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Culinary travel, Culture, Heritage Travel, Historic Places, Jewish Heritage Travel, Museums and Exhibits, New York City travel

New-York Historical’s ‘I’ll Have What She’s Having’ Examines How Jewish Delicatessens Became a Cornerstone of American Food Culture

I’ll Have What She’s Having’: The Jewish Deli exhibit at New-York Historical Society tells a deeply moving story about the American experience of immigration—how immigrants adapted their cuisine to create a new culture that both retained and transcended their own traditions © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

By Karen Rubin, Travel Features Syndicate, goingplacesfarandnear.com

New-York Historical Society’s exhibition “I’ll Have What She’s Having”: The Jewish Deli, is a fascinating exploration of the rich history of the Jewish immigrant experience that made the delicatessen so integral to New York and American culture. On view through April 2, 2023, the mouth-watering and culturally significant exhibition, organized by the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles (where it is on view through September 18), examines how Jewish immigrants, mostly from Central and Eastern Europe, imported and adapted traditions to create a cuisine that became a cornerstone of popular culture with worldwide influence.

The exhibition explores the food of immigrants; the heyday of the deli in the interwar period; delis in the New York Theater District; stories of Holocaust survivors and war refugees who found community in delis; the shifting and shrinking landscapes of delis across the country; and delis in popular culture. You get to see iconic neon signs, menus, advertisements, and deli workers’ uniforms alongside film clips depicting delis in popular culture and video documentaries.

Laura Mart, co-curator of I’ll Have What She’s Having”: The Jewish Deli, now at the New-York Historical Society, explains the transition from pushcart to delicatessen, along with the fortunes of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

Some 2 million Jews came from Eastern and Central Europe to the United States between 1880 and 1924, when nativist anti-immigrant furor shut down immigration (there is a display showing some of the anti-immigrant propaganda). New York was a stopover but also a destination for millions and they brought with them their food culture, which, of necessity, was adapted.

“Why make a museum show out of the Jewish deli – which is a specific and unusual topic? The ‘deli’ allowed us to explore themes of how people of different backgrounds relate to one another” in such a melting pot as New York, said Laura Mart, one of the curators. “It shows how Jewish-American culture was created and maintained through generations. And it is also about joy, more important than ever. Museums are a place for joyful learning.”

“It’s a story of tradition and change, adaptation and resilience,” said Lara Rabinovitch.

“It’s our great pleasure to present an exhibition on a topic so near and dear to the hearts of New Yorkers of all backgrounds,” said Dr. Louise Mirrer, president and CEO of New-York Historical, herself waxing nostalgic. I’ll Have What She’s Having’: The Jewish Deli tells a deeply moving story about the American experience of immigration—how immigrants adapted their cuisine to create a new culture that both retained and transcended their own traditions © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

“It’s our great pleasure to present an exhibition on a topic so near and dear to the hearts of New Yorkers of all backgrounds,” said Dr. Louise Mirrer, president and CEO of New-York Historical. ‘I’ll Have What She’s Having’: The Jewish Deli tells a deeply moving story about the American experience of immigration—how immigrants adapted their cuisine to create a new culture that both retained and transcended their own traditions. I hope visitors come away with a newfound appreciation for the Jewish deli, and, with it, the story of the United States.”

“Whether you grew up eating matzo ball soup or are learning about lox for the first time, this exhibition demonstrates how Jewish food became a cultural touchstone, familiar to Americans across ethnic backgrounds,” said co-curators Cate Thurston and Laura Mart. “This exhibition reveals facets of the lives of Central and Eastern European Jewish immigrants in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that echo in contemporary immigrant experiences. It shows how people adapt and transform their own cultural traditions over time, resulting in a living style of cooking, eating, and sharing community that is at once deeply rooted in their own heritage and continuously changing.”

I’ll Have What She’s Having is co-curated by Skirball curators Cate Thurston and Laura Mart along with Lara Rabinovitch, renowned writer, producer, and specialist in immigrant food cultures. It is coordinated at New-York Historical by Cristian Petru Panaite, curator of exhibitions. The exhibition explores topics including deli culture, the proliferation of delis alongside the expansion of New York’s Jewish communities, kosher meat manufacturing, shortages during World War II, and advertising campaigns that helped popularize Jewish foods throughout the city.

As is typical of New-York Historical’s exhibits, expanded presentation from its own collection and local twist includes additional artwork, artifacts, photographs of local establishments, and objects from deli owners, as well as costumes from The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, a mouthwatering interactive, and a Bloomberg Connects audio tour.

A soldier fighting in Italy during World War II writes to his fiancée that he “had some tasty Jewish dishes just like home” thanks to the salami his mother had sent, a confirmation of the success of the “Send a Salami to Your Boy in the Army” campaign © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

Highlights include a letter in New-York Historical’s Patricia D. Klingenstein Library collection from a soldier fighting in Italy during World War II writing to his fiancée that he “had some tasty Jewish dishes just like home” thanks to the salami his mother had sent—confirmation of the success of a famous “Send a Salami to Your Boy in the Army” campaign. (Panaite painstakingly poured over a huge collection of World War II letters, one by one, to find it.) 

There are photos of politicians and other notable figures eating and campaigning in delis, including then-US Senate candidate Hillary Clinton at Ben’s delicatessen in Greenvale, Long Island. Movie clips and film stills include the iconic scene in Nora Ephron’s romantic comedy When Harry Met Sally…, which inspired the exhibition title. This and other movie scenes underscore the prominent role of Jewish delis in American popular culture.

Special to New-York Historical’s presentation is a closer look at the expansion of Jewish communities at the turn of the 20th century, not just on the Lower East Side but also in Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx. In the 1930s, some 3,000 delis operated in the city; today, only about a dozen remain. 

I’ll Have What She’s Having’: The Jewish Deli at the New-York Historical Society will evoke nostalgia in native New Yorkers, as well as a craving for a pastrami sandwich on rye © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

The exhibition gives special attention to dairy restaurants, which offered a safe meatless eating experience; a portion of the neon sign from the Famous Dairy Restaurant on the Upper West Side is on display. Salvaged artifacts, like the 2nd Avenue Delicatessen storefront sign and vintage meat slicers and scales from other delis, are also on view, along with costumes by Emmy Award-winning costume designer Donna Zakowska from the popular Prime Video series The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.

Visitors are invited to build their own sandwiches named after celebrities, such as Milton Berle, Sophie Tucker, Frank Sinatra,  Ethel Merman, and Sammy Davis Jr., in a digital interactive inspired by menu items from Reuben’s Deli and Stage Deli (the menus are on display). 

On the Bloomberg Connects app, exhibition goers can enjoy popular songs like “Hot Dogs and Knishes” from the 1920s, along with clips of Mayor Fiorello La Guardia discussing kosher meat pricing, 1950s radio ads, and interviews with deli owners forced  to close during the pandemic lockdown.  

It’s a trip down memory lane for so many of us native New Yorkers – with the neon signs from popular delis and suppliers (Hebrew National), menus (there is one from Reubens, the home of the Reubens sandwich, which was a very popular venue for my family).

The roots for Jewish Deli cuisine were the fermentation, the types of foods, the technology of food, that originated in Europe, but the hallmarks of the Jewish Deli culture go beyond the food – to the booths, the waiters, the zeitgeist of the deli. We learn that that ambiance evolved – first from pushcarts on the streets of the Lower East Side (street food), to stools, to counter-style take-away shops, to finally having seating in full-fledged restaurants.

Case in point: Joel Russ founded his appetizing store out of a barrel in 1907 in Manhattan. He moved up to selling herring and other salt-cured and smoked fish out of a pushcart and finally opened a brick-and-mortar store in 1914.His daughters, Hattie, Ida, and Anne, worked in the store from the time they were 11 and 12. In 1935, he renamed the store Russ & Daughters, and are known as the “Sturgeon Queens.”

The delis introduced Americans to borscht (Slavic), gefilte fish, kishke (Slavic), vereniki (Ukrainian), kasha varnishkes (Russian), herring and chopped liver (“What am I, chopped liver?”). Also latkes (Ashkenazi), blintzes, knishes, rugelach and babka. Cheesecake is actually an American innovation.

The industrialization of beef production and processing actually made Kosher beef more desirable, hence Hebrew National’s slogan, “We answer to a higher authority.” © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

Interestingly, the rise of industrial food processing and cattle production (which mass produced beef and discouraged pork consumption) actually increased the desirability of Kosher food – certified as meeting religious standards, hence the Hebrew National slogan, “We answer to a higher authority.”

Jewish entrepreneurs in Chicago capitalized on the opportunity to produce kosher beef, but ultimately, what became the Jewish Delicatessen was American.

I’ll Have What She’s Having’: The Jewish Deli at the New-York Historical Society traces how Jewish cuisine was assimilated into American culture © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com
 

“Meat was expensive in Europe. Jews couldn’t own land and meat was a luxury. But in the United States, meat became central to deli food.” At first, there was strict separation between deli restaurants like Katz’ and dairy restaurants, like Ratner’s – because Koshruth forbids the mixing of meat and milk – but over time, and with assimilation, even delis would offer items like cheesecake as dessert after a corned beef sandwich.

We learn about the Vienna Beef factory, founded in 1893 by Jewish Austro-Hungarian immigrants Emil Reichel and Sam Ladany. They first sold frankfurters at the 1893 World’s Columbia Exposition in Chicago, then expanded to include Vienna sausages, pastrami, corned beef and salami.

A photo of Katz’ Delicatessen, circa 1900, one of the artifacts on view at I’ll Have What She’s Having’: The Jewish Deli at the New-York Historical Society tracing how Jewish cuisine was assimilated into American culture © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

Katz’s Delicatessen, likely the oldest continuously operating deli in the US, was founded in 1888 by two brothers named Iceland. The Katz family became business partners and by 1917, bought out the brothers. At a time when most deli food was being sold from carts and barrels on the street, Katz’s was a brick-and-mortar delicatessen.

In 1916 on Coney Island, Polish immigrant Nathan Handwerker began building his empire by selling franks for five cents and undercutting his competition, Feltman’s.

And then there is this intrigue: fraud and corruption became pervasive in the kosher meat industry. In 1925, an estimated 40 percent of meat sold as “kosher” was non-kosher. In 1933, the NYC Department of Health and US Department of Agriculture raided Jacob Branfman & Son, one of the city’s main kosher delicatessen manufacturers, and seized over 1,400 pounds of nonkosher beef briskets. The owner was sentenced to 30 days in the infamous city workhouse.

A sign from Katz Delicatessen from the World War II-era campaign © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

During World War II, Jewish delis promoted a campaign to “Senda Salami to Your Boy in the Army” (the slogan was developed by Sixth Avenue Delicatessen waiter Louis Schwartz) and used by delis including Katz’s. The slogan became so popular that comedian Jerry Lewis used it in the film, “At War with the Army” (1950).

Louis G. Schwartz, aka “Louie the Waiter,” helped raise more than $9 million in war bonds – that paid for 66 P-47 Thunderbolt fighter planes, each which bore the moniker, “Louie the Waiter.” Schwartz developed a rhyme to inspire patrons to buy the bonds, “you’ll buy war bonds sooner or later, so get them from Louis the Waiter!”

Al Hirschfeld’s caricature of Sixth Avenue Deli’s Louis G. Schwartz, aka “Louie the Waiter,” helped raise more than $9 million in war bonds and created the slogan, “Senda Salami to Your Boy in the Army”.

Most interesting is to learn about some of the people who found refuge in the delis – as owners or workers. Paula Weissman, born in present-day Ukraine, survived Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps. She arrived in New York in 1948 with two dollars. After working in a Brooklyn girdle factory, she was hired as a temporary waitress at Fine & Schapiro Kosher Delicatessen on West 72nd Street. The 7-day temp job turned into 30 years.”In her black uniform and white shoes, Paula took the orders of Zero Mostel, Molly Picon, Rita Moreno and many other Broadway stars.”

Rena Drexler was liberated from Auschwitz in 1945 and moved to Munich, Germany, where she and her husband, Harry, began their new lives working in a deli. The couple moved to Los Angeles in 1951 and opened Drexler’s Deli on Burbank Boulevard in 1957, selling kosher meals and products for the Orthodox Jews who settled in the neighborhood.

Paula Weissman, one of the Holocaust survivors who made a new life at Jewish delicatessens © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

The original owner of the Second Avenue Deli, Abe Lebewohl, was a Holocaust refugee. Upon arriving in America and not even speaking the language, he took his first job in a Coney Island deli as a soda jerk, graduating to counterman and over the next few years, learning the secrets of superb pastrami and other traditional Jewish delicacies. In 1954, with a few thousand dollars he managed to set aside, Abe took over a tiny 10-seat luncheonette on East Tenth Street—the nucleus of the 2nd Ave Deli. Working around the clock for years—often filling in as cook, counterman, waiter, and even busboy—he put all his time and energy into making a success of his tiny establishment. “He never turned anyone away for lack of funds, he fed striking workers, homeless.” In 1996, he was robbed and murdered when making a bank deposit; the case unsolved.

In a nostalgic tribute to departed delis that continue to hold a place in the hearts of many New Yorkers, photographs show restaurants that closed in recent years. Eateries include the Upper West Side’s Fine & Schapiro Kosher Delicatessen, Jay & Lloyd’s Kosher Delicatessen in Brooklyn, and Loeser’s Kosher Deli in the Bronx. An exuberant hot dog-shaped sign from Jay & Lloyds Delicatessen, which closed in May 2020, and folk artist Harry Glaubach’s monumental carved and painted signage for Ben’s Best Kosher Delicatessen in Queens, also pay tribute to beloved establishments. The exhibition concludes on a hopeful note, highlighting new delis that have opened their doors in the past decade, such as Mile End and Frankel’s, both in Brooklyn, and USA Brooklyn Delicatessen, located steps from the site of the former Carnegie and Stage Delis in Manhattan.

Ben’s, still a force on Long Island and Manhattan is illustrative of the changes in the Jewish Deli that followed changes in the lives of American Jews. To be blunt, in the mid-20th century, restrictive covenants that barred Jews (and Blacks) from living in certain neighborhoods were lifted, and American Jews were flocking to the suburbs. The delis followed.

What I found fascinating was that the Jewish deli grew up as the American industrialized cattle industry grew – displacing home-grown pork – making beef plentiful and giving rise to the sky-high thick pastrami and corned beef sandwiches that would never have been available to Jews in their European shtetls, where meat would have been a cherished rarity.

Folk artist Harry Glaubach’s monumental carved and painted signage for Ben’s Best Kosher Delicatessen in Queens is on view at I’ll Have What She’s Having’: The Jewish Deliat the New-York Historical Society © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

The exhibit ponders how it was, why it was that Jewish deli became so much a part of American pop culture.

“There is no definitive answer as to why the deli has inspired generations of Jewish filmmakers, comedians, musicians and writers. Perhaps it is because so many Jewish creatives got their start in New York City, where they frequented Jewish delis and later infused these experiences into their work. Or maybe it is because the Jewish deli is one of the most public secular environments in Jewish American life. It is a place where characters can demonstrate or celebrate their Jewish identity outside of private or religious spheres. Whatever the reason, the deli continues to have significant influence on Jewish artists.”

The fifth generation “Katz,” Jake Dell, alongside a model of his family’s delicatessen and a video of the famous scene in “When Harry Met Sally” movie which provides the title for the New-York Historical Society’s exhibit, at I’ll Have What She’s Having’: The Jewish Deli. © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

The better question has to do with how Jewish cuisine has become as integrated into in American culture as bagels (with or without lox). And that’s because so many of the creatives – in Broadway theater, film – were Jewish.

But Jewish delis, themselves, are struggling today, particularly after the coronavirus pandemic, but also because of changing economics – the cost of that two-inch high pastrami on rye, the rent. The sandwich that used to cost $1.95 (see the Reubens menu), now costs $25. The fifth generation “Katz,” Jake Dell, on hand at the press preview, spoke of the changing economics, he said that they don’t even make a profit on a $25 pastrami sandwich. “The profit is in the soup.”

Programming: Private group tours can be arranged throughout the run of “I’ll Have What She’s Having”: The Jewish Deli. Family programming includes a food-focused family day celebrating foodways brought to New York City by immigrants from around the world. Living History programs bring to life the stories of proprietors, patrons, and staff of New York City’s Jewish delis. Visit nyhistory.org for dates and details.

“Confronting Hate 1937-1952”

“Confronting Hate 1937-1952” exhibit at New-York Historical Society documents the American Jewish Committee’s groundbreaking campaign to combat anti-Semitism and ultimately to fight all forms of hate and bigotry © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

After enjoying the joyful “I’ll Have What She’s Having,” go up to the second floor of the historical society for another, more serious, exhibition that is so timely in the here and now: “Confronting Hate 1937-1952” about the American Jewish Committee’s groundbreaking campaign to combat anti-Semitism and ultimately to fight all forms of hate and bigotry. To reach as many Americans as possible in the period leading up to the Holocaust, World War II and the aftermath, the agency embraced new mass communication technologies and partnered with talented allies – artists, writers, political leaders, church groups, politicians, magazine and newspaper editors. They produced comic books, ads, articles. Among the celebrities who joined a “Speaking for America” poster campaign in 1946: Bob Hope, Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland and Danny Kaye, plus President Harry Truman and Admiral Chester Nimitz.

New-York Historical Society, New York’s First Museum

At the New-York Historical Society, New York’s first museum, you experience 400 years of history through groundbreaking exhibitions, immersive films, and thought-provoking conversations among renowned historians and public figures. A great destination for history since 1804, the Museum and the Patricia D. Klingenstein Library convey the stories of the city and nation’s diverse populations, expanding our understanding of who we are as Americans and how we came to be. Ever-rising to the challenge of bringing little or unknown histories to light, New-York Historical will soon inaugurate a new annex housing its Academy for American Democracy as well as the American LGBTQ+ Museum. These latest efforts to help forge the future by documenting the past join New-York Historical’s DiMenna Children’s History Museum and Center for Women’s History.

Digital exhibitions, apps, and For the Ages podcast make it possible for visitors everywhere to dive more deeply into history. Connect at nyhistory.org or at @nyhistory on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and Tumblr.

The New-York Historical Society is located at 170 Central Park West at Richard Gilder Way (77th Street), New York, NY 10024, 212-873-3400, nyhistory.org.

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© 2022 Travel Features Syndicate, a division of Workstyles, Inc. All rights reserved. Visit goingplacesfarandnear.com, www.huffingtonpost.com/author/karen-rubin, and travelwritersmagazine.com/TravelFeaturesSyndicate/. Blogging at goingplacesnearandfar.wordpress.com and moralcompasstravel.info. Visit instagram.com/going_places_far_and_near and instagram.com/bigbackpacktraveler/ Send comments or questions to [email protected]. Tweet @TravelFeatures. ‘Like’ us at facebook.com/NewsPhotoFeatures

Historic Places, Museums and Exhibits, New York City travel

Historical Society’s ‘Notorious RBG’ Pays Homage to New York’s Own Ruth Bader Ginsburg

New-York Historical Society’s “Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg,” pays homage to the trailblazing Supreme Court justice, on view through January 23, 2022 © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

By Karen Rubin, Travel Features Syndicate, goingplacesfarandnear.com

No exhibit that looks back into the past has been more timely and relevant than “Notorious RBG” which recently opened at the New-York Historical Society – a homage to the trailblazing Supreme Court justice, lawyer, wife, mother and woman, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who at age 80, became an internet phenomenon and cultural icon. It is so important to be reminded – through her words, documents, historical artifacts, archival photographs, contemporary art and interactives – of what society was like, what it took to change, and what is at risk today. The SCOTUS with the mostus challenged us to continue her work for a just, equal and compassionate society.

The traveling exhibit, which was organized by the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles and based largely on Irin Carmon and Shana Knizhnik’s book, “Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg” (which was the source for a documentary),  opened to the public just the day before marches in Washington DC and around the nation in support of women’s reproductive rights. It was also mere days before the start of the Supreme Court’s new term, with a 6-3 conservative majority, including the justice who took her seat, Amy Coney Barrett, gunning to overturn the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. “Notorious RBG” is on display only through January 23, 2022.

“It is different to be here, knowing she’s not with us,” author Irin Carmon reflected at the press preview of the exhibit. “She intended to visit Skirball but cancelled because of her cancer treatment. When the exhibit came to Philadelphia, she agreed to accept an award and see it more than a year after opened. It was an extraordinary experience of giving her a tour of her life.”

New-York Historical Society Presents “Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg,”  on view through January 23, 2022 © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

 “We walked her through to an imagined re-creation of her childhood living room. She stopped, as if completely alone, stopped in front of a portrait of her mother – who died just before her high school graduation. Opera was playing on an old fashioned radio. We all fell silent as she gazed. I thought of what she said when she accepted the nomination to the Supreme Court in 1993, standing with President Clinton. I was thinking what her mother would have thought.”

When Ruth Bader Ginsburg toured the “Notorious RBG” exhibit in Philadelphia with author Irin Carmon, she stopped in front of this re-creation of her childhood Brooklyn home to reflect on the portrait of her mother © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

What RBG said on that day was, “It is to my mother, Celia Amster Bader, the bravest and strongest person I have known, who was taken from me much too soon. I pray that I may be all that she would have been had she lived in an age when women could aspire and achieve and daughters are cherished as much as sons.”

Justice Ginsburg said she would have come to the NYHS’ exhibit, which was supposed to open in 2020, but the exhibit was delayed because of COVID. She died September 18, 2020.

“It falls on all of us who share her values, what she stood for, to carry on her legacy,” Carmon said.

The exhibit traces her life from modest beginnings in Brooklyn, losing an older sister when she was two, her mother sick with cancer from when she was 13 and dying just before her high school graduation.

But you appreciate how Brooklyn was formative to the person she became – the immigrant community of Eastern Europeans, Irish and Italians. Her Jewish heritage inbued in her a commitment to seek justice and compassion, to question, and it triggered her feminism when, in Jewish tradition, she was not counted in the minyan (the quorum of 10 males required) at her own mother’s funeral because she was female.

RBG became “notorious” because of her firey dissent in Shelby v Holder in 2013, when the majority overturned the preclearance requirement in the Voting Rights Act, unleashing a score of voter discrimination laws in states that otherwise would have been curtailed. She charged that overturning the Voting Rights Act would invite violations of the 15th amendment. The decision was 5-4, with Chief Justice Roberts saying it wasn’t needed anymore because (after Obama’s election to the presidency) “things changed.”

In her dissent, RBG said that overturning the provision was like “throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.” 

We enter the exhibit at the pinnacle – one of her Supreme Court robes and jabots on display, an official portrait of her in her office as only the second woman to have served on the Supreme Court, a PBS News Hour video of her as “Notorious RBG”, and as you wind through, you understand the context, the ecosystem, that forged her character and set her on her path.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the modest girl from Brooklyn, was tickled by becoming an internet sensation, the “Notorious RBG” at age 80, and took the association with the Notorious B.I.G. with humor, saying, “We have something in common – we’re both from Brooklyn.” © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

She took the “Notorious RBG” with humor – in a video of a PBS News Hour appearance, she said, “Notorious B.I.G. and I have something in common – we are both from Brooklyn.”

Very quickly, we are pushed back in time to her childhood in Flatbush Brooklyn, her time at Cornell University where she met Martin Ginsburg, and their decision to pursue law – because she thought lawyers the vanguard of societal change and because Harvard Law School had begun to accept women, albeit precious few.

“Both wanted to marry and keep on working together…Harvard Business School did not accept women. So they settled on law.”

From the beginning, “Their marriage defied gender expectations of the period and embodied her belief that men, women, and families are better when both partners share their lives and goals on equal footing. Marty was a passionate supporter of his life partners’ legal career and shared in child rearing and household responsibilities long before men were expected to do so.”

When Marty got sick with testicular cancer, she took his notes and transcribed his papers so he could stay in the program. And she left Harvard Law to go to Columbia when Marty got a job in New York (she made the Law Review at both.)

When she graduated, no law firm would hire her – “I was Jewish, a mother and a woman” so three strikes against her. She began teaching at Rutgers.

She signed up as a volunteer lawyer at the New Jersey branch of the American Civil Liberties Union, which was being overwhelmed by letters from women. “None of their problems were new. What was new was that anyone thought it was worth complaining about.”

“It was clear to RBG that fighting discrimination one strongly worded letter at a time was like catching the ocean in a thimble. There would always be another sexist law or regulation to take down. Women’s rights advocates needed to think bigger. What the country needed was a broader recognition of gender equality.”

New-York Historical Society presents “Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg,”  on view through January 23, 2022 © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

There is a very illuminating list of what women couldn’t do in the 1930s and 1940s – a sort of marker – which women today take for granted:

Practice law in most states or become a judge

Serve on a jury in most states

Get paid the same amount as men for doing the same work

Answer want ads for jobs labeled “men only”

Open a bank account or get a credit card without a husband’s or male relative’s permission (I would add: get a mortgage or a business loan without a man to co-sign)

In some states, own property without having a husband in control as “head and master”

Attend most Ivy League universities

Play school sports on an equal basis with boys

Attend a military academy

Get pregnant without the threat of losing her job

Wear pants on the US Senate floor

Serve in combat in the military

Much of her argument for gender equality was derived from the 14th Amendment – passed after the Civil War’s emancipation of slaves: “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” (Roe v. Wade was decided based on the “right to privacy” implied by “due process” rather than “equal protection”.)

Marty, a prominent tax attorney, brought her the breakthrough case, Moritz v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue. Charles Mortiz was a businessman who was caring for his 89-year old mother, but the IRS denied him the tax deduction for expenses for her care that was allowed women, widowers or husbands of incapacitated women. But Moritz had never married. “The idea that a man might be a caregiver had apparently never crossed the government’s mind,” Ginsburg wrote.

The Ginsburgs realized that the government was senselessly denying a benefit to someone purely on the basis of sex. “If the court said that was wrong, the precedent would open the door to a broader recognition of gender equality.”

“The line the law drew rested on a stereotype: Women are caregivers, so a daughter would take care of her aging mother but men are out in the world, earning a living, so they don’t take personal care of aging parents. That law was blind to the life Charles E. Moritz lived. We took his case from the tax court to the Tenth Circuit. Marty argued the tax part of it and I argued the equal protection part,” RBG wrote.

And when one of her cases brought her up against her former Harvard Dean Erwin Griswold, who had become Solicitor General of the US, he had counsel prepare an appendix of all the laws that would have to be changed if Ginsburg were successful in her argument about gender discrimination in the law. In other words, you change this law, you have to change all the others. Ruth saw it as a handy roadmap.

Between 1971 and 1981, RBG litigated cases that would set the stage for gender equality (or rather, “neutrality”): widower, pregnancy, forced sterilization of black women; jury, and even the right to buy beer at age 18.

It is important to note in these times as a woman’s reproductive freedom is in question, that the government that can ban abortion – and deny a woman’s right to autonomy over her own body – is also a government that can force sterilization, or require an abortion. This is exactly what the government did to Captain Susan Struck in 1970; the case that RBG took up, Struck v. Secretary of Defense, resulted in the USAF changing its policy of automatically discharging pregnant women who refused to get an abortion, and led to Congress passing the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978.

“RBG Tattoo II” by Ari Richter, fashioned of pigmented human skin on glass, is painted based on a photo of Justice Ginsburg taken as she officiated at the artist’s wedding to “Notorious RBG” author Irin Carmon. It is one of the personal items on view at New-York Historical Society’s exhibit “Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg,”  on view through January 23, 2022 © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

RBG spearheaded the formation of the Women’s Rights Project at the ACLU to tackle discrimination in education and training programs, prisons and the military, advocate for reproductive freedom and hold accountable institutions that discriminated against pregnant women.

You can listen in on decisions and see original documents and artifacts – for example, Stephen Wisenfeld’s letter to the editor complaining of the discriminatory rule of Social Security that prevented him from getting survivor’s benefits after his wife, the “breadwinner” of his family, died in childbirth; the personal letter from RBG to Stephen Wisenfeld in 1977 about going to DisneyWorld, which is so revealing about her as a person; photos of RBG with Steven’s son Jason Wiesenfeld when she officiated at Jason’s wedding in 1998, and another with Stephen Wiesenfeld and Elaine Harris Wiesenfeld at their 2014 wedding that RBG officiated.

“Wiesenfeld is part of an evolution toward a policy of neutrality – a policy that will accommodate traditional patterns, but at the same time, one that requires removal of artificial constraints so that men and women willing to explore their full potential as humans may create new traditions by their actions.” RBG wrote (she won an 8-0 decision at the Supreme Court).

The 2016 anti-abortion case, Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, 2016, struck down a Texas law that required such stringent standards on abortion clinics that they would have had to be shut down. The court ruled 5-3 that this imposed an “undue burden.”

RBG joined Stephen Breyer in his majority opinion but added, “I fully subscribed to everything Breyer said, but it was long and I wanted something pithy…. I wrote to say, ‘Don’t try this anymore.’”

New-York Historical Society’s “Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg,” features 3-D re-creations of key places in RBG’s life including her desk in her Supreme Court chambers © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

But we know that they have not stopped trying to chip away at the “undue burden” standard. Now Texas has come up with most brazen assault on women’s rights, without Ginsburg on the bench to challenge, instead, replaced by an ultra-conservative, anti-abortion justice Amy Coney Barrett. In a dire sign of what is to come, the court allowed the Texas law to go into effect – creating a new class of vigilantes and bounty hunters to enforce a blatantly unconstitutional “burden” on women who seek an abortion after six-weeks.

RBG’s last dissent was in 2020, in the “Little Sisters of the Poor v Pennsylvania,” in which the majority, 7-2 allowed religious objectors to be exempted from the Affordable Care Act’s regulatory requirement to provide health plans that include contraceptive coverage.

“Today, for the first time, the Court casts totally aside countervailing rights and interests in its zeal to secure religious rights to the nth degree,” she wrote.

New-York Historical Society Presents “Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg,”  on view through January 23, 2022 © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

On her deathbed, Justice Ginsburg told her granddaughter Clara Spera, “My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed.”

But Majority Leader Mitch McConnell could care less, and even though the 2020 presidential election had already gotten underway (and he had delayed an Obama nomination more than a year, to give Trump his appointee, Neil Gorsuch in place of Merrick Garland), pushed through his candidate, Amy Coney Barrett to complete a 6-3 radically conservative majority on the court.

And so, people are marching, rallying and protesting again with urgency to protect the rights that were thought to have been won, but now may be overturned. Many carry a sign that reads, “Ruth sent me.”

“Ruth Sent Me” sign at the New York City Women’s March for Reproductive Freedom, October 2, 2021 © Karen Rubin/news-photos-features.com

There are such personal items, including a reproduction of the letter her husband Marty wrote just before he died, in 2010, “My dearest Ruth- You are the only person I have loved in my life…what a treat it has been to watch you progress to the very top of the legal world!!”

Personal materials range from home movies of RBG with Marty on their honeymoon and in the early years of their marriage to yearbooks from RBG’s academic life—from her Brooklyn high school to Harvard, Columbia, and Rutgers Universities—to a paper that she wrote as an eighth grader exploring the relationship between the Ten Commandments, the Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, and the recently formed United Nations Charter, and the costume she wore for her cameo as the Duchess in Washington National Opera’s production of “Daughter of the Regiment.”

The costume Justice Ginsburg wore for her cameo as the Duchess in Washington National Opera’s production of “Daughter of the Regiment” is on view in New-York Historical Society’s “Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg,”   © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

Special to New-York Historical’s presentation – and only seen here – are remembrances from RBG’s visit to the museum in 2018 to officiate a naturalization ceremony of 200 new citizens after she learned about New-York Historical’s Citizenship Project which teaches U.S. history and civics to green card holders. (She sent a note,  “I had shingles, not yet diagnosed, on April 10, but would not have missed the oath-taking ceremony. Looking out at the 201 faces of the new citizens, I could hardly hold back the tears. The diversity represented among the new citizens, proudly pledging allegiance, is what the USA means to me. With appreciation, Ruth Bader Ginsburg.”

A city mourns one of its own: an overview of the memorials that appeared throughout New York City after Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, September 18, 2020, is a special feature of New-York Historical Society’s presentation of the traveling exhibition “Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg,”  on view through January 23, 2022 © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

There is also a video featuring a map and photographs of key places in her life as a New Yorker, and an overview of the memorials that cropped up around her hometown in the wake of her passing, “Rest in Power, A City Mourns Its Own.”

The various RBG iconography on display is fun and fascinating, like the “real life action figure” (you can buy one in the gift shop).

The strangest – and one of the most personal – is the “RBG Tattoo II” by Ari Richter, fashioned of pigmented human skin on glass, painted with a photo of RBG taken as she officiated at the artist’s wedding to “Notorious RBG” author Irin Carmon.

“Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg,  co-author Irin Carmon poses with “RBG Tattoo II” painted  by her husband, Ari Richter, based on a photo of RBG taken as she officiated at the their wedding © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

When Irin Carmon asked, “And when the time comes, what would you like to be remembered for?” RBG replied, “Someone who used whatever talent she had to do her work to the very best of her ability. And to help repair tears in her society, to make things a little better through the use of whatever ability she has.”

As part of New-York Historical’s upcoming public program series, on December 8, Supreme Court expert Linda Greenhouse looks at where the courts stand following Justice Ginsburg’s death. Families can explore the exhibition with a specially created family guide, and themed story times will take place throughout the exhibition’s run.

Supreme Court Justice and trailblazer Ruth Bader Ginsburg became a cultural icon, warranting an action hero figure (on sale at New-York Historical Society’s gift shop) © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

After debuting at the Skirball Cultural Center in 2018, Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg has toured the country. After its New York run, the exhibition will travel to the Holocaust Museum in Houston (March 2022) and the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C. (September 2022).

Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg has been coordinated at New-York Historical by Valerie Paley, senior vice president and Sue Ann Weinberg Director, Patricia D. Klingenstein Library; Laura Mogulescu, curator of women’s history collections; and Anna Danziger Halperin, Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Women’s History and Public History, Center for Women’s History.

The New-York Historical Society, 170 Central Park West (77th Street), New York, NY 10024, 212-873-3400,  nyhistory.org. Follow the museum on social media at @nyhistory on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and Tumblr.

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© 2021 Travel Features Syndicate, a division of Workstyles, Inc. All rights reserved. Visit goingplacesfarandnear.com, www.huffingtonpost.com/author/karen-rubin, and travelwritersmagazine.com/TravelFeaturesSyndicate/. Blogging at goingplacesnearandfar.wordpress.com and moralcompasstravel.info. Send comments or questions to [email protected]. Tweet @TravelFeatures. ‘Like’ us at facebook.com/NewsPhotoFeatures

Historic Places, National Parks, New York State travel, See America, Women Travel

Centennial of 19th Amendment is Great Time to Follow in Footsteps of Suffragists in New York State

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“The First Wave” sculpture at Women’s Rights National Historical Park in Seneca Falls puts you in the march toward women’s suffrage from 1848 to the passage of the 19th Amendment, the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, in 1920. © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

by Karen Rubin
Travel Features Syndicate, goingplacesfarandnear.com

On the Centennial of passage of the 19th Amendment, also known as the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, giving women the right to vote, Donald Trump made a grand gesture with much fanfare in issuing a pardon for Susan B. Anthony, who died in 1906.

Noting she was arrested in 1872 for voting before it was legal for women to vote, he exclaimed at the White House signing ceremony, “She was never pardoned! Did you know that she was never pardoned? What took so long?”

Actually, according to those who are the caretakers of her legacy, she wouldn’t have wanted to be pardoned.

In a statement headlined, “Objection! Mr. President, Susan B. Anthony must decline your offer of a pardon today,” Deborah L. Hughes, President & CEO of the National Susan B. Anthony Museum & House in Rochester, NY, stated, “Anthony wrote in her diary in 1873 that her trial for voting was ‘The greatest outrage History ever witnessed.’  She was not allowed to speak as a witness in her own defense, because she was a woman. At the conclusion of arguments, Judge Hunt dismissed the jury and pronounced her guilty.  She was outraged to be denied a trial by jury. She proclaimed, ‘I shall never pay a dollar of your unjust penalty.’ To pay would have been to validate the proceedings. To pardon Susan B. Anthony does the same.

“If one wants to honor Susan B. Anthony today, a clear stance against any form of voter suppression would be welcome. Enforcement and expansion of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 would be celebrated, we must assure that states respect the 14th, 15th, and 19th Amendments to the United States Constitution. Support for the Equal Rights Amendment would be well received. Advocacy for human rights for all would be splendid. Anthony was also a strong proponent of sex education, fair labor practices, excellent public education, equal pay for equal work, and elimination of all forms of discrimination.

“As the National Historic Landmark and Museum that has been interpreting her life and work for seventy-five years, we would be delighted to share more.”

We just celebrated the centennial of the passage of the 19th Amendment. But the journey to Women’s Right to Vote, goes back a century before, back to when Abigail Adams wrote her husband, John Adams, in 1776, “Remember the ladies.” He didn’t. The struggle began.

The journey toward Women’s Suffrage is long, and offers a long trail that can be followed, in order to experience first-hand something of what the struggle was like and pay proper respect to the Suffragists’ extraordinary courage, perseverance, and innovativeness. Here are some of the places to follow their footsteps and sense their spirit:

Suffragist Susan B. Anthony, for whom the 19th Amendment giving women the right vote is named, is a strong presence at the National Women’s Hall of Fame, Seneca Falls © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

“The National Susan B. Anthony Museum & House, Rochester’s first National Historic Landmark, was home to the legendary suffragist, abolitionist and civil rights leader during her 40 most politically active years, as Visit Rochester proudly notes. “She served as president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association from her home on Madison Street. It was a hub for planning strategies, organizing campaigns, writing speeches, and preparing petitions.  This was Anthony’s home base as she made countless trips throughout the United States, to Great Britain, and to Europe to support local suffrage campaigns and organize the International Council of Women.

“Walk through rooms where Anthony met often with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and other leaders of the civil rights movement.  Stand in the parlor where Anthony was arrested in 1872 for the ‘crime’ of voting.

“It’s not hard to imagine Anthony enjoying her talks with the famous orator and abolitionist Frederick Douglass over cups of tea in her parlor. Upstairs in the small bedroom where Anthony died in 1906, visitors can’t help feeling some sadness knowing she never had an opportunity to cast a legal ballot. Fourteen years after her death, the 19th “Susan B. Anthony” Amendment was finally ratified and women throughout America were welcome at polling places.” (www.visitrochester.com/susanb2020)

The 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, also known as the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, was ratified in 1920, 14 years after Anthony died, in 1906. The house was her home from 1866 until her death here in 1906; it was the site of her famous arrest for voting in the presidential election of 1872. Her bedroom contains her original furniture, including the feather-star-pattern quilt on the bed that she made with her sister Hannah. The house is filled with photographs, memorabilia, and much of the Anthony family’s furniture.  A museum room on the second floor illustrates major events of the woman suffrage movement, including extensive photographs of the people who worked so long and so hard to win voting rights for women.

National Susan B. Anthony Museum & House 17 Madison Street Rochester, NY 14608 585/235-6124, www.susanbanthonyhouse.org

You can visit the Ontario County Courthouse, the site of Susan B. Anthony’s famous trial in 1873, just a short drive from Rochester in Canandaigua,

The final resting place for Susan B. Anthony, Jean Brooks Greenleaf (former president of the New York State Woman Suffrage Association), Frederick Douglass and many other important leaders of the abolitionist and women’s rights movements is Mt. Hope Cemetery in Rochester. There are guided tours and self-guiding maps.

This year is also the 200th anniversary of Susan B. Anthony’s birth, in 1820. The daughter of a Quaker family that promoted abolition and temperance, from the age of 6 and 25, from 1826 to 1845, she lived in Battenville, Washington County, and later in Center Falls, before her family moved to Rochester. So, on the 100th Anniversary of the 19th Amendment, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo announced an effort to stabilize and preserve Susan B. Anthony’s childhood home on Route 29 in Battenville. The work at the 1832 two-story brick home where Anthony lived from ages 13 to 19,  is expected to be completed by September.

Wesleyan Chapel where the Seneca Falls convention took place 1848, is part of the Women’s Rights National Park today, but went through many incarnations including a laundromat © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

For many, the journey to women’s rights begins at The Women’s Rights National Park in Seneca Falls, New York, ostensibly the “birthplace” of the women’s suffrage movement, where the 1848 Convention offers the most identifiable launch-pad for the (ongoing) struggle. The actual exhibit, created during Ronald Reagan’s term, is disappointing, but you can visit Wesleyan Chapel where the convention took place.

The women organized the convention and prepared a document laying out their grievances, the “Declaration of Sentiments,” which was modeled after the Declaration of Independence and mimicked its language in describing the tyranny under which women were forced to live. The document outlined 11 resolutions to “declare our right to be free as man is free…” At the close of the convention, all the resolutions passed with the exception of the ninth resolution, guaranteeing a woman’s right to vote. 

Wesleyan Chapel where the Seneca Falls convention took place 1848, is part of the Women’s Rights National Park © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

Out of the 300 people who attended (the chapel had a balcony then; men were allowed to attend the second day), only 100 signed the Declaration of Sentiments, and of these, 68 were women and 32 were men). (Forty percent of those who attended were Quakers, who already accommodated more equal roles for women.) 

The history of the Wesleyan Chapel can be a metaphor for the ambivalence of American society to women’s rights: From 1843-1871 it was chapel, then an opera house/performing arts hall; then a roller skating rink, a movie theater (in 1910s), then a Ford dealership, and ironically enough, finished its days as a laundromat before facing a wrecking ball. “Women fought to save the building,” the Ranger says. It was only in 1982, during the Reagan Administration, that it was turned into a national park.

At this writing, with the COVID-19 restrictions, the Visitor Center is only open Tuesday and Thursday (10-4), historic homes are closed, but Ranger Programs have resumed outdoors and the grounds are open daily. Check the site for updates.

Women’s Rights National Historical Park, a National Park Service site, 136 Fall Street, Seneca Falls, NY 13148, 315-568-0024, www.nps.gov/wori/index.htm

The 1844 Seneca Knitting Mill building in Seneca Falls is now the home of the National women’s Hall of Fame © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

In contrast, The National Women’s Hall of Fame, now in its new location in the rehabilitated 1844 Seneca Knitting Mill building, remains the more meaningful and inspiring exhibit, putting faces on the long, long diverse parade of women, in the place “where it happened.” Indeed, women factory workers, fired for demanding equal pay, provided the seed for the convention (which initially did not seek women’s vote, but rather equal rights to pay, property and custody of children).

The Hall, housed up until last fall in a former bank building, only opened in the new location this spring, but immediately forced to shut down due to the coronavirus.

It has reopened, with timed reservations. Among the new features: a new Hall of Fame display listing Inductees and their areas of accomplishment;  a section called “Why Here?” highlighting why all of this history happened in Seneca Falls and the story of the Seneca Knitting Mill and the women who worked there.

“We invite visitors to delve into the history of what happens when women innovate or lead with an interactive exhibit that challenges widely-held assumptions. Visitors can ‘weave’ themselves into the story in a participatory exhibit, and we ask visitors for their own stories of women who have inspired them. The exhibits encourage visitors to engage in creating our future and to understand the possibility of a world where women are equal partners in leadership.” (See the Women of the Hall, the inductees into the Hall of Fame: https://www.womenofthehall.org/women-of-the-hall/)

National Women’s Hall of Fame, 1 Canal St., Seneca Falls, NY 13148, 315-568-8060, Womenofthehall.org; make reservations, https://national-womens-hall-of-fame.myshopify.com/products/national-womens-hall-of-fame-admission

Visit the home of Matilda Joslyn Gage, who was important to developing the arguments for women’s rights, but has too often been overlooked because she did not attend the Seneca Falls convention in 1848. Gage was a noted speaker and writer on woman’s suffrage and an abolitionist.  She and her husband used their home as a station for the Underground Railroad to help escaped slaves. She worked closely with prominent women’s rights leaders Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, often holding meetings in her home. Her lifelong motto and gravestone inscription reads “There is a word sweeter than Mother, Home or Heaven; that word is Liberty.”

Less well known about Matilda Gage is that many of her ideas for women’s rights came from the Iroquois Indians, who had a maternal society where women could be chiefs, own property and have custody of their children. Also, she was the mother-in-law of L. Frank Baum, author of “The Wizard of Oz.” The Gage Center is also an educational resource for discussion and dialogue about the human rights issues to which she dedicated her life. (210 E. Genesee Street, Fayetteville, matildajoslyngage.org

New-York Historical Society presents “Women March” exhibit marking centennial of Women’s Suffrage © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

Closer to home, you can join the long women’s march to voting rights at The New-York Historical Society when it reopens its indoor exhibits on Friday, September 11, to see the temporary exhibition Women March. (See www.nyhistory.org/exhibitions/women-march). Check the site for opening hours; timed Tickets are required. More details: www.nyhistory.org/safety. (New-York Historical Society, 170 Central Park West, New York, NY 10024, 212-873-3400, www.nyhistory.org).

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© 2020 Travel Features Syndicate, a division of Workstyles, Inc. All rights reserved. Visit goingplacesfarandnear.com, www.huffingtonpost.com/author/karen-rubin, and travelwritersmagazine.com/TravelFeaturesSyndicate/. Blogging at goingplacesnearandfar.wordpress.com and moralcompasstravel.info. Send comments or questions to [email protected]. Tweet @TravelFeatures. ‘Like’ us at facebook.com/NewsPhotoFeatures

Arts, Arts & Entertainment, Attractions, Cultural travel, Culture, Museums and Exhibits, New York City travel

New York City Virtually: Greatest Cultural Institutions, Closed for Coronavirus, Share Exhibits Online

The Metropolitan Museum of Art may be temporarily closed, but you can explore its collections virtually © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

by Karen Rubin, Travel Features Syndicate, goingplacesfarandnear.com

New York City’s major cultural institutions are temporarily closed to help minimize the spread of coronavirus, but many are making their exhibits and programs available virtually, and have websites that really engage, that make the time spent in enforced hibernation that much richer and more productive, and frankly, less maddening.

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which is celebrating its 150 anniversary year, has temporarily closed all three locations—The Met Fifth Avenue, The Met Breuer, and The Met Cloisters—effective March 13. Meanwhile, you can watch videos from exhibition previews to curator talks and performances (https://www.metmuseum.org/metmedia)) and experience the best of human creativity from every corner of the globe at The Met (I love watching the video of the conservation of the Degas tutu, https://www.metmuseum.org/metmedia/video/conservation-and-scientific-research/degas-tutu-conservation) and play audio guides (https://www.metmuseum.org/visit/audio-guide)

When the Met reopens, it will offer a series of special exhibits marking its 150th anniversary: The exhibition Making The Met, 1870–2020 will present more than 250 works of art from the collection while taking visitors on a journey through the Museum’s history; The reopening of the galleries for British decorative arts and design will reveal a compelling new curatorial narrative; Transformative new gifts, cross-cultural installations, and major international loan exhibitions will be on view throughout the year; and special programs and outreach will include a birthday commemoration on April 13, a range of public events June 4–6, and a story-collecting initiative.

“Our galleries may be closed, but never fear! Social media never sleeps.” Follow @metmuseum on Instagram for Tuesday Trivia, #MetCameos, and daily art content.

Being confined to home is a perfect time to take advantage of the Museum of Modern Art’s free massive open online course What Is Contemporary Art?, available now on Coursera. This course offers an in-depth look at over 70 works of art from MoMA’s collection—many of which are currently on view in the expanded Museum—from 1980 to the present, with a focus on art produced in the last decade. Learners will hear directly from artists, architects, and designers from around the globe about their creative processes, materials, and inspiration. What Is Contemporary Art? can be found at mo.ma/whatiscontemporaryart.

Dorothea Lange’s iconic photograph is featured in MoMA’s exhibit “Dorothea Lange: Words & Pictures”. Meanwhile, take advantage of the Museum of Modern Art’s free massive open online course What Is Contemporary Art?

I can’t wait for MoMA to reopen so I can see Dorothea Lange: Words & Pictures, the first major solo exhibition at the Museum of the photographer’s incisive work in over 50 years. The exhibition includes approximately 100 photographs drawn entirely from the Museum’s collection. Dorothea Lange: Words & Pictures also uses archival materials such as correspondence, historical publications, and oral histories, as well as contemporary voices, to examine the ways in which words inflect our understanding of Lange’s pictures. These new perspectives and responses from artists, scholars, critics, and writers, including Julie Ault, Wendy Red Star, and Rebecca Solnit, provide fresh insight into Lange’s practice. (Scheduled through May 9, 2020).

T. rex The Ultimate Predator at American Museum of Natural History. While the museum is closed, go online to its “Explore” site for videos, blogs and OLogy, a science website for kids of all ages. © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

American Museum of Natural History while closed, the website is a treasure trove of information and engaging photos and ways to explore and interact on your own. At the section of its site labeled “Explore” https://www.amnh.org/explore, there are videos, blogs and OLogy: The Science Website for Kids, where kids of all ages can play games, do activities, watch videos and meet scientists to learn more about fossils, the universe, genetics, and more. (Check out https://www.amnh.org/explore/ology/brain)

“Auschwitz: Not long ago. Not far away.” Exhibit at Museum of Jewish Heritage, NYC. While the exhibit is closed, there are excellent materials online. © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

Museum of Jewish Heritage-A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, is in the midst of the landmark exhibit, Auschwitz. Not long ago. Not far away. The most comprehensive Holocaust exhibition about Auschwitz ever presented in North America, the exhibit had already been extended until August 30, 2020. The museum so far is scheduled to reopen March 29; in the meanwhile, there are excellent materials at the website that will inform and prepare you for when the exhibit reopens (https://mjhnyc.org/discover-the-exhibition/about-the-exhibition/). (See Groundbreaking Exhibit at Museum of Jewish Heritage Transports to ‘Auschwitz: Not long ago. Not far away’)

New-York Historical Society presents “Women March” exhibit marking centennial of Women’s Suffrage. Many materials are online, but you can also re-visit some of the N-YHS’s imortant past exhibits, like a personal favorite, “Harry Potter: A History of Magic.” © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

New-York Historical Society is closed so you will have to wait to experience “Women March,”   presidential/election exhibits (take a selfie in Reagan’s Oval Office) and “Bill Graham” (phenomenal and surprising exhibit with fabulous musical accompaniment about this iconic concert impresario). Meanwhile, the N-YHS website offers sensational online exhibitions featuring some of their important past exhibits, including ‘Harry Potter; A History of Magic,” and “the Vietnam War: 1945-1975” and Chinese American: Exclusion/Inclusion (https://www.nyhistory.org/exhibitions/online-exhibitions). You can also delve into its digital collection, with selections from the N-YHS Museum and Library’s holdings paintings, drawings, photographs, manuscripts, broadsides, maps, and other materials that reveal the depth and breadth of over two centuries of collecting.  (http://digitalcollections.nyhistory.org/).  (See: Many Pathways to Mark Centennial of Women’s Suffrage)

Meanwhile, some outdoor venues are open, as of this writing (the situation has changed daily):

The Brooklyn Botanic Garden remains open to the public, having implemented stringent cleaning protocols and posted new signage on-site about best practices in personal hygiene. “We hope that the Garden might offer you some comfort and beauty even during a particularly stressful time.” (https://www.bbg.org/visit)

Central Park, Prospect Park and Flushing Meadows may well provide needed respite. However, the Wildlife Conservation Society has temporarily closed the Bronx Zoo, Central Park Zoo, Prospect Park Zoo, Queens Zoo and New York Aquarium, effective Monday, March 16. Check wcs.org for updates.

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© 2020 Travel Features Syndicate, a division of Workstyles, Inc. All rights reserved. Visit goingplacesfarandnear.com, www.huffingtonpost.com/author/karen-rubin, and travelwritersmagazine.com/TravelFeaturesSyndicate/. Blogging at goingplacesnearandfar.wordpress.com and moralcompasstravel.info. Send comments or questions to [email protected]. Tweet @TravelFeatures. ‘Like’ us at facebook.com/NewsPhotoFeatures

Attractions, Heritage Travel, Historic Places, Museums and Exhibits, Places of History, Women Travel

Many Pathways to Mark Centennial of Women’s Suffrage

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Trace the progress of Women’s Suffrage on an interactive screen at New-York Historical Society’s “Women March” exhibit marking centennial of the 19th Amendment giving women the right to vote © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

by Karen Rubin, Travel Features Syndicate, goingplacesfarandnear.com

The 2017 Women’s March may have been the largest single protest in history, but women have been marching literally and virtually for 200 years. And for 200 years, the march, the campaign for women’s rights has been shorthand for voting, education, health care, equal pay, workers rights, civil rights, environmental justice, gun safety. Yes, there was that period when temperance was a priority, as well. But it has only been in the 1970s, that Feminism – the fight for women’s equality – took hold, and with it, the fight for the essential right: reproductive freedom.

The new exhibit at the New-York Historical Society simply called “Women March” (part of The Women’s Suffrage NYC Centennial Consortium, www.WomensSuffrageNYC.org) traces this long arc which has not always moved toward justice or equality. Indeed, progress, on just about every front, has been in brief spurts of enlightenment. In reality, that long arc is more zig-zags and a maze with brick walls to block progress.

From the beginning, women directed their activism to abolition of slavery, labor rights, working conditions and pay equity, civil rights, health, education, property rights, custody, rights for Native Americans  – issues regarded as “moral imperative.”

“Women seized on the notion that women had a moral power, beyond home, a moral imperative to effect public policy,” said Jeanne Gardner Gutierrez, curatorial scholar in women’s history at the New-York Historical Society.

Without the right to vote, they took advantage of the Constitution’s right to petition Congress – until Congress said they would ignore any anti-slavery petition.

“It was infuriating. The one right available to women, guaranteed by Constitution, swept away. They realized that moral suasion has limits.”

New-York Historical Society presents “Women March” exhibit marking centennial of Women’s Suffrage © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

Voting rights was not at the core of the women’s activism, which was hardly a movement then. Even at the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention, the women leaders – mainly Quaker women who already had a measure of equality within their religious society –  had to be persuaded (by Frederick Douglass) to include the right to vote among their demands,  enunciated in the Declaration of Sentiments, that mimicked the Declaration of Independence. Their demands centered on equal pay and rights to own property and have control of one’s own earnings, a growing issue for women who were being employed in factories and for the first time earning their own wage. Many women did not sign on. It may surprise many to learn (as I did when visiting the Roosevelt historic site at Hyde Park) that Eleanor Roosevelt was not an early supporter of suffrage.

New-York Historical Society presents “Women March” exhibit marking centennial of Women’s Suffrage © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

During the Civil War – as in the Revolutionary War and later World War II – women took on roles that had been reserved for men: they managed their farms and businesses while husbands and fathers were off fighting, they were nurses, and organized fundraisers showing they could manage large financial projects (Sanitary Fair raised $1 million for union, the treasurer was a woman).

New-York Historical Society presents “Women March” exhibit marking centennial of Women’s Suffrage © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

After the Civil War, there was a great debate over whether women should seek the vote, whether under the 15th amendment which said that men could not be denied the right to vote simply based on their race, voting should be a right of citizenship. Women were considered citizens, but the Supreme Court found that citizenship did not automatically bestow voting rights.

But a section of the exhibit labeled “Go West Young Woman” notes that in the Western territories, women did have right to vote (and apparently, women had the right to vote briefly in New Jersey,  from 1776 to 1807 when the vote was restricted to white men. (See: On the Trail of America’s First Women to Vote)

Victoria Woodhull was the first woman to run for president as the Equal Rights Party candidate in 1871. New-York Historical Society presents “Women March” exhibit marking centennial of Women’s Suffrage © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

But those who think that Hillary Rodham Clinton was the first woman to run for president (she was the first to run as a major party candidate) might be surprised to learn that even before women won the right to vote, Victoria Woodhull was the first woman to run for president as the Equal Rights Party candidate in 1871. “Despite questions about eligibility to vote, women, she reasoned, still could run for political office,” the notes read. Lawyer Belva Lockwood, the first woman to argue before the Supreme Court, followed in 1884 and 1888 on the National Equal Rights Party ticket and was the first woman to appear on official ballots, endorsing equal rights, temperance, civil service reform and citizenship for Native Americans; she won some 4,000 votes.

But at a certain turning point, the women’s movement realized that moral suasion wasn’t going to effect real change; the key to getting any of the changes and rights they wanted was the right to vote.

They used the latest techniques and technology to build support. Film was new in 1915, and a newsreel agency, Universal Animated Weekly, captured a 1915 strike for workers rights (we get to see the film on a screen almost life-sized). The films were distributed and shown in nickelodeons  (small movie houses), and were an inexpensive way to reach working-class people.

Watch some of the earliest films ever made, documenting women’s protests for working rights and voting rights. New-York Historical Society presents “Women March” exhibit marking centennial of Women’s Suffrage © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

It’s only in the 1960s-1970s, it seems, that women’s rights became equated with reproductive rights, or more precisely, abortion, and coming almost simultaneously with The Pill and sexual freedom that broke down gender barriers. The threat to male domination became much starker – uprooting the concept of women in the home, being consumers of appliances and cosmetics, caring for children while men held the economic reins. Women could be fired for becoming pregnant, could be paid a fraction of the same wage, and relegated into specific jobs. Check out the classified job listing in the 1970s, and you will see “male” and “female” listings.

Feminism really only comes to play in the 1980s, when the right to control one’s own body, make one’s own choices, have the same right as men to self-determination, takes hold.  The outrage at women as property, chattel, of objectification comes into focus.

Here you see a display with the first issue of Ms. Magazine, an organizing force which reinforced women’s yearning for equal status.

In the 1970s and 1980s, the focus of women’s activism changed to Feminism. New-York Historical Society presents “Women March” exhibit marking centennial of Women’s Suffrage, displaying the first issue of Ms. Magazine, a pivotal force for unifying a movement for change. © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

Whereas in the earliest stages of activism, women’s issues were those that were considered the “moral imperative” – abolition, workers rights – now it boiled down to self, individual rights, but exploded back up again: women’s rights are human rights.

But for others, feminism boiled down to one word: abortion.

Ms. Magazine publishes an amazing call to sign on to “a campaign for honesty and freedom” along with a long list of 53 famous women who declared, “We have had abortions” On the list: Gloria Steinem, Nora Ephron, Judy Collins, Susan Sontag, Lillian Hellman, Lee Grant, Gael Greene, Billie Jean King.

New-York Historical Society presents “Women March” exhibit marking centennial of Women’s Suffrage © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

The exhibit follows to the 2017 Women’s March, with some of the posters.

And just to emphasize the importance of Women’s Suffrage, just outside the exit door is a computer where you can check on your voter registration.

For as long as there has been a United States, women have organized to shape the nation’s politics and secure their rights as citizens. Their collective action has taken many forms, from abolitionist petitions to industry-wide garment strikes to massive marches for an Equal Rights Amendment. Women March celebrates the centennial of the 19th Amendment—which granted women the right to vote in 1920—as it explores the efforts of a diverse array of women to expand American democracy in the centuries before and after the suffrage victory.

New-York Historical Society presents “Women March” exhibit marking centennial of Women’s Suffrage © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

On view in the Joyce B. Cowin Women’s History Gallery, Women March is curated by Valerie Paley, the director of the Center for Women’s History and New-York Historical senior vice president and chief historian, with the Center for Women’s History curatorial team. The immersive exhibition features imagery and video footage of women’s collective action over time, drawing visitors into a visceral engagement with the struggles that have endured into the 21st century.

New-York Historical Society presents “Women March” exhibit marking centennial of Women’s Suffrage © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

The exhibition begins with the many ways women asserted political influence long before they even demanded the vote. Objects and images demonstrate how they risked criticism for speaking against slavery, signed petitions against Indian Removal, raised millions to support the Civil War, and protested reduced wages and longer days. A riveting recreation of an 1866 speech by African American suffragist and activist Frances Harper demonstrates the powerful debates at women’s rights conventions. Absence of the vote hardly prevented women from running for political office: one engaging item on display is a campaign ribbon for Belva Lockwood, the first woman to argue before the Supreme Court, who won around 4,000 votes in her own presidential bid.

A campaign ribbon for Belva Lockwood, the first woman to argue before the Supreme Court, who won around 4,000 votes in her own presidential bid at the New-York Historical Society’s “Women March” exhibit marking centennial of Women’s Suffrage © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

Multiple perspectives on the vote, including African American and working-class activism, are explored, upending popular assumptions that suffragists were a homogenous group. The 19th Amendment is hailed as a crucial step forward, but recognized as an incomplete victory. One photograph shows an African American women’s voter group in Georgia circa 1920, formed despite wide disenfranchisement, and another shows women of the League of Women Voters who sought to make suffragists’ goals real with legislation that addressed issues such as public health and child welfare. A digital interactive monitor invites visitors to explore the nuances of voting laws concerning women across the entire United States. 

New-York Historical Society presents “Women March” exhibit marking centennial of Women’s Suffrage © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

Offering an examination of women’s activism in the century after the Amendment, the exhibition concludes by showing how women engaged with issues such as safe workplaces, civil rights, reproductive justice, and freedom from violence. Photographs and video footage of women building warships, boycotting segregation, urging voters to register, and marching for the Equal Rights Amendment convey the urgency of their desire for full citizenship. The dynamism of women’s collective action continues to the present day with handmade signs from the 2017 Women’s Marches and footage of a variety of marches and speeches on topics ranging from reproductive justice to indigenous peoples’ rights to climate change. Visitors can also learn about many individuals who have been instrumental in women’s activism over the past 200 years in an interactive display compiled by New-York Historical’s Teen Leaders program. Meanwhile, young visitors can explore the exhibition with a special family guide.

Women March, on view through August 30, 2020, is one of four major special exhibitions mounted by the New-York Historical Society that address the cornerstones of citizenship and American democracy.

Meet the Presidents which opened on President’s Weekend, is where you can discover how the role of the president has evolved since George Washington with a re-creation of the White House Oval Office, decorated “thread by thread” exactly as it was during Ronald Reagan’s tenure, and a new gallery devoted to the powers of the presidency.

Colonists, Citizens, Constitutions: Creating the American Republic explores the important roles state constitutions have played in the history of our country.

The People Count: The Census in the Making of America documents the critical role played by the U.S. Census in the 19th century—just in time for the 2020 Census.

To encourage first-time voters to learn about our nation’s history and civic as they get ready to vote in the presidential election, New-York Historical Society offers free admission to the exhibitions above to college students with ID through 2020, an initiative supported, in part, by History®. This special program allows college students to access New-York Historical’s roster of upcoming exhibitions that explore the pillars of American democracy as they prepare to vote, most of them for the first time.

“The year 2020 is a momentous time for both the past and future of American politics, as the centennial of the 19th Amendment, which granted women the right to vote, coincides with both a presidential election and a census year,” said Dr. Louise Mirrer, president and CEO of New-York Historical. “This suite of complementary exhibitions showcases the ideas and infrastructure behind our American institutions that establish and protect our fundamental rights to make our voices heard and opinions count. We hope that all visitors will come away with a wider understanding of the important role each citizen plays in our democracy.”

The New-York Historical Society is located at 170 Central Park West at Richard Gilder Way (77th Street), New York, NY 10024, 212-873-3400, nyhistory.org.

The Women’s Suffrage NYC Centennial Consortium 

One hundred years ago, women earned the right to vote with the ratification of the 19th amendment. To honor their fight and commemorate this moment in history, a collective of New York City cultural organizations has formed the Women’s Suffrage NYC Centennial Consortium.

The Women’s Suffrage NYC Centennial Consortium is a collaboration of cultural organizations citywide that foregrounds exhibitions and programs that, together, offer a multi-dimensional picture of the history of women’s suffrage and its lasting, ongoing impact. The consortium has launched www.WomensSuffrageNYC.org to highlight the activities being presented across New York City throughout 2020.

Founding members are the New-York Historical Society, the Staten Island Museum, the New York Philharmonic, The New York Public Library, Brooklyn Historical Society, the Museum of the City of New York, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the Brooklyn Museum, Park Avenue Armory, and Snug Harbor Cultural Center and Botanical Garden.

New-York Historical Society presents “Women March” exhibit marking centennial of Women’s Suffrage © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

Announced programming includes the exhibition Women March at the New-York Historical Society, which explores the efforts of a wide range of women to expand American democracy in the centuries before and after the suffrage victory (February 28 – August 30); Women of the Nation Arise! Staten Islanders in the Fight for Women’s Right to Vote at the Staten Island Museum, which presents the remarkable stories of local suffragists acting on the grassroots level to create the momentum necessary for regional and national change and the bold tactics they employed to win the vote (March 7 – December 30); the New York Philharmonic’s Project 19—a multi-season initiative to commission and premiere 19 new works by 19 women composers, the largest women-only commissioning initiative in history, which launched earlier this month and continues in the spring (May – June) and beyond; and 100 Years | 100 Women a partnership of Park Avenue Armory with National Black Theatre and nine other cultural institutions in New York City to commission work exploring the complex legacy of the 19th Amendment 100 years after its ratification from 100 artists who identify as women or gender non-binary (showcase of commissions on May 16).

The consortium is committed to showcasing women’s contributions to the past, present, and future. Though many women were given access to the right to vote 100 years ago, the fight for equality continues. Their goal is to expand the conversation through meaningful cultural experiences that convey that all women should be seen, heard, and counted.

The Women’s Suffrage NYC Centennial Consortium is co-chaired by Janice Monger, president & CEO of the Staten Island Museum, and Valerie Paley, director of the Center for Women’s History and senior vice president and chief historian at the New-York Historical Society, to bring together a group of vital New York City cultural organizations with a shared vision to honor the Women’s Suffrage Centennial.

New-York Historical Society presents “Women March” exhibit marking centennial of Women’s Suffrage © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

“We are so proud to bring together this collective of organizations and colleagues who share the vision that women’s stories are important and need to be told. All of these activities represent multi-faceted, nuanced cultural and historical insights into the early 20th century movement and equality in progress today,” said Janice Monger, consortium co-chair and Staten Island Museum president & CEO.

New-York Historical Society presents “Women March” exhibit marking centennial of Women’s Suffrage © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

“In an effort that was many decades in the making, a century ago, women came together to fight for and win the right to vote. While that right was not fully and immediately extended to all women, their continued collective action galvanized movements to expand and give substantive meaning to American democracy after the suffrage victory,” said Valerie Paley, consortium co-chair and senior vice president and chief historian at the New-York Historical Society, where she directs the Center for Women’s History. “Through these cultural experiences across New York City, we hope New Yorkers and visitors alike will be inspired by the women who made history and the women who are making history now,” she added.

The Women’s Suffrage NYC Centennial Consortium will continue to grow as new programs and exhibitions are announced during the year.

For a full list of exhibitions, events, and programs, visit WomensSuffrageNYC.org.

Where Women Made History

Meanwhile, the National Trust for Historic Preservation is compiling a catalog of 1000 sites associated with women of accomplishment and is more than halfway to the goal of identifying places Where Women Made History and is inviting people to submit entries (go to the site to submit a photo and short description).

“This year the United States commemorates the 100th anniversary of women gaining the right to vote, providing an important opportunity to celebrate the place of women in American history. While history, of course, is complicated, and voting rights for many women continued to be denied because of discriminatory practices, we at the National Trust want to tell the full history—to uncover and uplift women across the centuries whose vision, passion, and determination have shaped the country we are today. Our goal: discover 1,000 places connected to women’s history, and elevate their stories for everyone to learn and celebrate.

“But to do this, we need your help. What places have you encountered where women made history? They can be famous or unknown, protected or threatened, existing or lost. No matter their condition or status, these places matter, and we encourage you to share them with the world.

“Have a place you’d like to share? Submit a photo and a short description.”

Visiting the historic landmark house of Alice Austen, an early photographer, on Staten Island, one of the 1000 sites to be listed on the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s “Where Women Made History” site (c) Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com.

Just checking the listings in New York State, I see already listed is Grange Hall, Waterloo, NY, associated with Belva Ann Lockwood; Harriet Tubman House and Gravesite, Auburn, NY; the former Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, New York City, “Little Nellie,” Newspaper Editress, Penfield, NY; Alice Austen House, Staten Island; and Matilda Joslyn Gage Center for Social Justice Dialogue, Fayetteville, NY.

See: https://savingplaces.org/where-women-made-history.

_________________________

© 2020 Travel Features Syndicate, a division of Workstyles, Inc. All rights reserved. Visit goingplacesfarandnear.com, www.huffingtonpost.com/author/karen-rubin, and travelwritersmagazine.com/TravelFeaturesSyndicate/. Blogging at goingplacesnearandfar.wordpress.com and moralcompasstravel.info. Send comments or questions to [email protected]. Tweet @TravelFeatures. ‘Like’ us at facebook.com/NewsPhotoFeatures

Attractions, Museums and Exhibits, New York City travel

First Ever Exhibit of LIFE Magazine’s 6 Women Photographers, Now at New-York Historical Society

The exhibit, LIFE: Six Women Photographers, at the New-York Historical Society through October 6, 2019, features the work of Margaret Bourke-White, one of LIFE Magazine’s first four full-time photographers, one of only six women LIFE photographers; her photograph was the cover of LIFE’s inaugural issue © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

By Karen Rubin, Travel Features Syndicate, goingplacesfarandnear.com

From its founding in the 1930s to the end of weekly publication in the 1970s, LIFE Magazine elevated and showcased photojournalism. Instead of just being the acoutrement to reporting, the photos were the story, or as Henry R. Luce saw it, the photojournalist as essayist.

During that time, only six out of 101 full-time LIFE photographers were women. Now, for the first time, these women – who contributed so much to the evolution of photojournalism as well as the cultural and societal trends they spotlighted –  are featured in their own exhibit, LIFE: Six Women Photographers, at the New-York Historical Society through October 6, 2019.

“For the editors of LIFE—the first magazine to tell stories with photographs rather than text—the camera was not merely a reporter, but also a potent commentator with the power to frame news and events for a popular audience. For decades, Americans saw the world through the lens of the magazine’s photographers. Between the late 1930s and the early 1970s, LIFE magazine retained only six women photographers as full-time staff or on a semi-permanent basis. LIFE: Six Women Photographers showcases the work of some of those women and how their work contributed to LIFE’s pursuit of American identity through photojournalism,” the curators write. The exhibition features more than 70 images  showcasing the extraordinary work created by Margaret Bourke-White, Hansel Mieth, Marie Hansen, Martha Holmes, Nina Leen, and Lisa Larsen. 

How were these women part of a larger editorial vision? What topics did they cover, and how did their work reflect—and sometimes expand—the mission of the magazine? The exhibit reveals these photographers’ important role in creating modern photojournalism and defining what LIFE editor-in-chief Henry Luce called the “American Century.” The level of influence that LIFE Magazine wielded was considerable – at its height, one out of every three Americans read the magazine each month.

We learn that of the six, three were immigrants of whom two fled Fascist Europe. In all, they produced 3,000 stories, 325,000 images that curator Sarah Gordon, curatorial scholar in women’s history at NYHS’ Center for Women’s History, and Marilyn Satin Kushner, curator and head, Department of Prints, Photographs, and Architectural Collections, combed through to select out the 70 images featured in the exhibit. The exhibit, interestingly, highlights not only the photos that were selected for publication, but photos out of the series that were not, as well as the contact sheets. There are also displays with the magazine opened to the page, and notes from the photographers.

Asked how the six featured stories were selected out of the photographers’ 3,000, Kushner reflects, “We thought about what we wanted to show and say – that kept me up at night, how to tie as a thread. The first thought was to show a woman’s point of view, but then we don’t know how a man would have treated the same subject. What the women did was illustrate Luce’s idea, that the photos [depict] the American story.”

Margaret Bourke-White, one of the first four staff photographers, her image of Fort Peck Dam was the cover of LIFE Magazine’s inaugural cover ; she photographed from front lines in World War II, and worked for LIFE until her death in 1971

Yet, except for Margaret Bourke-White’s famous series on the Fort Peck Dam – illustrative of her talent to show Industrial America and technological progress – the photo essays selected for this exhibit predominantly show women and women’s issues – wrestling with their place in society after World War II’s independence, the WACS. And even when there is a story, like the Dam, Bourke-White and others showed a great sensitivity to how ordinary people – families – lived. Bourke-White chose to show shantytowns that developed around the dam, and what Saturday night dancehall was like.

Margaret Bourke-White’s feature on nightlife in the “New Wild West” © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

Her telegram to her editor reads, “Swell subjects especially shanty towns. Getting good nightlife. Nobody camera shy except  ladies of evening but hope conquer them also…. May I give one picture FortPeck Publishing booklet for local sale. Would help repay their many courtesies. Could choose pattern picture we probably wouldn’t use anyway.”

How did they get their assignments? “Sometimes the women wrote and asked for an assignment, but usually were told to ‘do that’” Kushner tells me. Luce wanted LIFE Magazine to reflect the American Century, and while Bourke-White documented steel mills and dams – America’s technology and industrial achievements – she also depicted new towns in the middle of no where, “FDR’s New Wild West.”

Standing in front of one of the most controversial and substantial photos in the exhibition – Martha Holmes’ 1949  image of singer Billy Eckstine being embraced by a white  female fan, surrounded by other gleeful white teenagers  – I meet Holmes’ daughter, Anne Holmes Waxman, and granddaughter of the photographer, Martha Holmes., Eva Koshel Castleton.

LIFE Photographer Martha Holmes’ granddaughter, Eva Koshel Castleton, and daughter Anne Holmes Waxman, with one of the photographer’s most controversial and important photographs, of Billy Eckstine © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

“My mother came on when a lot of men were in the war. Born in Louisville, Kentucky, she was working as a photographer at the Courier-Journal when Life Magazine came to recruit her to come to New York. “She was shaking in her boots, just 24 years old. She never went back.”

The exhibit shows the contact sheet with other images of multiracial crowds waiting for tickets and autographs, but the editors chose to publish the more controversial image. They were so concerned that they sought permission from Luce, who agreed with Holmes that the photograph reflected social progress and was appropriate for the story. “Holmes felt the photo was one of her best, claiming ‘it told just what the world should be like.’ The magazine, however, received  vicious letters in response  and the fallout adversely affected Eckstine’s career.”

LIFE Magazine photographer Martha Holmes.

In the weekly report of letters received for April 24 issue, “Fifty-nine readers are very much upset. ‘That picture of Billy Eckstine with a white girl clinging to him after a performance just turns my stomach. Why a teen-age white girl conducts herself in this manner over a Negro crooner is beyond me. Juvenile delinquency is bad enough in our own race without mixing it up with another.”  “The most nauseating picture of the year.” “That picture qualifies as the most indecent picture ever published by LIFE.” “ That picture should have appeared in Pravda Your publication of it leads me to believe that Mr. Chambers was not the only Communist on your staff.” Eight readers cancelled their subscriptions, but nine praised the feature.

(What I notice in the magazine that is featured in the display is the ad for new Coty eye cosmetics . “Eyes of natural glamour. Newest style in beauty.”)

It becomes clearer why LIFE Magazine had women photographers exploring women’s issues when you look at the ads that accompanied features like Martha Holmes’ Billy Eckstine piece © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

I ask her daughter Anne whether her mother got or lost certain assignments because of being a woman. She related that the only assignment her mother turned down was when, she was 8 ½ months pregnant with her, in 1956, and had to refuse an assignment to photograph Elvis Presley. “It was the one job she couldn’t take.” But she is renowned for her photos of artist Jackson Pollack and the House on UnAmerican Activities hearings.

LIFE Magazine photographer Nina Leen.

A very interesting series, “The American Woman’s Dilemma” by Nina Leen, published in the July 16, 1947 issue, danced around the issue of “how are you going to get them back on the farm, after they’ve seen Par-ee” – in this case, women who worked traditionally male jobs and had independence during the war, now being shoved back into housework and child-rearing rather than pursue a career. “The essay also reflected cultural anxieties about a ‘return to normalcy’ after the Depression and war. LIFE assumed that all women desired marriage and children but voiced concern that a woman’s time was so stretched, she did not have time to pursue her husband’s interests.

“The American Woman’s Dilemma” by Nina Leen that was published in the July 16, 1947 issue danced around the issue of career and childrearing © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

“The article barely acknowledged that many women had no choice but to find work. It did recognize women’s struggles with child care buit disparaged separation as creating insecure children.”  Only one of Leen’s photos of an unmarried woman made the cut. “This article represented a clear attempt at setting out women’s choices in the post-war era of societal realignment.” (The article is opposite an ad for Singer sewing machines; LIFE Magazine clearly had an investment in women as homemakers, wanting the latest appliances.)

LIFE Magazine photographer Marie Hansen’s series “The WAACs” (September 7, 1942) helped America accept the idea of women in uniform..
LIFE photographer Hansel Mieth.

Hansel  Mieth is represented by her feature on “International Ladies’ Garment Workers: How a Great Union Works Inside and Out” (August 1, 1938). She worked as a migrant worker in California when she first emigrated to the US from Germany, and photographed fellow migrant workers in San Francisco, the city’s neighborhoods and cultural enclaves before LIFE hired her in 1937, publishing her socially engaged photo essays over the next seven years.

Among Lisa Larsen’s iconic assignments for LIFE was photographing the John F. Kennedy-Jacqueline Bouvier wedding in 1953.

I am left to wonder to what extent were the projects reshaped by a woman’s perspective, or how much the women photographers were directed to focus on “women’s subjects”. Even Lisa Larsen’s feature, “Tito as Soviet Hero, How Times Have Changed!” (from June 25, 1956) featured a spread, “Wives Materialize to Greet a Visitor.” We would have to see many more examples of the photographers’ assignments to make that appraisal, and hope these topics will be revealed in future exhibits NY-HS’ Women’s Center.

Based on this cursory examination, it seems Luce wasn’t being progressive in having women photographers for their point of view. He was realizing that women were the market for advertisers. And they were used to socialize women back to their pre-World War II prescribed roles – as homemakers and consumers.

The exhibit is curated by Sarah Gordon, curatorial scholar in women’s history, Center for Women’s History, and Marilyn Satin Kushner, curator and head, Department of Prints, Photographs, and Architectural Collections; with Erin Levitsky, Ryerson University; and William J. Simmons, Andrew Mellon Foundation Pre-Doctoral Fellow, Center for Women’s History.

NYHS brilliantly uses its space to maximize an immersion into Women’s History. Just outside the Women Photographers of LIFE Magazine exhibit is Women’s Voices, a multimedia digital installation where visitors can discover the hidden connections among exceptional and unknown women who left their mark on New York and the nation, even going back to Colonial America. Featuring interviews, profiles, and biographies, Women’s Voices unfolds across nine oversized touchscreens to tell the story of activists, scientists, performers, athletic champions, social change advocates, writers, and educators through video, audio, music, text, and images.

Among the many fascinating profiles featured in Women’s Voices are those of the first Latina Supreme Court Justice, Sonia Sotomayor; Nobel Prize-winning scientist Barbara McClintock; civil rights activist and poet Audre Lorde; the first woman to receive a medical degree in the U.S., Elizabeth Blackwell; award-winning actress Meryl Streep; Brooklyn-born opera star Beverly Sills; Seneca leader and artisan Caroline Parker Mountpleasant; trailblazing dancer and principal ballerina Misty Copeland; the Manhattan Project physicist who was snubbed by the Nobel Prize committee, Chien-Shiung Wu; Gilded Age novelist Edith Wharton; and the teacher whose 1854 lawsuit helped desegregate public transit in New York, Elizabeth Jennings Graham, among others.

There are also displays about the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU), Women’s Activism and Billie Jean King. And in the middle of the floor is a most sensational gallery devoted to Tiffany, which includes a fascinating display about Clara Driscoll, who headed the Women’s Glass Cutting Department of some 45-55 young women (mainly 16-17 year olds who would work until they went off to be engaged). And who until this exhibit was unheralded for her role in creating many of Tiffany’s iconic designs.

Revolutionary Summer at New-York Historical Society

Also on view:

The New-York Historical Society, the oldest museum in New York, celebrates Revolutionary Summer, a Museum-wide exploration of Revolutionary War times, Revolutionary Summer presents outdoor events every weekend featuring characters from the era; 18th-century art and artifacts; a diorama of the Continental Army; and a host of programs for all ages, including trivia nights, a DJ evening, and a Revolutionary Drag Tea Party. On select weekends, visitors can explore a replica of George Washington’s Headquarters Tent at an outdoor Continental Army encampment, meet Living Historians portraying soldiers and spies, and learn about the many facets of camp life during the War for Independence.

“We’re so excited to welcome visitors to New-York Historical this summer with a full line-up of fun ways to experience the Revolutionary era,” said Dr. Louise Mirrer, president and CEO of the New-York Historical Society. “Revolutionary Summer celebrates the outstanding, revolutionary times that ignited the birth of our country with everything from a scavenger hunt to the chance to meet George Washington.”

The centerpiece of Revolutionary Summer is a replica of George Washington’s Headquarters Tent, on display in New-York Historical’s outdoor courtyard on select weekends. The original Tent is on display at the Museum of the American Revolution (MoAR) in Philadelphia. Often called the “first Oval Office,” the Headquarters Tent was where Washington and his most trusted staff plotted the strategy that ultimately won the Revolutionary War. On loan from MoAR, this painstakingly detailed, hand-sewn replica—made of custom woven linen and wool fabrics—was created as part of a collaboration between MoAR and Colonial Williamsburg. The Tent is staffed by MoAR educators, who lead visitors on an immersive tour through history. (On view July 4–7,  26–28, August 16–18,  23–25,  September 13–15)

A host of special installations and artifacts are on view at New-York Historical as part of Revolutionary Summer. One of the highlights is a recently discovered watercolor painting of the 1782 Continental Army encampment at Verplanck’s Point, New York—the only known eyewitness image of Washington’s Headquarters Tent during the Revolutionary War—on loan from MoAR. Other highlights include a camp cot used by Washington at Valley Forge during the winter of 1777; John Trumbull’s iconic painting of Washington that he gave to Martha Washington in 1790; and a pipe tomahawk gifted by Washington to Seneca Chief Sagoyewatha. Also on display is a diorama depicting the Verplanck’s Point encampment and the Hudson River shoreline, providing visitors with a 360-degree view of the scope and scale of Washington’s forces.

Revolutionary Summer also showcases historic documents from the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, including an original 1823 William J. Stone facsimile of the Declaration of Independence; a broadside from King George III announcing the armistice and officially ending the war; and a letter by Martha Washington detailing domestic life in the aftermath of the Revolution.

Independence Day Celebration: Celebrate the Fourth of July exploring George Washington’s encampment! Enter his Headquarters Tent, meet the man himself, and experience where the future first president strategized, dined, and slept while MoAR staff describe his daily life. Also on tap: singalongs with the Hudson River Ramblers; fife and drum corps music; a one-woman play about Deborah Sampson, the woman who disguised her gender to enlist in the Continental Army; family-friendly food for purchase; and Living Historians portraying soldiers from the Continental Army, as well as John Adams, who’ll read the Declaration of Independence. Free Admission for kids age 17 and under

And this fall, the New-York Historical Society explores the life and accomplishments of Paul Revere (1734–1818), the Revolutionary War patriot immortalized in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s 1860 poem, “Paul Revere’s Ride.” On view September 6, 2019 – January 12, 2020, Beyond Midnight: Paul Revere separates fact from fiction, revealing Revere as a complex, multifaceted figure at the intersection of America’s social, economic, artistic, and political life in Revolutionary War-era Boston as it re-examines his life as an artisan, activist and entrepreneur. The exhibition, featuring more than 140 objects, highlights aspects of Revere’s versatile career as an artisan, including engravings, such as his well-known depiction of the Boston Massacre; glimmering silver tea services made for prominent clients; everyday objects such as thimbles, tankards, and teapots; and important public commissions, such as a bronze courthouse bell.

Exhibitions at the New-York Historical Society are made possible by Dr. Agnes Hsu-Tang and Oscar Tang, the Saunders Trust for American History, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.

New-York Historical Society, 170 Central Park West (77th Street), New York, NY 10024, 212-873-3400, nyhistory.org.

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© 2019 Travel Features Syndicate, a division of Workstyles, Inc. All rights reserved. Visit goingplacesfarandnear.com, www.huffingtonpost.com/author/karen-rubin, and travelwritersmagazine.com/TravelFeaturesSyndicate/. Blogging at goingplacesnearandfar.wordpress.com and moralcompasstravel.info. Send comments or questions to [email protected]. Tweet @TravelFeatures. ‘Like’ us at facebook.com/NewsPhotoFeatures

Attractions, Family Travel, Historic Places, New York City travel

‘Hudson Rising’ Exhibit at New-York Historical Society Shows River Was Incubator for America’s Environmental Movement

“Hudson Rising” at the New-York Historical Society: Legendary folk singer Pete Seeger, with a model of the Clearwater, led a movement to reclaim the Hudson River from industrial destruction and overdevelopment © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

By Karen Rubin, Travel Features Syndicate, goingplacesfarandnear.com

This spring, the New-York Historical Society presents Hudson Rising, a unique exhibition that explores 200 years of ecological change and environmental activism along “the most interesting river in America” through artifacts, media, and celebrated Hudson River School paintings.

On view March 1 – August 4, Hudson Rising reflects on how human activity has impacted the river and, in turn, how the river environment has shaped industrial development, commerce, tourism, and environmental awareness. The exhibition also explores how experts in various fields are currently creating ways to restore and re-engineer areas of the river in response to climate change.

Indeed, we tend to think of the environmental movement as originating with Yellowstone and the national parks, but it is fascinating to realize that the beginning of environmental activism – and the techniques – began here. Citizens rallied to oppose the construction of a Con Ed plant on Storm King Mountain; one of the new organizations, Scenic Hudson, sued; the case, in 1965 set a precedent beyond the Hudson, establishing that citizens have standing to sue on behalf of conservation, even when they do not have a direct economic interest,  that beauty and history also merit protection – the forerunner of the Environmental Protection Act. Later, a “viewshed,” modeled on the concept of a watershed, in connection with landscape painter Frederic Edwin Church’s Olana, also warranted preservation.

Curated by Marci Reaven, New-York Historical’s vice president of history exhibitions, “Hudson Rising” begins where environmental consciousness of the Hudson River began, with the landscape artist Thomas Cole © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

The Hudson River raised consciousness of the importance of environmental protection. the exhibit opens with paintings from Thomas Cole, the founder of the Hudson River School art movement (America’s first native-grown art movement), who worried even then about the encroachment of development. His paintings depict an idyllic landscape, but also the destruction of the forest to lumbering.

Much more than a body of water, the Hudson and its surroundings have been the home for humans and hundreds of species of fish, birds, and plants; offered an escape for city-dwellers; and witnessed battles over the uses of the river valley and its resources. For over 200 years, writers and artists have captured the river in paintings, drawings, literature, and photographs, and surveyors and scientists have mapped and measured its every parcel.

The Hudson has always encapsulated the tension between development and conservation. But it was more than about aesthetics, and the need for urbanites to be able to seek respite in the countryside: an early environmental scientist realized that logging in the Adirondacks, which was discovered to be the source of the Hudson, was jeopardizing the watershed supplying New York City.

Scientists at the same time discovered the critical link between forests and the health of rivers. They realized the Adirondack forest supported the Hudson River and aquatic animals. That begins the movement to save the Adirondacks, including the forests. Ultimately, it leads to New York State’s “Forever Wild” amendment to the state constitution, in 1894.

“This path-breaking exhibition explores ideas about the environment that developed in the context of the Hudson, examining how we became aware, as New Yorkers and as Americans, of the role that humans played in the river’s ecological degradation,” said Dr. Louise Mirrer, president and CEO of New-York Historical. “The exhibit also looks at the strategies we devised to address it. Spanning the entire industrial era, Hudson Rising presents a compelling account of how the Hudson has been an incubator for our ideas about the environment and our relationships to the natural world for two centuries-plus.”

Indeed, we learn that Theodore Roosevelt, before creating the first national park as president, innovated environmental protection as Governor of New York State, working with New Jersey, to protect the Palisades as a “park for the people” (hugely popular with immigrants who crammed into cities, the park had 2 million visitors in 1920, many who came by a free ferry); similarly Franklin Roosevelt, when he was New York State governor, created what would become the New Deal Civilian Conservation Corps when he was president.

Curated by Marci Reaven, New-York Historical’s vice president of history exhibitions, and Jeanne Haffner, associate curator, Hudson Rising begins with a prelude featuring artist Thomas Cole’s panoramic five-part Course of Empire series (1834-36), a treasure of New-York Historical’s collection that depicts the transformation of a pristine landscape into a thriving city, then its dramatic decline, and the fall of civilization.

Thomas Cole’s painting, Catskill Mountain House © Karen Rubin/ goingplacesfarandnear.com

Cole railed against “human hubris” and the exploitation of nature. “The ranges of the ax are daily and increasing,” Cole said. “Nature has spread for us a rich and delightful banquet. Shall we turn from it?” he wrote in his “Essay on American Scenery” (1836). Cole’s poetic questioning of the social costs of what was seen in his time as progress, serves as a prelude to the exhibition narrative, which begins with the industrial age and continues into the present day. The Hudson River, we learn, was the incubator for the environmental movement.

The exhibition is organized chronologically and geographically into five sections that highlight significant places and events in the environmental history of the river: Journeys Upriver: The 1800s, The Adirondacks: 1870s-1890s, The Palisades: 1890s-1950s, The Hudson Highlands: 1960s-1980s, and A Rising Tide: Today.

The exhibit is designed to meander, like the river itself, and uses actual artifacts – there is even the smell of freshly cut wood from the Adirondacks – that bring you, as much as possible to the Hudson: bricks from Haberstraw; rocks from the Palisades; iron from Cold Spring Foundry across from West Point; wood from Catskills; hemlock (used for tanning), even a fish tank with striped bath (blue eels will be added later). “The layout is a metaphor for the river,” said Ken Nintzel, the designer.

A cherished tourist panorama of the Hudson River from 1847, that was so big, it was accordioned into a book © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

There are historical maps – one of the most impressive is a panorama map from 1847 that stretches the length of a wall, that tourists would use, “one of the great maps of American history”- photos, paintings, news clips that trace the battle to reclaim the Hudson from industrial pollution. A map from 1890s shows how the Hudson was “redesigned” to make it more navigable for shipping, changing the way the river ran, but in the process, did away with the shallows that hosted aquatic life and mitigated flooding. Another map documents how plentiful oysters used to be – New York city used to be the primary exporter of oysters and clams – until sewage in the Hudson killed off the oysters.

The painting by Thomas Cole of the Catskill Mountain House reminds that American tourism began here in the Hudson – today, you can hike up to where the hotel used to be and gaze out over the Hudson.

The exhibits surround you, and there are various interactive elements. 

“Hudson Rising” features a combination of paintings, artifacts, maps, photos, videos to tell the story of the development of the river and its preservation © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

Journeys Upriver: The 1800s starts with a steamboat journey up the Hudson River from the New York City harbor to Albany, inspired by one of the great tourist guides of Hudson River history, the Panorama of the Hudson (1847). The detailed rendering of the river landscape led steamboat and armchair travelers from New York City to the last navigable point of the river near Troy, pointing out natural wonders, Hudson Valley industries, notable individuals, and Revolutionary War sites along the way. Also on view are paintings, industrial objects, and an important Army Corps of Engineers map that shows how the Corps engineered the river to be a more navigable and predictable shipping channel. Hudson River School art on display include Robert Havell Jr.’s View of Hudson River from near Sing Sing, New York (ca. 1850) and George Henry Boughton’s Hudson River Valley from Fort Putnam, West Point (1855), both depicting tourists enjoying the landscape.

The Adirondacks: 1870s-1890s examines the creation of Adirondack Park, established to save the source of the river and combat deforestation in order to protect the viability of the entire Hudson watershed. Advocates for the area included surveyor Verplanck Colvin, who mapped the area’s peaks and lakes as superintendent of the State Adirondack Survey and identified the source of the river at Lake Tear of the Clouds, and Seneca Ray Stoddard, a photographer whose images of deforestation made a case for forest conservation. On view in this section is one of Asher B. Durand’s majestic depictions of the Adirondack wilderness, Adirondack Mountains, New York (ca. 1870).

The Palisades: 1890s-1950s traces the protection of the forests and cliffs of the Palisades to maintain the health of the river and preserve a place for beauty and nature. In the late 1800s, the Palisades cliffs were being blasted to bits by road builders who prized their rock. Citizen activists, such as the New Jersey chapter of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs and the American Scenic and Historic Preservation Society, fought back and helped create Palisades Park in 1909. Residents of New York and New Jersey thronged to the park, arriving by foot, ferry, train, and car, with over two million people visiting in 1920 alone, most of them from Manhattan. The exhibition features a selection of tourist brochures from that era, including one with a trio of women posed on the cliff edge, above the river.

The Hudson Highlands: 1960s-1980s explores how activism along the river helped spark the modern American environmental movement. By the early 1960s, untreated sewage and industrial pollutants were poisoning the river. Increasing numbers of power plants were also rising along the Hudson, whose operations were killing millions of fish, and whose monumental structures were intruding upon the most treasured vistas. When Con Edison announced plans to build a plant on Storm King Mountain, citizen activists fought back and prevented its construction. By the 1980s, citizens could legally intervene to stop development that put treasured natural resources at risk. On view is an aquarium featuring striped bass and other fish native to the Hudson River, which now thrive due to activists’ efforts to save them.  Displays of artifacts, images, and media from the environmental campaigns of the era include a 1983 photograph featuring John Cronin, river patroller for the Hudson River Fisherman’s Association (now called Riverkeeper) on his first day on the job, confronting an Exxon tanker discharging polluted water into the river.

The final section, A Rising Tide: Today, discusses the process of reimagining and reclaiming the Hudson River in the 21st century, as experts in many fields explore ways to restore and re-engineer areas of the river in response to climate change. The exhibition showcases innovative projects addressing these concerns, such as a system of “living breakwaters,” reef-like structures designed to restore diverse aquatic habitats, lessen wave impacts, and restore the shoreline, implemented by the New York Governor’s Office of Storm Recovery and landscape architecture firm SCAPE.

“We hope Hudson Rising will inspire visitors to see the river differently, and how movements like environmental activism get born,” Dr. Mirrer said.

“It’s not a new story, but this is the first exhibit that presents such a comprehensive look at the Hudson River as an incubator of the environmental movement.”

Programming

As part of New-York Historical’s What the History programs, a suite of interactive talks, history classes, art-making workshops, and social evenings for a young professional audience illuminates the environmental history of New York, the lasting impact of the Hudson River School painters on the American imagination, and how contemporary design and ideas are engaging with the threats climate change pose to the city.

Visiting families can enjoy a special guide featuring suggested exhibition highlights to view as a family, discussion questions, and gallery-based activities. During the April School Vacation Week (April 19-28), Museum’s family programs explore environmental activism, including art making using recycled materials in Museum galleries. On the weekends (April 20-21 and April 27-28) visiting families can interact with Living Historians portraying famous and unsung activists of American history.

On April 16, architectural historian Barry Lewis discusses how the Victorians “greened” their homes and cities, bringing nature into city greenbelts and private home design. On May 22, Douglas Brinkley, New-York Historical’s presidential historian, explores how presidents like Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Delano Roosevelt championed the protection of the nation’s natural treasures and established a sprawling network of state parks and scenic roadways, respectively. On June 9, author Leslie Day leads a tour along the Hudson River exploring its rich geological and human history and its diverse ecosystems.

Present Day Relevance

The exhibit is particularly timely: years of exploitation and pollution have resulted in the entire Hudson River, from the Battery to Hudson Falls, some 200 miles, designated a superfund site by EPA. Mandated clean-up by industrial polluters including General Electric, have significantly improved conditions. But the Trump Administration’s EPA is moving to issue a Certificate of Completion which would end GE’s responsibility for cleaning up the Superfund site, despite the state’s research that shows high levels of PCBs remaining in the river.

Governor Cuomo issued a statement ahead of Administrator Wheeler’s visit to New York:

“In New York, we are leading the fight to protect our environment with the most ambitious environmental agenda in the nation. Administrator Wheeler, while you are in New York, I urge you to visit the Hudson River, one of this country’s natural treasures that is also one of the most pressing Superfund sites in the country. New York has fought to restore this vital resource but the ball is now in the EPA’s court. The EPA can either do the right thing and continue to hold GE accountable for continued clean up, or they can side with big polluters and let GE off the hook for its responsibility to clean up PCBs in the river.

 “We refused to allow PCB contamination to continue to jeopardize the health and safety of our communities for generations to come. We hope and expect that the EPA will join us in ensuring the full completion of the cleanup.”

I suggested Wheeler visit “Hudson Rising”.

The New-York Historical Society, one of America’s preeminent cultural institutions, is dedicated to fostering research and presenting history and art exhibitions and public programs that reveal the dynamism of history and its influence on the world of today. Founded in 1804, New-York Historical’s mission is to explore the richly layered history of New York City and State and the country, and to serve as a national forum for the discussion of issues surrounding the making and meaning of history. New-York Historical is also home to the Patricia D. Klingenstein Library, one of the oldest, most distinguished libraries in the nation—and one of only 20 in the United States qualified to be a member of the Independent Research Libraries Association—which contains more than three million books, pamphlets, maps, newspapers, manuscripts, prints, photographs, and architectural drawings.

New-York Historical Society, 170 Central Park West (at 77th Street), www.nyhistory.org.

See for Yourself: Hike the Hudson River School Art Trail

Walk in the footsteps of the Hudson River School artists Thomas Cole, Frederic Church, Asher B. Durand, Jasper Cropsey, Sanford Gifford and other pioneering American landscape artists, literally walking into their paintings, and appreciating their work in an entirely new way.

New York State created the first “viewshed” – a protected view – at Frederic Church’s Olana, Hudson NY © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

See what inspired Thomas Cole, his art and his passion to save the Hudson Valley environment, when you visit his home and art studio. Visit Frederic Edwin Church’s magnificent Olana,  walk the gorgeous trails and see the very first protected “viewshed”  (Olana State Historic Site, 5720 State Route 9G, Hudson, NY 12534, 518-828-0135, olana.org.) Hike the trails that take you up to where the Catskill Mountain House would have stood, to Sunset Rock, to Kaaterskill Falls, North-South Lake, just as the Hudson River School painters did, often with markers that show the paintings that were created from that very same vantage point.

The view from Sunset Rock in the Catskill Preserve, one of the hikes on the Hudson River School Art Trail, the same view as Thomas Cole painted © Karen Rubin/ goingplacesfarandnear.com

“The Hudson River School painters believed art to be an agent of moral and spiritual transformation. In large-scale canvases of dramatic vistas with atmospheric lighting, they sought to capture a sense of the divine, envisioning the pristine American landscape as a new Garden of Eden. Their work created not only an American art genre but also a deeper appreciation for the nation’s natural wonders, laying the groundwork for the environmental conservation movement and National Park System.”

Most of the stops on the trail are within 15 miles of the Thomas Cole National Historic Site, in Catskill. (Thomas Cole National Historic Site, 218 Spring Street, Catskill, NY 12414, 518-943-7465, thomascole.org)

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© 2019 Travel Features Syndicate, a division of Workstyles, Inc. All rights reserved. Visit goingplacesfarandnear.com, www.huffingtonpost.com/author/karen-rubin, and travelwritersmagazine.com/TravelFeaturesSyndicate/. Blogging at goingplacesnearandfar.wordpress.com and moralcompasstravel.info. Send comments or questions to [email protected]. Tweet @TravelFeatures. ‘Like’ us at facebook.com/NewsPhotoFeatures

Arts & Entertainment, Museums and Exhibits, New York City travel

‘Harry Potter: A History of Magic’ is Spellbinding Exhibit at New-York Historical Society

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Capturing the traditions of folklore and magic at the heart of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter stories, Harry Potter: A History of Magic, on view at the New-York Historical Society through January 27, 2019, explores the historic and traditional foundations underpining “Harry Potter” as well as her creative process © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

by Karen Rubin

Travel Features Syndicate, goingplacesfarandnear.com

“Harry Potter: A History of Magic”, the newly opened exhibit at the New-York Historical Society Museum & Library only on view until January 27, is a must-see on so many levels. It isn’t just for fans of J.K. Rowling’s phenomenal series, where you get extraordinary insights into her creative process through glimpses at original hand-written drafts and drawings, but insights into the history of magic – the centuries of folklore, myth and legend –  that provided the foundation for her stories. Here you see the original documents and artifacts which make you realize (for the first time), how Rowling drew on history and tradition, and how magic and witchcraft actually provided the foundation of science and discovery.

“Abracadabra,” we learn, is an incantation believed to have healing powers, first recorded by Quintus Serenus Sammanicus, physician to the Roman Emperor Caracalla. He prescribed that the word be repeatedly written out, each time leaving off one letter. The charm was then worn as an amulet around the neck to drive out fever. We see it described in “Liber Medicinalis,” a 13th century book from Canterbury.

The invisibility cloak that Harry Potter wore? There actually was an incantation for invisibility that we can see in a mid-17th century spell book owned by a contemporary of Shakespeare. A 4th century papyrus scroll turns out to be an ancient Greek handbook of magic that contains a love charm.

Mandrake roots really do look like men (or women) and the legend of them screaming when pulled out by the roots, causing insanity, was documented across cultures. We get to see a mandrake root, which looks like a shriveled old man in anguish.

The Philosopher’s Stone that plays such a key role for Harry Potter (it was renamed the Sorcerer’s Stone for American readers)? This was the quest of alchemists, who sought to create the elixir of immortal life and turn ordinary metal into gold – in essence, harnessing the energy of the universe and its power. The “recipe” for the Philosopher’s Stone was believed to be prescribed in The Ripley Scroll. We get to see an actual Ripley Scroll, from around 1570 England, exquisite in its color, unfurled over 20 feet, one of only 22 known to still exist. This one is on loan from the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University.

The Ripley Scroll provided alchemists with the “recipe” to make the Philosopher’s Stone, the key to the elixir of life (immortality) and for turning ordinary metal into gold © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

The scroll takes its name from George Ripley, a canon at Bridlington Priory in northern England and author of “The Compound of Alchymy.” The scroll, full of mystical symbolism, supposedly gives clues to how to make the key red, white and black stones that together would form the Philosopher’s Stone. Rowling wove these symbols into her characters: Rubeus Hagrid (rubeus is Latin for “red); Albus Dumbledore (albus is Latin for “white”) and Sirius Black, Harry’s three father figures.

We get to see a copy of Culpepper’s Herbal, describing the medicinal properties of herbs, the first medical text to be published in English (instead of Latin), so as to break the monopoly of wealthy, educated in having this knowledge. Culpepper was accused of witchcraft in 1642, but acquitted. The book is still in print and we learn from Rowling that she possesses two copies.

We get to see the actual tombstone of Nicolas Flamel, an actual person! who a landlord and bookseller in medieval Paris who married a rich woman and became a philanthropist. His interest in alchemy, according to Pottermore, was apparently sparked after he obtained a mystical book was written by a man called Abraham the Jew in Greek, Hebrew and other languages. Following his death in 1418, rumors began to circulate that Flamel was an alchemist who had discovered how to make the Philosopher’s Stone, and turn metal into gold. He was buried in the church of Saint-Jacques-de-la Boucherie in Paris, his grave marked by this tombstone. But years later, when the body was exhumed, there was no body. Some believe he escaped to India, and with the elixir, still lives.

The actual tombstone of Nicolas Flamel, rumored to be an alchemist who had discovered the Philosopher’s Stone, who died in 1418 © Karen Rubin/ goingplacesfarandnear.com

The exhibition, a cerebral celebration marking the 20th anniversary of the US publication of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, captures the traditions of folklore and magic at the heart of the Harry Potter stories. Based on Harry Potter: A History of Magic, a British Library exhibition, with some special New York twists, it combines century-old treasures—including rare books, manuscripts, and magical objects from the British Library, New-York Historical Society, and other collections—with original material from Harry Potter’s U.S. publisher Scholastic and J.K. Rowling’s own archives, never before collected in one place, and items that have never been shown before. And this exhibit is the only other place where it will be shown, before the items go back to their respective museums, which include the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic, in Cornwall.

The entertaining aspect is in the exhibition’s presentation, as if you are wandering through Hogwarts, with the galleries organized around the Hogwarts’ curriculum for witches: Potions, Alchemy, Herbology, Charms, Astronomy, Divination, Defense Against the Dark Arts, Care of Magical Creatures – each one showing the historical and cultural traditions that underlie Rowling’s fantastical world and her creative process.

It is as if instead of J.K. Rowling inventing the Hogwarts curriculum, she graduated from it. It also means that all of us, children and adults, who were so enrapt in the Harry Potter saga of witchcraft and magic 20 years ago, have a whole new dimension for appreciating Rowling’s masterpiece from a mature perspective.

The exhibit, “Harry Potter: A History of Magic” at the New-York Historical Society is laid out as if you were walking through Hogwarts, with the galleries themed for the different subjects: Potions, Alchemy, Herbology, Charms, Astronomy, Divination, Defense Against the Dark Arts, Care of Magical Creatures © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

The exhibit is captivating on so many levels – Rowling’s personality and creative process, you get so many insights into her as a person, and the connection to history and tradition at the heart of mythology. Also, we get to see the evolution of science from magic and spiritualism.

Rowling faithfully represented these traditions – even the names she chose for her characters relate back to these traditions, symbolically or literally.

Professor Severus Snape, presides over the Potions gallery at New-York Historical Society’s “Harry Potter: A History of Magic” exhibit. © Karen Rubin/ goingplacesfarandnear.com

In Potions & Alchemy, we see a copy of Jacob Meydenbach’s 1491 edition of Hartus Sanitatis (Latin for “The Garden of Health”), the first printed cyclopedia of natural history, which actually includes a hand-colored woodcut illustration of a potions class.

One of the plants described, blue hellebore, was the plant Harry Potter forgot to add in his Draught of Peace.

We see an actual bezoar stone, which was believed to be an antidote to poison, first introduced into medieval Europe by Arab physicians. They were expensive to buy and owners often kept their stones in elaborate cases. Here we see a bezoar stone in a gold filigree case from the 17th century.

The Herbology section is particularly fascinating: Here we see an illustration from a 15th century illustrated herbal by Giovanni Cadamasto that describes mandrakes (mandragara) that could cure headaches, earache, gout and insanity. Just as Rowling depicted, the plant was said to be particularly hazardous to harvest because the shrieks from the roots cause madness. “The best way to obtain it safely was to unearth its roots with an ivory stake, attaching the plant to a dog with a card. A horn would sound, drowning out the shrieking, startling the dog and causing it to drag out the mandrake.” We actually get to see a mandrake root and how much it resembles a prone shriveled man who appears anguished. The description of mandrake is also from a 14th century Arabic text, originally in Ancient Greek by Pedanius Dioscorides, a botanist.

We see implements of “magical gardening” of bone and antler, on loan from the Museum of Watchcraft & Magic, Boscastle, Cornwall.

There is an original copy of a book by Elizabeth Blackwell (one of the first women physicians), “A Curious  Herbal,” published in London in 1737-38. She was desperate to raise money to spring her husband Alexander from debtor prison, so made drawings that she took to Alexander to identify, which she then published weekly, eventually detailing 500 plants.

An 1807 edition of Robert John Thornton’s “The Temple of Flora,” an elaborate botany book that nearly bankrupted Thornton to produce (it was originally titled, “The New Illustration of the Sexual System of Linnaeus”). There is an illustration of Dragon arum (Dracunculus vulgaris), also known as stink lily, which reproduces the smell of putrefying meat to attract flies for pollination.

In Charms, we see a copy of Cotton Mather’s “The Wonders of the Invisible World,” published in London in 1693 (from the New-York Historical Society Library), in which he justified the Salem witchcraft trials.

This is the area which gives some attention to the way witches were depicted, when in essence, they were shaman, healers, who were extraordinarily connected to the natural world, and in fact, the first scientists and doctors.

We see the earliest printed illustration of a witch, from 1489, depicting witches as powerful and dangerous. “The Iconography went on to influence image of witches for centuries. The printing press was new – like video of the time.”

Here we see a colorful broomstick belonging to Olga Hunt, a 20th century witch of Manatan, Devon (from the Museum of Witchcraft, Boscastle). The broomstick is closely associated with the Western image of witches, but has roots in pagan fertility rites. The connection with witchcraft and broomsticks developed during the witch hysteria of 16th and 17th century Europe. Olga was supposed to have used it to leap around Dartmoor on a full moon.

We also see Rowling’s original, handwritten draft of the Sorting Hat Song, sung at Harry’s sorting ceremony in his first year, with some crossings out and additions, and her sketch of Argus Filch, the Hogwarts caretaker (Argus is a name from Greek Mythology of a man-eyed giant who is “all seeing.”)

In Divination, there is a major archaeological find on view: oracle bones some 3,000 years old from China that proved the existence of the Shang Dynasty, which had only been known in legend. The bones offered not only the earliest examples of Chinese writing, but showed that the culture worshipped ancestors – the Oracle Bones were a means of communicating with ancestors, who could send back messages.

A witch’s cauldron is on view in “Harry Potter: A History of Magic” at the New-York Historical Society © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

We see a black moon crystal ball used by “Smelly Nelly,” a 20th-century British witch who used strong perfume to attract the spirits she believed helped her to see the future (on loan from Museum of Witchcraft & Magic, Cornwall). Nelly is reflected in Rowling’s character of Sybill Trelawney, Hogwarts Divination professor.

There is also a 19th century fortune-telling doll from New-York Historical’s collection.

Astronomy features a 1699 celestial globe by famed cartographer Vincenzo Coronelli, pages from a notebook compiled by the artist and inventor Leonardo da Vinci that show the sun and moon revolving around the Earth, and a 13th century astrolabe thought to be one of the oldest geared instruments in existence, from the American Museum of Natural History Library.

Defense Against the Dark Arts features an actual wand, in the shape of a snake (snakes were magical because they were thought to have the ability to regenerate, and a wand in the shape of a snake would have been very powerful), and we learn that there are still wandmakers today who go to the woods where trees speak to them to be selected. There is also a magic staff (1998) carved from timber.

The basilisk in mythology didn’t look like the snake-like creature in Harry Potter but was depicted as a strange chicken, the size of palm, but its stare would kill you, and the way to defeat it was not by sword but by weasels.Care of Magical Creatures features a 13th-century bestiary manuscript depicting a phoenix rising from the ashes, a narwhal tusk, and John James Audubon’s original watercolor of snowy owls, just like the snowy owl that Hagrid gave to Harry Potter.

Care of Magical Creatures section of the “Harry Potter” exhibit features the New-York Historical Society’s John James Audubon’s original watercolor of snowy owls, just like the snowy owl that Hagrid gave to Harry Potter © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

We see the oldest description of a Hippogriff: 16th century book on vellum paper given to George III –a magical creature that has the front legs, wings, and head of a giant eagle and the body, hind legs and tail of a horse. It is very similar to another mythical creature, the Griffin, with the horse rear replacing the lion rear.

We see examples of unicorn (loaned from the Explorer’s Club), as well as an actual merman – a Japanese creation made by combining two fish with wire and cloth (worthy of P.T. Barnum).  This is the first time it has been displayed outside the United Kingdom.

This fascination with these strange new creatures reflects the era of exploration into strange new lands and discovery of new creatures.

This section features Rowling’s hand-written draft of “Deathly Hallows”, with her crossings out, notes to self and ”x” where she needed to add more providing this amazing insight into Rowling’s creative process. There is also her own illustration of Harry and Hagrid going to Gringots and Jim Kay’s drawing of Hagrid.

These items were collected for the exhibition, basically tracing and providing original artifacts that underlie Rowling’s Harry Potter narrative, but it seems as if Rowling had already undertaken the Hogwarts curriculum herself. The exhibit brings together the source material that informed her inspiration.

In the section, Past, Present and Future, one of the most fascinating items is Rowling’s own draft for the “Order of Phoenix” and her meticulous outline of plot and where the characters are, what they are doing. You see original cover art by Brian Selnick for the 2018 (20th anniversary) series, in which he unifies the seven covers as a single image that tells the story of the Boy Who Lived, which had never been displayed before, and models of set designs for the “Cursed Child” on Broadway, as well as an autographed screenplay of “Fantastic Beasts,” and an edition of “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” (as “Sorcerer’s Stone” was titled in United Kingdom).

The New York presentation of  the British Library’s Harry Potter: A History of Magic exhibition is special because it features Mary GrandPré’s pastel illustrations for the cover artwork of Scholastic’s original editions of the novels; Brian Selznick’s newly created artwork for the covers of the 20th anniversary edition of the Harry Potter series published by Scholastic; cover art by Kazu Kibuishi featured in Scholastic’s 15th anniversary box set; and the enormous steamer trunk used to transport a signed copy of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince on the Queen Mary to the U.S. The exhibition also includes costumes and set models from the award-winning play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.

Original art for “Harry Potters and the Order of the Phoenix” © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

Also on display for the first time in the U.S. are Rowling’s handwritten first drafts of The Philosopher’s Stone and Deathly Hallows, her hand-drawn sketch of the Hogwarts grounds, and portraits and sketches of some of the Hogwarts’s professors and magical creatures created by British illustrator Jim Kay. John James Audubon’s watercolor of Snowy Owls, a 1693 publication defending the Salem witch trials, a study of the Woolworth Building—the landmark New York location featured in the film Fantastic Beasts—and other artifacts from New-York Historical’s collection.

I love the origination story – worthy of fiction – how in 1990, J.K. Rowling was sitting on a delayed train from Manchester to London when an idea popped into her head fully formed: the character of Harry Pottery, a boy wizard with messy black hair, glasses and a lightning shaped scar on his forehead. Over the next five years, she planned out seven books, writing mostly in longhand and amassing a mountain of notes, many on scraps of paper (some we get to see).

She presented a scroll of the draft of “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” (as it was titled in the United Kingdom), to Nigel Newton of Bloomsbury, who handed it to his eight year old daughter, Alice, to read. His daughter’s review, “‘it’s probably one of the best books for 8 or 9 year old could read,” encouraged him to publish. The initial print run was just 500 copies, typical for a children’s book by a first-time author. The book turned into a worldwide phenomenon – over 500 million books sold, printed in 80 languages. We see various editions lining the corridor.

The New-York Historical Society exhibition also includes costumes and set models from the award-winning play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

There’s so much to absorb – I went through the exhibit twice, and used the Audible guide they make available for free, and after three hours, could have spent considerably more time there.

There is a superb Family Guide for “A History of Magic” that turns the exhibit into an interactive activity.

New-York Historical is also presenting a wide variety of exhibition-related events for grown-up Harry Potter fans throughout the run of the exhibition, including trivia nights, art workshops, creative writing classes, social meet-ups, open mics, book clubs, and engaging courses that explore the Hogwarts curriculum. Programs include an onstage conversation with illustrators Mary GrandPré and Brian Selznick, and a special evening with actor Jim Dale, known for his narration of all seven Harry Potter U.S. audiobooks. Family activities feature History of Magic family days with hands-on activities and crafts, a Harry Potter family book club, historical Hallowe’en celebration, and trivia for families. Additional programming information is available at harrypotter.nyhistory.org.

Harry Potter: A History of Magic is sponsored by Audible and a special audio tour to accompany the Harry Potter: A History of Magic exhibition at New-York Historical, featuring Natalie Dormer, will be available to ticketholders as a free Audible download, offering in-depth content on fascinating objects throughout the exhibition galleries.

This is the only other exhibition of this collection outside of the British Library. After finishing here on January 27, the artifacts will be returned to the museums and institutions to which they belong. Poof, it’s vanished.

Timed-entry tickets for the exhibition Harry Potter: A History of Magic are $21 for adults, $16 for seniors (65+), $13 for students, $6 for kids ages 5–13, and free for children ages 0–4; tickets include admission to the rest of the Museum. Harry Potter: A History of Magic is on view through January 27, 2019, on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday 10 am–6 pm; Friday 10 am–9 pm; and Sunday 10 am–5 pm. The last entry is 45 minutes before closing.

Visit harrypotter.nyhistory.org to purchase exhibition and programming tickets in advance.

Black Citizenship in the Age of Jim Crow 

“History Matters,” is the New-York Historical Society’s motto, and that is clearly on view.

There is so much to see at the New-York Historical Society – it never fails to offer fascinating and provocative exhibits – you need a couple of extra hours beyond the time visiting “Harry Potter.”   I went through “Black Citizenship in the Age of Jim Crow” exhibit which is hard-hitting and in your face discussion of how the Emancipation Proclamation, Civil War, and most significantly, the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, led to an institutionalized system of terror and subjugation of African Americans, including a series of Supreme Court decisions dating back to Dred Scott, that perpetuated subjugation (on view through March 3).

Thomas Waterman Wood’s painting, “A Bit of War History: The Cantraband, The Recruit, The Veteran”, 1865, depict one man over time, as a runaway slave, a volunteer in the Union Army, and wounded veteran, is part of the exhibit, “Black Citizenship in the Age of Jim Crow” © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

Also, the relatively new “Gallery of Tiffany Lamps” is not to be missed – this permanent display of 100 illuminated lamps is breathtaking for its beauty and exquisite presentation (by architect Eva Jiricna), and you even get the opportunity to design your own Tiffany lamp shade. You also learn the “hidden history” behind the lamps: about Clara Driscoll, the woman who up until now was virtually unknown and unheralded but was the artistic genius behind many of his designs, who headed the “Women’s Glass Cutting Department.”

There are also two films that are shown in a fantastic theater, each shorter than 20 minutes: “We Rise” about women and social movements that were incubated, flourished and pollinated from New York City (narrated by Meryl Street) and “New York Story,” how and why it grew to be the commercial and cultural capital of the world and remains inextricably connected to the world.

There is a lovely café at the Society.

New-York Historical Society, 170 Central Park West (at 77th Street), 212-873-3400, nyhistory.org.

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© 2018 Travel Features Syndicate, a division of Workstyles, Inc. All rights reserved. Visit goingplacesfarandnear.com,  www.huffingtonpost.com/author/karen-rubin , and travelwritersmagazine.com/TravelFeaturesSyndicate/. Blogging at goingplacesnearandfar.wordpress.com and moralcompasstravel.info. Send comments or questions to [email protected]. Tweet @TravelFeatures. ‘Like’ us at facebook.com/NewsPhotoFeatures

Attractions, Museums and Exhibits, New York City travel

New-York Historical Society Examines ‘Rebel Spirits: Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.’

Juxtaposed portraits of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy, Schiller’s photo taken just days before RFK’s assassination, open the exhibit © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

By Karen Rubin, Travel Features Syndicate, goingplacesfarandnear.com

Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy are tethered together in peoples’ minds, and not only because they both were assassinated within two months of each other in that fateful year of 1968. A new, remarkable exhibit that has just opened at the New-York Historical Society commemorates the 50th anniversary of those events, examines their conjoined legacy and makes some interesting discoveries: their lives had a kind of parallel trajectory, yet, they consciously steered separate courses, intersecting finally in death.

On view through May 20, 2018, Rebel Spirits: Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. showcases 61 photographs and 30 documents and artifacts that reveal the relationship between these historic figures. The exhibit is based in part on The Promise and the Dream, written by Vanity Fair contributing editor and New York Times writer David Margolick and produced by Lawrence Schiller for National Geographic Publishers. Schiller, a photojournalist who covered many of the significant events throughout the 1960s, conceived of the project and collected 21,000 photographs, sifting them down to 3,000, then 2,000, and ultimately, over the course of just three days, laid out the photographs that are presented much like a 20-page photo essay in Life Magazine, where Schiller worked, would have produced.

Lawrence Schiller, a photojournalist since the 1960s, recalls a fateful day when he was 26 years old: “The elevator opened to reveal Oswald, who was only 24 years old. It shocked me that evil could be in such a person – a kid my age had caused this tragedy.” © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

But in the course of gathering that material, an essential question arose: why were there so few photos of King and Kennedy together? The exhibit has just one where the two men were at the same event, with then-Vice President Lyndon Baines Johnson. Another instance where they would have been together was when King testified to a Senate Committee which included Robert Kennedy, in which he stated that the millions of dollars that were being sent to support the war in Vietnam should better be spent to revitalize America’s ghettoes (a photo is taken from behind King). Significantly, while Kennedy supported the idea of spending more in cities, he was forced for political reasons (like the fact that his brother, as President, dramatically escalated America’s role in Vietnam) to disassociate himself from King’s anti-Vietnam stance.

Margolick, who researched and wrote the book in a mere seven months time, started off with no pre-conceived notion, but wanted to come up with some original construct about these two lions of American history.

Indeed, if news is the first draft of history, books provide the room for reflection and context.

The big idea of the book and the exhibit is that “Robert Kennedy was a political person and Martin Luther King Jr. a spiritual person; they respected one another but there was a limit how closely they could ally,” Margolick said at the press opening of the exhibit.

The two men had reason to be wary of one another.

Robert Kennedy was at his core a politician from a political family; on top of that, his brother, as president, had made key decisions including significantly involving the US in war in Vietnam, and was skittish about making civil rights a key focus of his administration; as JFK’s Attorney General, Robert Kennedy had signed off on J. Edgar Hoover’s request to surveil King, whom Hoover was convinced was a Communist. But Kennedy also sent US Marshals to force school integration.

King, for his part, was a spiritual man for whom civil rights was not merely a political issue but a matter of everyday survival for millions of people who could be brutalized without repercussion under a Jim Crow regimen.

“They were initially wary of each other,” Margolick said. “There was an enormous chasm which gradually shrank, but did not entirely disappear.”

Bobby Kennedy on the cover of Time Magazine © Karen Rubin/ goingplacesfarandnear.com

 

“RFK felt MLK a liability, he couldn’t get close.” There was that special night, when Robert Kennedy, who made a concerted effort to embed himself into black communities when he realized he did not have more than a superficial understanding of issues, was in “black” Indianapolis for a campaign speech and gets notice that King has just been killed, and instead of rushing away, he spoke compassionately to the crowd. “That was a special night. Death was the only time Kennedy actually embraced [the idea] of King. Kennedy was dead two months later. There was no time to carry torch of MLK.

“But even in limited time, Kennedy was reluctant to embrace King. The Kennedys were politicians King was a spiritual man. Kennedy considers the political implications of everything. Part of the purpose of this book is to examine and correct the revisionist idea that were together – really was there was always space between them.”

They also came from completely different worlds: Kennedy chose to take up the fight; the fight chose King.

Over the course of researching the book, Margolick said, “my point of view was constantly evolving. I wanted it to be as original as it could. I looked at newspapers no one had; primary documents not examined before. I came to realize the most precious thing was to talk to dwindling supply of people who knew both men – very few knew both: Andrew Young, William Vanden Heuval and some behind scenes intermediaries.

Margolick realized that an excellent source would be the photographers who photographed both – including Harry Benson, Steve Shapiro – who could even describe how differently they interacted with crowds.

“Both men had a sense of their mortality – they knew they were doomed.” One of the photographers, he thinks it was Harry Benson, said that when King was in a crowd, he would look it over carefully, mindful of his safety. He never stayed in one place longer than he had to.”

But, he adds, “Robert Kennedy didn’t care. He had a premonition of death but approached it differently. He told his security force he didn’t want precautions. There were reporters who never left RFK’s side because they expected he would be assassinated and wanted to be there when it happened.”

David Margolick with the Time Magazine featuring Robert Kennedy on the cover © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

Lawrence Schiller, who organized the project and curated the exhibit, was one of those photographers who helped document history beginning in the 1960s. He was assigned to Robert Kennedy and followed him for the last 40 days of his life. Schiller was at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles the night that Robert Kennedy delivered his last speech, tried to hurry out by going through the kitchen, where he was met by Sirhan Sirhan who shot him dead. (The portrait that opens the exhibit was taken by Schiller on board Kennedy’s plane en route to California just days before the speech.)

He was just 26 years old working as a photojournalist on a fateful day in 1963 when he was summoned from Los Angeles to Dallas after President John F. Kennedy was shot. He was in the police station when, as it happened, the police were booking Lee Harvey Oswald.

“The elevator opened to reveal Oswald, who was only 24 years old. It shocked me that evil could be in such a person – a kid my age had caused this tragedy.”

Schiller, who has several photos in the exhibit, called upon many of the photographers he knew who are represented, but there are many which had not been published before.

The exhibit is laid out chronologically for the most part, but in some cases “emotionally chronologically”, as when a portrait of Robert Kennedy, photographed on Feb. 26, 1962, with a movie slate, is juxtaposed next to a police mug shot of King from Feb. 22, 1956, upon which someone had scrawled “DEAD 4-4-68”; and in a case with artifacts, the Time Magazine editions with each on the cover, is displayed. ”King’s ‘Man of the Year’ drove people crazy,” Schiller remarks.

Parallel lives: portrait of Robert Kennedy, photographed on Feb. 26, 1962, juxtaposed next to a police mug shot of King from Feb. 22, 1956, upon which someone had scrawled “DEAD 4-4-68” © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

Asked which photo was the most impactful, Schiller points to one of a man with a broom, sweeping the blood from outside King’s hotel room in Memphis, a photo which he said had never been published; another shows the hotel room. Schiller says that people came in and collected vials of blood to keep as a memento.

The exhibit starts with Rosa Parks and ends in a field after Kennedy’s assassination, where people are holding a sign, “So long Bobby.” Several of the photos don’t feature King or Kennedy at all, but provide context: the KKK, US Marshals, Freedom Riders, the march after Medgar Evers was assassinated in June 1963, just five months before JFK was assassinated, in eerie similarity to the one-two King-Kennedy assassinations.

There is great intimacy of the experience – the photos, which were printed all at the same time in the same lab from negatives and then scanned –  are 8 x 10 and smaller, the room is compact, so you are close to the images, can easily read the captions and notes.

“The insight we came to early on emerged from the question: Why were there not more photos of the two together?” Margolick said. “The book tries to fill the gap, why there were no more photos of the two together. They kept apart. We are documenting, explaining the absence of something.”

One notable absence is a still photo of Robert F. Kennedy addressing a black audience in Indianapolis the night that King was killed, which in itself, says a lot.

“No one knew how important that speech by Kennedy would be, the night MLK was killed,” Margolick said. “The event that became so important was so scantily covered, there were just two still photographers there from local papers. It was only a 6-7 minute speech, but there is no film of the entire speech.” But it was at that point that Kennedy most fulsomely embraced King. (A portion of the video is displayed.) There’s a monument in Indianapolis commemorating the event.

Born Worlds Apart

Martin Luther King Jr. (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) and Robert F. Kennedy (November 20, 1925 –June 6, 1968) were born worlds apart—culturally, geographically, racially, financially, and politically—but by the time they were killed within months of each another in 1968, their worlds had come together. As their concerns expanded beyond civil rights (King) and organized crime (Kennedy), their ties deepened to encompass shared interests in supporting the poor and opposing the war in Vietnam. This unprecedented exhibition explores the overlapping paths of their lives through images taken by some of the most renowned photojournalists of the era, including Bob Adelman, Danny Lyon, Henri Dauman, Jacques Lowe, Spider Martin, Steve Schapiro, Lawrence Schiller, and Paul Schutzer, alongside original correspondence, publications, and ephemera.

“The year 1968 rocked the nation in many ways, but it would be difficult to point to anything that shocked and sickened Americans more that year than the senseless and tragic deaths of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.,” said Dr. Louise Mirrer, president and CEO of the New-York Historical Society. “Fifty years later, the legacies of Kennedy and King still reverberate. This timely exhibition underscores the two men’s lasting impact on our nation while drawing attention to the ways in which their lives intersected. ”

Author David Margolick, Dr. Louise Mirrer, president and CEO of the New-York Historical Society, and Lawrence Schiller, photojournalist and curator of “Rebel Spirits: Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.” © Karen Rubin/ goingplacesfarandnear.com

Exhibition highlights include images of King and his son looking at the charred remains of a cross the Ku Klux Klan burned outside his Atlanta home in 1960, King’s mug shot after being indicted for the 1956 Montgomery Bus Boycott, and Kennedy being swarmed by an adoring crowd during his 1968 presidential campaign. Also on view are posters reading “Honor King: End Racism!” and “I Am a Man” that were carried in a Memphis march led by widow Coretta Scott King and her children on April 8, 1968, as well as a black and white “Kennedy/King” button worn by a New Yorker in memory of the two slain leaders.

An adjunct display showcases the bronze sculpture of Martin Luther King Jr.―one of five existing casts created by Harlem Renaissance artist Charles Alston (1907– 1997), on loan from the Community Church of New York.
Rebel Spirits is based in part on The Promise and the Dream, written by David Margolick and produced by Lawrence Schiller for National Geographic Publishers. The exhibition was curated by Lawrence Schiller, Cristian Panaite, and Marilyn Kushner. It was produced by Wiener Schiller Productions, Inc. in association with Susan Bloom International with support from Getty Images, The Jacques Lowe Estate, and Steve Schapiro.

Published by National Geographic and written by  David Margolick, The Promise and the Dream: The Interrupted Lives of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. features an introduction by historian Douglas Brinkley. The book is available at the NYHistory Store.

Several public programs will provide further insights into the exhibition and its time period. On March 6, eminent legal experts survey the evolution of the U.S. Supreme Court’s interpretations of the 14th Amendment—in commemoration of its 150th anniversary—and civil rights throughout American history, highlighting landmark cases such as Brown v. Board of Education. On April 23, scholar Randall Kennedy discusses the Supreme Court and Martin Luther King Jr. On May 21, journalist Chris Matthews sits down to explore the rebel spirit of Robert Kennedy.

Vietnam War

The New-York Historical Society has a variety of fascinating exhibits, some short term and some ongoing.

The Vietnam War: 1945 – 1975, on view through April 22, 2018, is particularly timely in conjunction with the “Rebel Spirits.” © Karen Rubin/ goingplacesfarandnear.com

The Vietnam War: 1945 – 1975  on view through April 22, 2018 is particularly timely in conjunction with the “Rebel Spirits.” Featuring interpretive displays, digital media, artwork, artifacts, photographs, and documents, the exhibit provides an enlightening account of the causes, progression, and impact of the war. Spanning the duration of U.S. involvement in Indochina, the narrative incorporates perspectives covering both the home and the war fronts. Displays touch upon the Cold War, the draft, military campaigns initiated by both sides, the growth of the antiwar movement, the role of the president, and the loss of political consensus. The exhibition explores themes of patriotism, duty, and citizenship. Key objects include a troopship berthing unit, interactive murals, vibrant antiwar posters, artwork by Vietnam vets, a Viet Cong bicycle, the Pentagon Papers, and news and film clips.

Gallery of Tiffany Lamps

Step into the Gallery of Tiffany Lamps, a permanent exhibit which is the centerpiece of a newly designed fourth floor, and you are aglow in light and beauty. The exhibit features more than 100 illuminated Tiffany lamps from N-YHS’s  spectacular collection displayed within a dramatically lit jewel-like two-story space (the glass staircase is exquisite).

Step into the Gallery of Tiffany Lamps, a permanent exhibit which is the centerpiece of a newly designed fourth floor, and you are aglow in light and beauty. © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

The presentation is breathtaking, and so insightful: it was only in the last decade that it was learned through a series of letters that some of Tiffany’s most famous and prized lamps, featuring nature imagery like wisteria, dragonflies, spider webs, were designed by Clara Driscoll, who headed the Women’s Glass Cutting Department of some 45-55 young  women (mainly 16-17 year olds who would work until they went off to be engaged).

It was only in the last decade that it was learned through a series of letters that some of Tiffany’s most famous and prized lamps were designed by Clara Driscoll who headed the Women’s Glass Cutting Department of some 50 young women © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.comThe collection comes from Dr. Egon Neustadt. an Austrian immigrant enamored with all things American, who purchased his first Tiffany lamp in 1935 for $12.50 (by then, Tiffany Lamps were no longer in favor, the company closed, Tiffany went bankrupt in 1932 and died in 1933) and went on to amass the largest and most comprehensive Tiffany lamp collection ever assembled. The docent explained that he bequeathed half his collection to the N-YHS and half to the Queens Museum. She points out what would have been the most valuable lamps: the wisteria would have sold for $450; the cobweb for $500, at a time when you could buy a brand new car for that amount. On the mezzanine level, you not only can look down onto the lighted lampshades, but can try your hand at designing your own.

Learn how Tiffany Lamps were made at the New-York Historical Society’s Gallery of Tiffany Lamps © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

The redesigned fourth floor also offers exhibitions and interactive media that explore American history. Themed displays in the North Gallery present a variety of topics—such as slavery, war, infrastructure, childhood, recreation, and 9/11—offering unexpected and surprising perspectives on collection highlights. Touchscreens and interactive kiosks allow visitors to explore American history and engage with objects like never before. When I visit, a docent is discussing the Industrial Revolution with high school students.

Women’s Rights & Social Activism

 A new Center for Women’s History enables visitors to discover hidden connections among exceptional and unknown women who left their mark on New York and the nation with the multimedia digital installation, Women’s Voices, and through rotating exhibitions in the Joyce B. Cowin Women’s History Gallery. Objects from the Billie Jean King Archive are also on view. 

Celebrating the centennial of women’s right to vote in New York and on view in the Joyce B. Cowin Women’s History Gallery, Hotbed brings to life the neighborhood’s bohemian scene and energetic activist spirit © Karen Rubin/ goingplacesfarandnear.com

Hotbed, a special exhibit on view through March 25, 2018, is about Greenwich Village in the early 20th century, when it was a hotbed of political activism and social change—where men and women joined forces across the boundaries of class and race to fight for a better world. At the heart of the downtown radicals’ crusade lay women’s rights: to control their own bodies, to do meaningful work, and above all, to vote. Celebrating the centennial of women’s right to vote in New York and on view in the Joyce B. Cowin Women’s History Gallery, Hotbed features immersive installations and more than 100 artifacts and images—drawn from New-York Historical’s archives and several private collections—that bring to life the neighborhood’s bohemian scene and energetic activist spirit.

Collecting the Women’s Marches, on view through June 3, 2018, documents  January 21, 2017, when hundreds of thousands rallied at the Women’s March on Washington for diverse issues including women’s rights, racial equality, and the environment. Counting more than 500 sister marches across the United States, it was the largest single-day protest in the nation’s history. As part of its History Responds program, the New-York Historical Society collected a range of artifacts, including signs, sashes, pussyhats, and colorful props, to document the moment. One year later, Collecting the Women’s Marches highlights some of the political and visual themes that emerged, as well as the efforts of individuals and groups that worked behind the scenes. An adjunct display of protest clothing by Olek (Agata Oleksiak), an artist who works in crochet, and Brick x Brick, a public art performance group, is also on view. It is odd to have an exhibit of a major historic event so recent, and to actually have been there.

New York through the Lens of George Kalinsky on view through June 3, 2018 is an amazing photo exhibition of some of New York’s most iconic cultural moments over the past 50 years as captured by George Kalinsky. Serving as Madison Square Garden’s official photographer, Kalinsky has turned truly memorable moments―sporting events, legendary performances, and notable occasions―into lasting images that have defined the city. Among the quintessential photographs on view are Pope John Paul II hoisting a seven-year-old child onto the Popemobile in Madison Square Garden, Bill Bradley celebrating a New York Knicks victory, Sloane Stephens winning the 2017 US Open, and Jesse Orosco falling to his knees on the mound as the Mets won the 1986 World Series.

Collector’s Choice: Highlights from the Permanent Collection, ongoing: Since 1804, the New-York Historical Society has been welcoming to its collection some of the most esteemed artworks of the modern world. Collector’s Choice: Highlights from the Permanent Collection showcases a selection of paintings that reflect the individual tastes of several New York City collectors who donated their holdings to New-York Historical. Joining Picasso’s Le Tricorne ballet curtain are featured American and European masterpieces spanning the 14th through the 21st centuries from Luman Reed, Thomas Jefferson Bryan, and Robert L. Stuart, including colonial portraits of children, marine and maritime subjects, and an installation showcasing recently collected contemporary works.

Picasso’s Le Tricorne ballet curtain is part of the New-York Historical Society’s permanent collection © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com

Hours: Tuesday – Thursday: 10 am – 6 pm; Friday: 10 am – 8 pm; Saturday: 10 am – 6 pm; Sunday: 11 am – 5 pm  Admission: Adults: $21; Teachers and Seniors: $16; Students: $13; Children (5–13): $6;  Children (4 and under): Free. The museum has a pay-as-you-wish policy on Fridays from 6-8 pm.

Check the website for special events and lecture.

New-York Historical Society, 170 Central Park West (at 77th Street), New York, NY 10024, www.nyhistory.org, (212) 873-3400. 

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© 2018 Travel Features Syndicate, a division of Workstyles, Inc. All rights reserved. Visit goingplacesfarandnear.com,  www.huffingtonpost.com/author/karen-rubin , and travelwritersmagazine.com/TravelFeaturesSyndicate/. Blogging at goingplacesnearandfar.wordpress.com and moralcompasstravel.info. Send comments or questions to [email protected]. Tweet @TravelFeatures. ‘Like’ us at facebook.com/NewsPhotoFeatures