproduced all over the country in the years following the Civil War.

To celebrate the winter season, the New-York Historical Society is presenting It Happened Here: The Invention of Santa Claus, an installation tracing the modern image of Santa Claus, the red-suited, pot-bellied descendant of the medieval bishop St. Nicholas of Myra, which emerged only decades after the first Congress met in 1788 in Federal Hall in New York.  The exhibition features Robert Weir's 1837 painting of a rather sly St. Nicholas and Thomas Nast's Harper's Weekly cartoons of Santa. Clement Clarke Moore's desk is on display in the Henry Luce III Center for the Study of American Culture.

Hanukkah lamps, or Hannukiot, are candelabra characterized by nine candle branches and used in the ritual candle-lighting associated with the celebration of Hanukkah, the festival that commemorates the 165 B.C.E. liberation of the Second Temple in Jerusalem. Hanukkah lamps were made up of eight oil wells or candle-holders, separated from a ninth traditionally used as a shamash, or server, to light the others. These lamps remain distinct from menorahs, which generally have seven candle branches and are not associated with a specific use or holiday. Hanukkah lamps were present in European synagogues by about the 13th century, and often designed in the form of menorahs or as standing table lamps.

The Hanukkah lamp currently on display was made in 1999 by New York City silversmith Bernard Bernstein in his Bronx, New York workshop. A quintessential New Yorker, Bernstein was born and raised in the city, attended the High School of Music and Art, graduated from City College of New York and New York University, and began his career as a teacher of industrial arts in New York and New Jersey schools. He began making silver Judaica in 1959 after taking a class with the German-Israeli silversmith Ludwig Y. Wolpert (1900–1981), a world-renowned expert in Jewish ceremonial metalwork. The lamp was acquired by the New-York Historical Society in 2010 and will be through January  8, 2012. The lamp will also be featured in the forthcoming catalogue and 2012 exhibition, Stories in Sterling.

Recalling the desperate fight for life that used to be waged by juvenile diabetes patients, and commemorating the events of 1921 that inaugurated a new era of hope for them and their families, the New-York Historical Society will present the exhibition Breakthrough: The Dramatic Story of the Discovery of Insulin from October 5, 2010 through January 31, 2011. Exploring the roles of science, government, higher education and industry in developing and distributing a life-saving drug, the exhibition will bring to life the personalities who discovered insulin and raced to bring it to the world and will tell the story of one extraordinary New York girl—Elizabeth Evans Hughes, daughter of the leading statesman and jurist Charles Evans Hughes—who was among the very first patients to be saved.

To lead visitors through this history, from the discovery of insulin in Toronto by Dr. Frederick Banting in 1921 and its first human trials in 1922 to its widespread use today, Breakthrough will feature digital interactives, film, artifacts and ephemera drawn from the Historical Society's own collections and from archives including those of the University of Toronto, Eli Lilly and Company, the Rockefeller Institute, the Joslin Clinic and the New York Academy of Medicine.

The first chapter will recount the excitement, and the clash of personalities, among the scientists whose research led to the discovery of insulin, beginning in May 1921. Also included in this chapter will be an account of the valiant but heartbreaking efforts of Dr. Frederick Allen in the years before the discovery to prolong the lives of diabetic children through the use of a starvation diet. The story of Elizabeth Evans Hughes, told in part through actual treatment charts and period letters, will bring to life the impact of insulin when it first became available. Because Elizabeth was the daughter of Charles Evans Hughes—Governor of New York (1907–1910), Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States (1910–1916), United States Secretary of State (1921–1925) and Chief Justice of the United States (1930–1941)—her survival provided powerful testimony to the value of insulin, and helped bring the work of Dr. Allen and Dr. Banting to the world's stage.

The exhibition's second chapter will examine how insulin became available for widespread medical use through a partnership between the University of Toronto and Eli Lilly and Company—the first such collaboration between an academic institution and a drug company. Photographs from the Lilly archives will reveal the painstaking early method of manufacturing insulin in mass quantities—an innovative industrial process that ran from the slaughterhouse to the laboratory. Display cases of syringes, vials, testing kits for blood sugar and other equipment will take the story of insulin treatment from the 1920s up through today.

The exhibition's final chapter will tell about recent developments—notably the synthesis of insulin in the 1980s as the world's first biotechnology drug—and the current state of research, development, treatment and demography of diabetes. Included in this chapter will be information about the alarming increase in prevalence of Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes in the past decade, and the ways in which individuals, families and institutions can address this health crisis. The exhibition will conclude with a presentation of Life for a Child, a documentary film produced by the International Diabetes Federation and Eli Lilly and Company to raise awareness of the devastating impact of the disease.

Breakthrough will be installed in the Historical Society's 1,300-square-foot temporary gallery, located just off the 77th Street entrance, while the remainder of the landmark Central Park West building undergoes a $60 million architectural renovation.

Timed to coincide with the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson's sail into the New York bay, The World of Margrieta van Varick explores the life and times of a fascinating woman, her family and possessions. Born in the Netherlands, Margrieta spent the better part of her life at the extremes of the Dutch colonial world: in Malacca (now Malaysia) and Flatbush (now Brooklyn). Arriving in Flatbush with her minister husband Rudolphus in 1686, she set up a textile shop, bringing with her an astonishing array of Asian and European goods. We know about the wealth of objects thanks to an inventory, taken after her death in 1696—and recently rediscovered in the archives of the New-York Historical Society library—documenting her personal belongings and shop goods.

New York Divided: Slavery and the Civil War is the final exhibition in the New-York Historical Society's groundbreaking series on slavery and its impact on the people, landscape, institutions and economy of New York. New York Divided offers a bold look at one of the most challenging periods in New York City's history, when it was torn by the violence of the 1863 draft riots, produced some of the most significant figures in the abolitionist movement, and became the economic engine of the country. Featuring precious historical artifacts, many never displayed before, as well as an online exhibit, the exhibition examines New York's little-known history.

Few non-historians recall that during the "secession winter" of 1860-61, pro-Southern voices (including New York City's Mayor Fernando Wood) called for the City's declaration of independence from both the North and the South, aiming to preserve its role as a great port for both sections. New York was a virtual "Capital of the South," with major commercial and political ties to Southern slavery and, at the same time, a major center of the nation's abolitionist movement. The exhibition traces the evolution of New York's rise to national and global economic power and its relationship to the nation's confrontation with issues of slavery and racial inequality against the backdrop of the Civil War. New York Divided shows how the momentum of emancipation was interrupted by the emergence of the cotton revolution, and enhances the public understanding of the efforts of New Yorkers—black and white—in the struggle for freedom that presaged the civil rights movement of the 20th century.

The exhibition is a follow-up to last fall's groundbreaking, highly acclaimed exhibition, Slavery in New York. This is not the American history most of us grew up learning. Exciting new discoveries have upended our understanding of the national past, including that of New York City and State. New York Divided brings the exciting research recently unearthed by scholars to a broad audience. We hope that visitors to this exhibition will have learned something new from their visit, made important connections to the past and the present-day lives and be inspired to action.