New York City

NY Historical to Reopen with Revolution! Exhibit

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After three years of construction New York’s first museum, the New-York Historical Society, will re-open fully on November 11, 2011 with the exhibition Revolution! The Atlantic World Reborn, the first exhibition to relate the American, French and Haitian struggles as a single global narrative.

Spanning decades of enormous political and cultural changes, from the triumph of British imperial power in 1763 to the end of the Napoleonic wars in 1815, Revolution! traces how an ideal of popular sovereignty, introduced through the American fight for independence, soon sparked more radical calls for a recognition of universal human rights, and set off attacks on both sides of the Atlantic against hereditary privilege and slavery. Among the unforeseen outcomes was an insurrection on the French possession of Saint-Domingue, leading to the world’s only successful slave revolt and the establishment in 1804 of the first nation founded on the principles of full freedom and equality for all, regardless of color.

“Just as the New-York Historical Society set new standards for American culture when it opened in 1804, Revolution! will break new ground for American history in 2011,” Louise Mirrer, President and CEO of the Historical Society, said in a press statement announcing the new exhibit. “This trailblazing exhibition underscores how much our nation has always been an integral part of a much broader world, and how our city’s great cultural pantheon took shape against the backdrop of a sweeping play of historical forces on an international stage. As we established in our widely acclaimed exhibition on Nueva York, the history of our city has always implicated the history of the world.”

Richard Rabinowitz, founder and president of American History Workshop, serves as chief exhibition curator. Thomas Bender of New York University and Laurent Dubois of Duke University have served as the co-chief historians for Revolution!, drawing on the scholarship of an advisory committee of historians and specialists.

Following its presentation at the New-York Historical Society (November 11, 2011 – April 15, 2012), Revolution! will travel to venues in the U.K., France, and elsewhere in the United States. Educational materials and programs will be distributed internationally, including in Haiti.

The exhibition is made possible with grant funds from the U.S. Department of Education Underground Railroad Educational and Cultural (URR) program and The Nathan Cummings Foundation.

On view in Revolution!

With texts and audio guides in English, French and Haitian Kreyol, the exhibition unfolds in galleries designed to evoke varied gathering places, such as a baroque palace, a portside tavern and a rural Haitian lakou: sites where people of the era felt and shared the “common wind” of political information and opinion. Within these galleries, visitors will encounter paintings, drawings and prints from collections in a dozen countries- historical documents, maps and manuscripts from the hands of participants in these revolutions- audiovisual presentations and interactive learning stations- and curriculum materials for students from kindergarten through graduate school.

Highlights among the three hundred objects in Revolution! include:
· the original Stamp Act, as it was passed by Parliament in 1765 setting off the riots that led to the American Revolution, on loan from the Parliamentary Archives, London, displayed for the first time outside the U.K.

· Sea Captains Carousing in Surinam (oil on canvas, 1752-58, by John Greenwood), the first genre painting in American art history, on loan from the Saint Louis Art Museum, illustrating the sort of tavern where discontent brewed in the Atlantic world, in an 18th-century version of “social networking”

· a first edition of Thomas Paine’s epoch-making pamphlet Common Sense (1776), from the collection of the New-York Historical Society

· an elegant mahogany desk from the first capitol of the United States, Federal Hall in lower Manhattan (c. 1788, New-York Historical Society): the first example of a legislator’s desk in Anglo-American history

· the “Africa Box” filled with craftworks and agricultural products from Africa (ca. 1785, on loan from the Wisbech and Fenland Museum, U.K.), used by Abolitionist Thomas Clarkson in his lectures against slavery, and never before exhibited outside the U.K.

· Vue de l’incendie de la ville du Cap Francais (1795, by J.B. Chapuy, Archives departementales de la Martinique), an example of the sort of engraving that brought impressions of the Haiti uprising to an international public

· Napoleon’s authorization to French negotiators to sell the Louisiana Territory to the United States (1803, New-York Historical Society), as a direct consequence of the Haitian rebellion

· the only known surviving copy of the first printing of the Haitian Declaration of Independence (1804, National Archives, London), recently discovered and exhibited here to the public for the first time

· a wooden model of the slave ship Brookes, produced for the French revolutionary leader Mirabeau, intended to be used as a prop in the National Assembly’s debate on ending slavery in France (1789, Bibliotheque nationale de France)

· Thomas Jefferson’s copy of Notes on the State of Virginia, his only book, inscribed to the Abbe Morellet, and used by the latter to make the first French translation (1785, New York Public Library)

· a 2nd-century C.E. Roman marble bust of a young man wearing a Phrygian (or “liberty”) cap, which became an inspiration for one of the great symbols of the revolutionary era (Bibliotheque nationale de France)

· three superb vodou sculptures, produced by secret societies in Haiti that were established during the Haitian Revolution (early 20th century, La Fondation pour la Preservation, la Valorisation et la Production d’Oeuvres Culturelles Haitiennes)

· Anne-Louis Girodet’s magnificent portrait of the great Saint-Domingue military and political leader Jean-Baptiste Belley, the “most important image of a black revolutionary” (1797, Musee National du Chateau de Versailles)

· a seven-foot-long “carcan” or leg-yoke, used to shackle five captives together, taken from a French slave ship (ca. 1800, Bibliotheque nationale de France)

· and many examples of the broadsides, pamphlets, and political and satirical cartoons that spread, and reflected, revolutionary fervor throughout the period

Plan of the Exhibition

Revolution! tells its story through the following main sections:

The Palace: Imperial Ambitions, Political Realities provides an overview of the Atlantic imperial world in 1763 at the moment when the British defeated French and Spanish forces in the first truly global conflict, the Seven Years War. This triumph came at a price, as the gallery illustrates with evidence of the material riches of the colonial possessions, and the high-level debates within the capital about the costs of exploiting them. Warfare and colonial government were expensive- yet greater taxation within the imperial homeland carried political risks. The leaders of Britain (like their imperial counterparts in Spain and Portugal) chose instead to impose new taxes and regulations on their colonies.

The Tavern: A World of Conspiracy and Connivance brings visitors into contact with the new public sphere of political argument that emerged in the world of the Atlantic’s maritime commerce, as broadsides, pamphlets and dockside murmurings circulated among a growing population of “masterless” people: men and women uprooted from their ancest
ral homes in Africa, Europe and the Americas. A seaport tavern in the Caribbean is the exhibition’s setting for the exchange of arguments, rumors, information and grievances that took place among colonial planters, royal officials, free people of color, fugitives, sailors, dockworkers and demimondaines. Their public chatter became an increasingly loud, dissonant and often corrosive counterpoint to the official pronouncements of palaces, ministries, cathedrals and courtrooms.

The Uncharted Upheaval in British North America traces the unforeseeable course of American rebellion from the protests against the Stamp Act to the aftermath of the War of Independence, showing these events less as a chronology of conflicts than as a set of “inventions.” Having begun by arguing for their traditional English rights within the empire, the colonists went on to construct universalist arguments for independence and a government based on popular sovereignty. Materials in the gallery illustrate the increasing political and cultural alienation of the colonists- the evolution of their colonial assemblies into wartime “committees of safety”- the formation of a military alliance with England’s imperial rival, France- and the postwar invention of self-government under the Articles of Confederation and then the Constitution.
The British Campaign for the Abolition of Slavery and the Slave Trade explores how the impact of the successful American rebellion—combined with the resistance of the enslaved aboard ships and within American plantations—set off a powerful impulse for reform in Great Britain, as the greatest slave-trading power on earth began the march toward emancipation. Materials in the gallery show how the anti-slavery forces used lectures, community meetings, marches, rallies, petitions to Parliament, the publication of propaganda images and personal testimonies—techniques of political mobilization that are now standard in the democratic world—to advance their cause. By 1807, the British had abolished the slave trade and assumed the role of maritime policemen in the Atlantic, aiming to cripple the human trafficking of Britain’s imperial rivals. This was the second great achievement of the revolutionary era.

Free and Equal: French and African Ideals Liberate the World’s Richest Colony takes the story of revolution to Paris—where the American example, and the cost to the royal treasury of assisting the Americans, contributed to the monarchy’s downfall—and to France’s own prize colony, Saint-Domingue, the western third of the island of Hispaniola. In the wake of 1789, the rich sugar planters of Saint-Domingue struck out for autonomy from France. Meanwhile, their mixed-race offspring, the often prosperous free people of color, responded to the new egalitarian ideals by calling for racial equality within economic classes- and the colony’s poor whites, hating both groups, agitated for the overthrow of all hierarchies. None of these forces wanted the abolition of slavery- but after more than two years of universal conflict, the ninety percent of Saint-Domingue that was African and enslaved rebelled, in summer 1791. At the heart of this chapter is Toussaint Louverture, the military genius, economic czar and law-giver of the rebellion. Its legacy included the total abolition of slavery by the Convention in 1794—the third great achievement of this revolutionary era—but also the ongoing resistance in Saint-Domingue, as ex-slaves chafed at Louverture’s orders for them to remain at their places of work.

The Second Haitian Revolution takes the story into the foothills and mountains of the island, where the formerly enslaved population stole away from the plantations and began creating a distinctive national identity. They melded the enormous diversity of their native African backgrounds into a single culture, through the development of a new form of spirituality (vodoun), a new national language (Kreyol) and a new form of household space and organization (the lakou).

The Triumph of Haitian Independence concludes this part of Revolution! with the story of Napoleon’s 1802 invasion of Saint-Domingue (with the goal of reinstituting slavery, threatening to kill off the existing adult African population and importing an entire new workforce from Africa) and the subsequent resistance. Although successful at first, the French army fell victim to yellow fever, the maroon insurgency in the mountains and their own government’s ineptitude. At the beginning of 1804, having driven the French out of Saint-Domingue, the victorious General Dessalines declared the independence of the second republic established in the Americas, the newly named nation of Haiti, concluding the first (and only) successful slave revolt in history and establishing the first nation to guarantee unconditional equality and emancipation in its constitution. This was the fourth great achievement of this era of revolution.
Legacies, the 19th century shows how the immediate consequences of this first Age of Revolution fell short of the dreams and sacrifices of the revolutionaries. The new Haitian state was quarantined by the imperial powers, with France extending recognition only after Haiti agreed to indemnify whites for the loss of their land and slaves—leaving the nation crippled by debt, and chronically unable to construct a workable political system. The British went on to abolish slavery in their West Indian possessions in the 1830s—but only after compensating slaveholders, and providing them with a new supply of indentured workers from Asia. As for the U.S., it ceased to be a fount of revolutionary activity after its purchase of the Louisiana Territory—a direct consequence of the Haitian revolution—turning inward to a project of continental expansion. (The question of extending slavery into western territories, ironically, would break apart the Union.) Despite these reversals, however, the events of 1776-1804 had implanted an ineradicable aspiration for democratic rights in the Atlantic world and beyond.

Legacies for our time carries the story of Revolution! into the 20th century, when the attainment of universal human rights came to be a global ideal, if certainly not an achieved reality. Dozens of colonial nations declared their independence from European powers, often in language adopted from Jefferson and Lafayette. Slavery, though persisting outside the law, became illegal everywhere. And in 1948, the United Nations brought forth the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which codified a new norm in human affairs: the fundamental entitlement of every person to a life of dignity, liberty and equality. This is the ultimate legacy of the half-century we call the Age of Revolution.

Exhibition Catalog

The exhibition will be accompanied by a full-color, illustrated catalogue edited by Thomas Bender, Laurent Dubois, and Richard Rabinowitz. The volume will feature ten essays by leading scholars: Thomas Bender- Laurent Dubois and Julius S. Scott (University of Michigan)- Richard Rabinowitz- T. H. Breen (Northwestern University)- Cathy Matson (University of Delaware)- David Brion Davis (Yale University) and Peter P. Hinks- Robin Blackburn (New School University)- Jeremy D. Popkin (University of Kentucky)- Vincent Brown (Duke University)- Rebecca J. Scott (University of Michigan) and Jean M. Hebrard (University of Michigan)- and Jean Casimir (Universite d’Etat, Haiti).

Education: School Programs

Curriculum materials for grades K through graduate school will include teacher lesson plans and student materials such as maps, copies of primary resources, life stories of exhibition protagonists and timelines. As with all major exhibitions, Museum educators from the Historical Society will conduct teacher training and onsite tours for school groups throughout the run of the exhibition. Teacher materials will also be accessible for download from the Revolution! website at no charge.

Public Programs

A series of evening programs at the Histo
rical Society will feature some of the nation’s top historians, journalists and authors. These programs will be digitally recorded and posted as podcasts on various sites. In addition, the Historical Society will offer educational and community outreach programs for the Haitian-American community in New York and other venue cities, including visual and performing arts, oral history and citizenship education.

A joint scholarly conference with the John Carter Brown Library (Providence, RI) in March 2012 will convene post-secondary audiences and scholars of the subject.

Illustration: Sea Captains Carousing in Surinam (oil on canvas, 1752-58, by John Greenwood).

New Board Chair for Brooklyn Museum

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The Members of the Board of Trustees of the Brooklyn Museum have elected John S. Tamagni, a member of the Board since 1987 and currently Chair of the finance committee and Board Treasurer, as the Museum’s Chair. He succeeds retiring Chair Norman M. Feinberg, who has served as Chair since 2006. Feinberg will continue to serve as an active Board member. Trustee Stephanie Ingrassia was elected Board President. Ingrassia has been a Trustee for ten years.

Born and raised in Brooklyn, Tamagni has recently returned to the Borough after living in Summit, New Jersey, for four decades. He has had a connection to the Brooklyn Museum since childhood, coming as a visitor when his mother studied art at the Brooklyn Museum Art School (which was moved to the Pratt Institute in the 1980s). Following his graduation from Dartmouth College with a degree in economics, he served as a Line Officer in the United States Navy. After his release from active duty in 1959, he joined Blyth & Co. as an investment banker in its Municipal Finance group. In 1972 he moved to Lazard Freres & Co. as a General Partner and retired as a Managing Director at the end of 2005. He subsequently assumed control of Capital Markets at Lazard for corporate, government, and municipal securities. He is currently a Founding Partner and Chairman of Castleton Partners, a fixed-income investment management and advisory firm. He was Vice-Chairman of the Securities Industry Association as well as a Director. He was also Director of the Bond Market Association.

Tamagni has long been involved in philanthropic causes. He is also a Trustee of the Orchestra of St. Luke’s and an overseer of the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College. He is a former Trustee of Overlook Hospital in Summit, New Jersey and a former Overseer of the Graduate School of the New School in New York City. With his late wife Janet, to whom he was married for 52 years, he collected American paintings of the mid-nineteenth through early twentieth century.

Stephanie Ingrassia, who takes over the long-vacant position of President, studied fine arts and art history at Michigan State and the University of London, and received a B. A. from the School of Visual Arts in New York. A career in graphic design has included the design of books, magazines, newsletters, and promotional materials as well as teaching computer graphics at the School of Visual Arts. A collector of contemporary art, Ingrassia has served on the Brooklyn Museum Board since 2001. Prior to her election as President, she was a Vice Chair. She has also been a board member of BRIC Arts/Media and of Creative Time. She and her husband, Tim Ingrassia, and their four children live in Brooklyn.

Brooklyn Museum Cancels Street Art Exhibition

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The Brooklyn Museum has canceled the spring 2012 presentation of Art in the Streets, the first major United States museum exhibition of the history of graffiti and street art. Organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, where it is currently on view at The Geffen Contemporary through August 8, 2011, the exhibition had been scheduled at the Brooklyn Museum from March 30 through July 8, 2012.

&#8220This is an exhibition about which we were tremendously enthusiastic, and which would follow appropriately in the path of our Basquiat and graffiti exhibitions in 2005 and 2006, respectively. It is with regret, therefore, that the cancellation became necessary due to the current financial climate. As with most arts organizations throughout the country, we have had to make several difficult choices since the beginning of the economic downturn three years ago,&#8221 Brooklyn Museum Director Arnold L. Lehman said in a prepared statement.

The announcement follows a recent follows the limiting of Friday hours, effective July 1. The Brooklyn Museum will no longer remain open until 10 p.m. every Friday, a change resulting from what museum officials called &#8220the challenging economic climate confronting many public institutions throughout New York City and the country.&#8221

Broolyn Museum Programming, Hours Changes

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Open every Thursday evening until 10 p.m. since last October, the Brooklyn Museum will enhance its Thursdays @ 7 programming this fall to better meet the needs of visitors who work during the day.

However, effective July 1, the Brooklyn Museum will no longer remain open until 10 p.m. every Friday. This change is a result of the challenging economic climate confronting many public institutions throughout New York City and the country.

In a press statement issued last week, Museum Director Arnold L. Lehman said, &#8220Although the difficult economy made it impossible to serve our visitors two evenings each week, based on our good experience with the history of First Saturdays, we believe that by focusing our resources on Thursday nights, we can more effectively serve our audience by presenting an increasingly dynamic and engaging schedule of programs each Thursday.&#8221

The Museum will continue to be open every Thursday evening at 7 p.m. with a series of special programs including interviews, performance, film, and tours. The lineup for July and August is as follows:

July 7
Music: Winard Harper, one of the most celebrated drummers in jazz, performs with his sextet. Presented in conjunction with WBGO Jazz 88.3FM and Heart of Brooklyn as part of Jazz: Brooklyn’s Beat.

Moonlight Tour: &#8220Nude, Naked, or Undressed? Eroticism in American Art&#8221

July 14
Moonlight Tour: &#8220Behind the Scenes with Split Second: Indian Paintings.&#8221
Curator Joan Cummins and Director of Technology Shelley Bernstein discuss the curatorial experiment that resulted in Split Second. Space is limited, and reservations are required. RSVP to [email protected].

July 21
Moonlight Tour: &#8220Visitor’s Choice&#8221

July 28
Moonlight Tour: &#8220Fantasy, Fashion, and Reality in American Art&#8221

Film: POV Short Cuts (2011, 60 min.). A collection of documentary films on subjects ranging from bird watching and Tiffany lamps to Sunday school teachers and family relationships. Appropriate for all audiences.

August 4
Moonlight Tour: &#8220Vishnu: Hinduism’s Blue-Skinned Savior with Curator Joan Cummins&#8221

August 11
Moonlight Tour: &#8220The Dinner Party by Judy Chicago&#8221

August 25
Film: Yogawoman (Kate Clere and Saraswati Clere, 2011, 90 min.). Documentary about how women are changing the face of yoga.

Brooklyn Museum Sanford Biggers Exhibit Planned

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&#8220Sanford Biggers: Sweet Funk-An Introspective&#8221 challenges and reinterprets symbols and legacies that inform contemporary America in a focused selection of eight installations and five additional artworks created by the New York-based artist. On view September 23, 2011, through January 8, 2012, this will be Biggers’ first museum presentation in New York, and it will mark the Brooklyn debut of his Blossom (2007), a large-scale multimedia installation.

Sanford Biggers employs a variety of media, and his work incorporates references to a range of artistic and cultural traditions. The focal point of the Brooklyn Museum exhibition, Blossom (2007), is composed of a large tree that grows through, and uproots, a grand piano. At various intervals, the keys move as the piano plays the artist’s arrangement of &#8220Strange Fruit,&#8221 a song first recorded in 1939 by the blues singer Billie Holiday.

In Biggers’ work, the tree suggests multiple, divergent ideas and references, some of them horrifying, such as lynchings and other race crimes that the 1930s song movingly protested. But other references are positive, such as Buddha’s finding enlightenment while sitting under the bodhi tree. Addressing the historical and cultural landscape, Blossom, which was recently acquired by the Brooklyn Museum, also references the ideologically tinged landscapes by artists such as Alfred Bierstadt and Frederic Church.

Blossom will occupy the center of the Museum’s fifth-floor Rotunda (the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Gallery), where it will be presented along with eight other, thematically related installations. One of Biggers’ earliest videos, Bittersweet the Fruit (2002) introduces the imagery of tree, piano, and black male subject. Cheshire (2008), a sculptural installation, alludes to the disembodied smile of the cat in Alice in Wonderland as well as to the caricatured wide grin associated with blackface minstrelsy. The video installation Cheshire (2007) presents a sequence of professionally attired African American men who each attempt to climb a large tree. The installation Kalimba II (2002), named after an African percussion instrument, incorporates a piano that has been cut in two by a wall- a bench invites the visitor to sit down and play half of the keyboard, initiating a dialogue/duet with an unseen visitor on the other side of the wall.

Another related installation is a large glass disc, titled Lotus (2007) that refers to the Buddhist symbol but also to the slave trade: etched in glass, the filigree pattern contained in each petal of the lotus flower is made up of diagrams of the placement of human bodies in the cargo hold of an eighteenth-century slave ship. The remaining installations include Shuffle (2009), a video installation that explores the shifting identities of the main protagonist- Calenda (Big Ass Bang) (2004), a dance diagram affixed to the floor and walls that evokes both a cosmic explosion and codified dance forms- and Passage (2009), an altered portrait bust of Martin Luther King Jr. that casts a large shadow, a silhouette of Barack Obama, on the wall.

Sanford Biggers has been creating installations and performances for more than fifteen years. He now works and lives in New York City. Originally from Los Angeles, he attended Morehouse College in Atlanta, earning his B.A., and then the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, completing his M.F.A. He was the recipient of a Creative Time Global Residency grant, which took him to Brazil in 2009. Biggers joined the faculty of Columbia University in January 2010. He was also part of the affiliate faculty at the Virginia Commonwealth University and spent a year as a visiting scholar and resident artist at Harvard University.

Sanford Biggers: Sweet Funk-An Introspective is organized by Eugenie Tsai, John and Barbara Vogelstein Curator of Contemporary Art at the Brooklyn Museum. The exhibition will be accompanied by an illustrated catalogue with an introduction by Eugenie Tsai and an essay by the critic Gregory Volk. The Museum is coordinating this exhibition with the Sculpture Center, in Long Island City, Queens, which will host a concurrent exhibition of new work by Biggers.

Illustration: Sanford Biggers (America, b. 1970). Blossom, 2007. Steel, Zoopoxy, silk leaves, wood, piano w/MIDI system. Courtesy of the artist and Michael Klein Art.

Lower East Side History Project Walking Tours

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The Lower East Side History Project (LESHP), a non-profit organization dedicated to research, education and preservation, has announced its Summer 2011 walking tour schedule.

LESHP walking tours have been called a “Must do&#8230-” by Frommers Guide (2009) and was ranked “Top Five in New York City” by Time Out New York (2010). New York Newsday announced, “Nothing will get you closer to the real thing&#8230-” (2010) and NBC declared “You will be amazed&#8230-” (2010).

LESHP’s stable of licensed tour guides are multigenerational, native New Yorkers with well over a century of personal insight. They are veteran educators, professional authors, movie consultants, researchers active in neighborhood politics, arts and culture. The organization is partnered with museums and cultural institutions in the City of New York and has unique access to images, documents and information.

The full schedule is below, but you can find out more online or call 347-465-7767.

LESHP Summer 2011 public walking tour schedule:

Alphabet City Walking Tour
Once the godforsaken broken heart of the ghetto, the most densely populated square mile on the face of the earth, built over an industrial wasteland, then abandoned to a wild mix of marginal artists, angry anarchists, gangs, dealers, excons and thieves, against a backdrop of urban blight, tenements burned to rubble and danger on every corner out of which grew jazz and the beat generation, graffiti art and punk rock, the squatters movement, the garden movement and radical underground cinema: there’s more to Alphabet City than meets the eye, stories that could happen only in metropolis’ darkest corner.

When: Every Saturday at 11:00am
Reservations: Not Required
Fee: $20 General Admission
Meet: Entrance to Tompkins Square Park, St. Marks and Avenue A
Subway: L train to 1st avenue or 6 train to Astor Place

Bowery Walking Tour
The Bowery is not just the oldest and most architecturally diverse thoroughfares in NYC, it is one of most historically significant streets in the country. Beyond the myths, legends and gritty reputation, the Bowery offers an absolute treasure trove of NYC and American history.

Once an important Native American trail, the Bowery has undergone many changes in its modern history. From elegant opera houses to rowdy working-class theaters- from America’s vice district controlled by gangs and crooked politicians to a haven for the homeless and downtrodden as &#8220skid row&#8221 during the great depression- and from factories and warehouses to pioneering artist colonies. Today the Bowery has become a popular hotel, restaurant and nightclub district, but buried beneath the five-star offerings is a repository of social, economic, political, immigrant, labor, underground, criminal, deviant, marginal, counter-cultural, literary, musical, dramatic and artistic history.

When: Every Sunday at 11:00am
Reservations: Not Required
Fee: $20 General Admission
Meet: Astor Place Cube, E.8th St and 4th Ave
Subway: 6 train to &#8220Astor Place&#8221

Chinatown/Five Points Walking Tour
New York’s legendary slum, a story of Irish, Italians, Africans, Germans, Jews and Chinese, their struggles, their cultures- gangs of New York to the tongs of Chinatown &#8212- with underground passageways still in use on winding Blood Alley where countless gang members were murdered in half a century of turf warfare &#8212- to the single oldest relic of western civilization on the island of Manhattan. It’s 19th century New York: bigotry and rivalry, ribaldry and racism, oppression, defiance, perseverance, progress and reform.

When: Every Sunday at 2:00pm
Reservations: Not Required
Fee: $20 General Admission
Meet: SE corner of Centre & Worth Streets
Subway: J to Chambers St or 4, 5, 6 to Brooklyn Bridge/City Hall

East Village Walking Tour
This is a crash course in East Village/Lower East Side history. From the farmlands of the 1600s and the wealthy estates of the 1700s, to immigration, tenements, the &#8220melting pot&#8221 and how the East Village became a haven for artists and counter culturalists in the twentieth century (and everything in between). Also learn about how recent commercial development and gentrification is the changing landscape of the East Village and surrounding neighborhoods.

When: Every Saturday & Wednesday at 12:00pm
Reservations: Not Required
Fee: $20 General Admission
Meet: In front of Bowery Poetry Club, 308 Bowery
Subway: F train to &#82202nd Avenue/Lower East Side&#8221

Jewish Mob Walking Tour
Trace the steps of pre-Prohibition era gangsters like Monk Eastman, Max “Kid Twist” Zweifach, “Big” Jack Zelig and Benjamin “Dopey” Fein – pivotal figures in the organizing of crime in New York City- paving the way for men like Arnold Rothstein, Meyer Lansky and &#8220Bugsy&#8221 Siegel. Learn about the Jewish immigrant experience on the Lower East Side and the conditions that led to organized gangsterism- visit the sites of gang headquarters, shootouts and assassinations, and learn how the Jewish Mob expanded out of the slums and into a contemporary organized crime syndicate.

When: Every Sunday at 12:00pm
Reservations: Required, RSVP: 347-465-7767 or online.
Fee: $20 General Admission
Meet: Outside of Landmark Sunshine Cinema, 143 E. Houston
Subway: F to &#82202nd Ave/Lower East Side&#8221

Lower East Side Walking Tour
This one-of-a-kind tour of the LES highlights all aspects of our neighborhood’s rich diversity by providing an introduction to the many distinct populations &#8212- Native-American, African, Irish, Italian, Jewish, Chinese, Hispanic, and others &#8212- which influenced the character of the Lower East Side over the last thousand years.

When: Every Friday at 12:00pm
Reservations: Not Required
Fee: $20 General Admission
Meet: Outside of New Museum of Contemporary Art, 235 Bowery
Subway: F to &#82202nd Ave/Lower East Side&#8221

Mafia Walking Tour
This popular and exciting weekly tour explores the Sicilian/Italian immigrant experience and examines the roots of the Mafia in America: From the original Sicilian Black Handers and Neapolitan Camorra to the forming of the Mafia Commission in 1931 &#8212- this tour visits the early homes, headquarters, hangouts of such criminal heavyweights as &#8220Lucky&#8221 Luciano, Al Capone, Giuseppe Morello, Joe &#8220The Boss&#8221 Masseria, Vito Genovese, and many more.

When: Every Saturday at 2:00pm
Reservations: Not Required
Fee: $20 General Admission
Meet: Outside of New Museum of Contemporary Art, 235 Bowery
Subway: F to &#82202nd Ave/Lower East Side&#8221

Radical Spirits Bar Crawl
Whether you like a warm pub, a dive bar or an innovative cocktail lounge, the East Village has a history and a present to satisfy your fermented dreams. In fact, there are more liquor licenses (old and new) issued in this zip code than any other in New York. Explore why that’s a good thing and why that’s a bad thing in this bar crawl focusing on the East Village’s legacy of artists, writers, musicians, radicals and other indulgers. In short, an evening walk of the New York of Lou Reed, W.H. Auden, Charlie Parker, Jack Kerouac, Keith Haring, and Abbie Hoffman&#8230-with refreshments

When: Every Tuesday at 6:15pm
Reservations: Not Required (21 and over only, with ID)
Fee: $35, includes three drinks
Meet: Outside St. Marks Bookshop, 31
3rd Ave at E. 9th St
Subway: 6 train to &#8220Astor Place&#8221

Photo: The Bowery.

Live Theater Returns to Ellis Island

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Sing a Song of Freedom: The Story of Emma Lazarus and the Statue of Liberty, a new play celebrating Lady Liberty’s 125th year, dramatizes how the writer’s poem “The New Colossus” transformed the beloved Statue into a symbol of welcome. The show opens at the Ellis Island Immigration Museum’s intimate Living Theater for a limited run beginning April 16 through Labor Day weekend. Written by playwright/director Ken Urban, the 30-minute play also features stories of immigration.

Produced and funded by The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation, the show will be presented April 16 through June 27 on Monday and Wednesday through Saturday. Beginning June 28, the show will run Thursday through Monday. Show times are 10:45- 11:30- 12:15- 1:00- 2:30- 3:15- and 4:00. Admission is $6.00.

A gift from France to the American people, the Statue of Liberty was dedicated October 28, 1886. In 1982, President Ronald Reagan appointed Lee Iacocca to head up a private sector effort to restore the Statue of Liberty for her centennial. Fundraising began for the $87 million restoration under a public/private partnership between the National Park Service and The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation, Inc., and on July 5, 1986 the newly restored Statue re-opened to the public during Liberty Weekend. The famous sonnet written by poet and essayist Emma Lazarus (shown here) in 1883 is engraved on a bronze plaque which has been affixed to the inner walls of the pedestal since the early 1900&#8242-s.

Ellis Island Living Theater performances, which are both educational and entertaining, are especially popular with students, scout troops, day campers, religious groups, senior clubs, and families. Reservations for Sing a Song of Freedom: The Story of Emma Lazarus and the Statue of Liberty are accepted for groups of 10 or more. Since the theater seats 56 people, some groups may have to schedule multiple shows. Please note that the National Park Service, which administers Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty, requires one chaperone for every ten children. Individuals without reservations are encouraged to purchase their tickets upon entering the museum.

For more information or to make reservations, contact The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation at 212-561-4500, ext. 0 or [email protected]. More on Sing a Song of Freedom: The Story of Emma Lazarus and the Statue of Liberty can be found online.

For ferry tickets and schedules, call Statue Cruises at 1-877-LADY TIX or go online.

The Actors employed in this production are members of Actors’ Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers in the United States.

Historic Districts Council Preservation Awards

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The Historic Districts Council (HDC) presented its annual Grassroots Preservation Awards to seven organizations and individuals on May 12th in the garden of Plymouth Church of the Pilgrims in the Brooklyn Heights Historic District. This year, HDC is celebrating its 40th year of advocating for New York City’s historic neighborhoods.

“These advocates are the foundation of the preservation movement and their efforts benefit everyone who lives, works or visits New York City,” said Simeon Bankoff, executive director of HDC. “It’s an honor to be able to shine the spotlight on these neighborhood leaders.”

2011 Grassroots Awardees

Cedar Grove Beach Club

Established on the North Shore of Staten Island in 1911, Cedar Grove Beach Club is the last beach bungalow colony on the island. In 1962, the club land was taken by eminent domain but residents were allowed to remain and continued to restore the buildings and keep the beach clean and accessible. However in 2009, the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation declared that they were evicting the residents in order to demolish the majority of the bungalows. The Beach Club rallied to stop this action but was unsuccessful. Their campaign, however, raised awareness about this special piece of New York City’s cultural history.

Central Queens Historical Society

In 1988, Jeffrey Gottlieb established the Central Queens Historical Association to advocate for preservation of the borough’s significant areas, including Kew Gardens, Jamaica, and Richmond Hill. Through his ongoing advocacy campaign for downtown Jamaica, the LPC moved forward on the designation of several historic structures including the Jamaica Chamber of Commerce Building, Queens General Court House, two Jamaica Savings Bank buildings, and Jamaica High School.

Mary Kay Gallagher

Mary Kay Gallagher has been a leading figure in Brooklyn’s Victorian Flatbush area for more than four decades. She founded Mary Kay Gallagher Real Estate in 1970, in part to help find sympathetic buyers for the wealth of large, free-standing Victorian-era homes that dominate Brooklyn neighborhoods such as Prospect Park South, Ditmas Park, Fiske Terrace, Midwood Park, Beverly Square West and Caton Park.

Prospect Cemetery Association

Cate Ludlam has been the driving force behind Prospect Cemetery Association, a group dedicated to preserving and restoring Prospect Cemetery in Jamaica, Queens. The site is the oldest burial ground in Jamaica, with burials dating back to the mid-17th century. Ludlam has led the group through an intensive effort to reclaim the largely abandoned cemetery and recently completed a restoration of the adjacent Chapel of the Sisters.

Friend in High Places
State Senator Bill Perkins, 30th District, Manhattan

Senator Perkins currently serves as State Senator from Manhattan’s 30th District. Both in his role as New York State Senator for the past five years and previously during eight years as a city councilmember, he helped champion numerous preservation causes. Recently he has been a strong supporter for the designation of the West End Avenue Historic District and a Morningside Heights Historic District, and the successful designation of West-Park Presbyterian Church. Among the other preservation campaigns Senator Perkins has been involved with include holding public education programs on tax incentives for historic properties and leading the effort for more comprehensive legislation to improve oversight of the landmarks process.

Friend from the Media

The Architect’s Newspaper

Since its founding in 2003, The Architect’s Newspaper has featured broad coverage of preservation and development–related issues from across the city. Looking beyond concerns of architectural design, the paper has covered important neighborhood preservation issues such the proposed redevelopment of St. Vincent’s Hospital, the tower proposal at 980 Madison Avenue and the future of Coney Island in depth. Although it is targeted towards a self-identified audience of architects and design professionals, AN’s coverage is both balanced and accessible, with a deep understanding of the arcana of New York City’s development world.

Mickey Murphy Award for Lifetime Achievement
Bronson Binger and Ann Walker Gaffney

Bronson and Ann have been tireless preservation advocates for decades. Bronson served New York City as Assistant Commissioner of Capital Projects for both the Parks Department and the Department of General Services. As Vice President of the Municipal Art Society, he saw the need to form a committee to protect the city’s historic neighborhoods, which later became the Historic Districts Council. He was closely involved in several successful campaigns, including the creation of the Carnegie Hill, Upper East Side, and Sailors’ Snug Harbor Historic Districts. Trained as a Graphic Designer, Ann has contributed her art of logos, brochures and invitations for many not-for-profit organizations. She served on the Historic Districts Council’s board of directors for almost 20 years as well as serving on the Board of The Fine Arts Federation and as a governor of the Brooklyn Heights Association for many years.

Gita Lenzs New York Views Online Photo Gallery

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Places, an online journal of environmental design published in partnership with Design Observer, has just published an online slideshow &#8220Gita Lenz: New York Views.&#8221

The site features work by the mid-century New York photographer Gita Lenz, whose long neglected work is now gaining new attention. Lenz lived most of her life in Greenwich Village where from the 1940s through the mid-1960s, she the city and life around her first in the documentary tradition and then in abstraction. Lenz died January 20th, 2011 at a nursing home in New York City.

The gallery can be found on here.

John Jays Manhattan Historic Walking Tour

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John Jay’s Manhattan, an historic walking tour sponsored by John Jay Homestead State Historic Site, will take place Saturday, May 21. Participants will meet in lower Manhattan, and step off promptly at 10:00 a.m., rain or shine. The cost of participation is $20.00 per person- members of the Friends of John Jay Homestead can participate for $15.00.

Founding Father John Jay, America’s first Chief Justice, was born and educated in New York City, and spent much of his life there. The walking tour will trace his haunts, visiting the locations of the places where he lived and worked as one of New York’s leading lawyers and politicians, as well as U.S. Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Chief Justice of the United States, and Governor of New York. The tour will recall the time when New York was the capitol city of a young republic, and present a reminder of how the geography and architecture of Manhattan Island have changed since the arrival of the first European settlers in the 17th century.

The walk will cover approximately 1? miles and take about two hours, proceeding at a leisurely pace over mostly level terrain. Comfortable footwear is highly recommended. The tour will both begin and end in lower Manhattan, convenient to several subway lines. Attendance is limited, and advance registration is required- payment is due in advance, and is non-refundable. To reserve your place and learn the tour’s initial gathering place, call John Jay Homestead at (914) 232-5651, extension 100.

John Jay Homestead State Historic Site is located at 400 Route 22, Katonah, N.Y. It is regularly open for guided tours Sunday through Wednesday from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., and at other times by appointment.

Illustration: Portrait of John Jay painted by Gilbert Stuart.