To mark the opening of the Tang Wing for American Democracy, The New York Historical has expanded hours until 8 pm on Thursdays through Saturdays from June 18 to July 4. Admission during expanded hours on those dates are pay-as-you-wish admission from 5-8 pm.
Also enjoy “Songs of America,” a vibrant lineup of live music performances taking place at the Museum in collaboration with Jazz at Lincoln Center, featuring music from across 250 years of the nation. Performances are free with pay-as-you-wish admission during expanded hours from June 18 to July 4.
And see a rare printed copy of the Declaration of Independence, on view through July 5.
By Karen Rubin, Travel Features Syndicate, goingplacesfarandnear.com
The timing couldn’t be more perfect, nor more necessary: The New York Historical, New York’s first museum, has just opened a major new expansion, the Tang Wing for American Democracy with a mission and a facility dedicated to teaching the history and future of the nation’s founding principles.
Opening in time for America’s 250th anniversary of the signing the foundational Declaration of Independence and audaciously creating the first government “of, by, and for the people” since antiquity, “This transformative new wing embodies The Historical’s mission of illuminating the complexities of the American story and inspiring engagement with the ideas and principles that define it,” said museum president and CEO Dr. Louise Mirrer. “As we approach the nation’s 250th anniversary, the Tang Wing will serve as both a beacon for civic learning and a space for reflection on the values that continue to shape our democracy. We are deeply grateful to Agnes Hsu-Tang and Oscar Tang for their extraordinary vision and generosity in making the Tang Wing for American Democracy possible.”
“The New York Historical’s origin story began with the American Revolution, and after 222 years we have achieved an institutional legacy as a steadfast witness to the history that shaped this nation,” said Dr. Agnes Hsu-Tang, who chairs The Historical’s Board of Trustees. “On the occasion of America’s semiquincentennial, this new wing shall rise as a self-evident embodiment of the American evolution—from its beginning as the world’s first modern democracy to the world’s longest continuing democracy.
“When New York Historical was founded in 1804, 222 years ago, Napoleon had crowned himself Emperor of France while Jefferson was reelected by the people of a young republic, the United States of America,” Dr. Tang said.
New York City, she noted, was the first capital of the United States of America, was where modern democracy and the American presidency originated.
“We are here today, because this very institution for 222 years has steadfastly safeguarded the evidence of our history, through wars and peace,” she said. “The new wing, dedicated to teaching of American history and democracy, is the culmination of 222 years of engaged citizenship and assiduous examination of American history – the good, bad, ugly and beautiful. Our history began as a revolution and endures and will endure as evolution of democracy for all.”
Since the museum’s founding as the New-York Historical Society, New York City has become a capital of modernity, culture and arts, Dr. Tang said. “The roots of the New York Historical are in New York City, but it has grown and evolved in mission and understanding of itself to become a national museum of national significance.”
The expanded space – 71,000 sq. ft – adds new galleries, classrooms, collections areas, a rooftop terrace and courtyard, and was designed to maintain and expand upon the Beaux-Arts style of the museum’s landmarked campus. The project also pursued LEED Gold Certification and includes state-of-the-art HVAC equipment anticipated to reduce energy consumption.
“It’s not just a new building but a tactical renovation of the existing building to knit it together with the new wing, aesthetically and functionally,” Dr. Mirrer said. “We are reimagining, reinventing this institution – what it is today and will become.”
The $175 million project represents the museum’s first expansion of its landmark campus in nearly a century and will significantly increase its capacity and ability to have exhibitions that could not be installed before, education, collections preservation and public programming. In addition to the newly constructed wing, the project included renovations to more than 30,000 square feet of existing museum space. The project was supported by $9.25 million from Empire State Development, along with $5 million from the New York State Council on the Arts.
Dr. Mirrer noted that the institution has sought an education wing going back to1937 “to educate about who we were as a people, so we can see who we should become. We sit in the new Klingenstein Family Gallery – a soaring light-filled space – where historical figures can tell their stories.”
The expansion will also support New York Historical’s education programs, including its award-winning Chang Chavin Academy for American Democracy four-day civics residency program, where 6th graders are brought to the museum to learn about democracy from its origins in antiquity – Greece and Rome – to today. With the additional classrooms – set along a gorgeous balcony – the museum expects to grow the program from 5,000 sixth-grade students served annually to 30,000 students per year. The Historical’s education programs currently reach more than 300,000 students and educators annually and help support the New York City Department of Education’s social studies curriculum.
“Hundreds of thousands of children receive education in civics here at a time when civics is under-taught in schools. New York Historical is picking up the ball, but we needed a facility,” Dr. Tang said.
Also newly opened in the Tang Wing, the Stuart and Jane Weitzman Shoe Museum, exhibits three centuries of American women’s lives through an extraordinary collection of historical footwear (check out Beyonce’s custom stiletto tour booties).
Like most of New York museums, the bulk of their collections are stored off site. The expansion includes crucial new on-site storage for The Historical’s invaluable Patricia D. Klingenstein Library, which holds the Robert A. Caro Archive, Time Inc. Archive, and Billie Jean King Archive as well as millions of manuscripts, maps, photographs, and prints documenting American history
Another significant improvement is that its conservation facilities, where its renowned collection of paintings and historical objects are restored and conserved, are now consolidated in a new state of the art facility in the lowest level.
And because the renovation has been at the highest level museum design standards, the New York Historical can now borrow rare and top quality artifacts from other institutions.
Also, the outdoor greenspace has been “recaptured” and now offers an accessible sculpture courtyard (where you will find the Hamilton and Burr statues, set at the exact distance apart as where they stood for their duel) and a new roof terrace atop the Tang Wing which will be lushly landscaped.
Interestingly, the granite used to build the Tang Wing (which was built over a vacant lot where three brownstones were razed 80 years ago) is the same as in the existing building, even though the quarry had closed in the 1920s. The quarry, on Deer Island, Maine, was reopened just for this project, architect Graham Wyatt, partner, RAMSA (Robert A.M. Stern Architects), tells us.
“Designing the new Tang Wing and related renovations for The New York Historical has been an extraordinary opportunity to engage with one of New York’s most important cultural institutions and historic landmarks,” Wyatt said.
“Our design completes a plan first contemplated almost a century ago and enters into dialogue with The New York Historical’s existing building and with the craftsmanship and materials of the original structure, while introducing new interior spaces that meet the Museum’s evolving mission and programs.” It also was the last project designed by Robert Stern before he passed away.
The Tang Wing ultimately will create the first permanent home for the American LGBTQ+ Museum – a collaborative institution that will join The New York Historical’s Center for Women’s History in advancing the narrative of civil rights for all Americans – opening in late 2027.
“New York’s cultural institutions tell our stories, strengthen our communities and power our tourism economy,” Governor Kathy Hochul stated. “For more than two centuries, the New York Historical has preserved the history of our state and nation, and the new Tang Wing will ensure that millions of visitors, students, scholars and families can continue to learn from that history for generations to come. As our nation prepares to celebrate its 250th anniversary, this expansion reaffirms New York’s role as a global capital of culture, education and ideas.”
Democracy Matters
The opening of the Tang Wing coincides with New York Historical’s exhibition, Democracy Matters, in the new Klingenstein Family Gallery. Bringing together objects from The New York Historical’s collections, the exhibition explores how the concept of democracy has stretched, contracted, and shifted through key moments in the history of the nation; how competing understandings of it have come into conflict; and how those conflicts have reshaped its boundaries.
© Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com
In 1789, George Washington was inaugurated the first president in lower Manhattan. He sat in a wooden chair, not the velvet cushioned, gilded throne of a king – indeed, the chair he used and the Bible he swore the newly written oath of office, are both on view in the new Klingenstein Gallery, where “Democracy Matters,” displaying essential artifacts organized around key moments in history and key pillars of our democracy – freedom of press, religion, free and fair elections, is on view through November 1.
Also on view is a fragment from the King George III statue that was pulled down at Bowling Green after the Declaration of Independence was read, and a glass bowl that served as a ballot box (so votes were transparent), a Torah scroll among other religious objects that show Freedom of Religion, all five Thomas Cole’s Empire Series depicting the “Rise and Fall of Civilization.” There is also an odd, 34-star flag, dating back to the “darkest days of the Civil War. Even as the Confederacy adopted their own flag, Lincoln refused to accept the union could be broken,” Dr. Mirrer noted. The exhibits are also arranged to spark thought and interaction.
America 250th Anniversary Exhibitions
The New York Historical is continuing to present a slate of special exhibitions throughout the America 250th anniversary year, that have already included Declaring the Revolution: America’s Printed Path to Independence and Stirring the Melting Pot: Photographs from The New York Historical Collections.
Indeed, before there was a United States of America or a New York, there was a New Amsterdam, founded by the Dutch 400 years ago, which set the stage for America’s entrepreneurism, individualism and culture.
New-York Historical’s current blockbuster exhibition, Old Masters, New Amsterdam, celebrates the city’s founding 400 years ago with a fascinating look at life in New Amsterdam from the perspective of 17th century Dutch Masters including Rembrandt van Rijn, Frans Hals, and Jan Steen.
“Four centuries ago, the Dutch founded an outpost at the tip of Manhattan Island—a humble but vibrant settlement that would give rise to New York,” said Russell Shorto, the exhibition’s co-curator, director of the New Amsterdam Project at The New York Historical. “Across the ocean, meanwhile, Rembrandt and his peers were transforming art, revealing the beauty and drama of everyday life. These Dutch artists never set foot in New Amsterdam, but their portraits, character studies, and depictions of daily life in the Netherlands provide real insight into the world of Manhattan’s 17th-century settlers.”
Some of the most intriguing objects in the exhibition are those from New York Historical’s own collection: the journal of John Bowne who was arrested for hosting a Quaker meeting and deported to the Netherlands in 1662, where the West India Company directed Stuyvesant to “allow every one to have his own belief.” setting the stage for freedom of religion in New York. Also, a property deed to Manuel de Spangle (dated January 18, 1651), who won his freedom (the first enslaved Africans probably arrived in New Amsterdam in 1627), which encouraged other slaves to sue for their freedom.
The exhibition ends with several paintings providing a glimpse into 1776 and beyond.
From The New York Historical’s collection, Francis Guy’s 1797 painting Tontine Coffee House, New York City, where commercial activity seemingly bursts across the canvas, shows the expansive growth of the city in the century after the Dutch founded New Amsterdam, at the place that became the stock exchange.
The individuality fostered in the Dutch era evolved into a New York hallmark: a brash, confident, entrepreneurial energy. On the eve of the American Revolution, the city’s diversity made it a cauldron of debate and unrest. Built on Dutch foundations and shaped by waves of newcomers, New York reflected the American experiment and propelled it forward.
Also on view:
House Made of Dawn: Art by Native Americans, 1880-Now,: Drawing from a collection of more than 100 promised gifts of art, artifacts, and rare books created by Native American artists to The New York Historical by Board Chair Dr. Agnes Hsu-Tang and her husband Oscar Tang in celebration of the nation’s semiquincentennial, this exhibition presents distinct artistic expressions and practices of modernism by more than 85 artists of diverse Indigenous heritage (through August 2, 2026).
Revolutionary Women: The Center for Women’s History foregrounds the women of New York City whose contributions to the Revolutionary War effort have been little recognized—but whose experiences highlight the material realities of living in the war-torn city as well as the divergent, contested meanings of revolutionary liberty itself and its unfinished promise. Revolutionary Women dives deep into the stories of the women who left indelible marks on the fight for—and even against—independence and who helped create the foundations of a new government. Liberty, equality, and independence were key bywords for that emerging nation. But who did these concepts apply to? Revolutionary Women attempts to provide answers and deepen the history we all think we know with letters, poems, petitions, archeological objects, paintings, household objects, and more from our Patricia D. Klingenstein Library collection.
Also visit the fascinating exhibit dedicated to the Presidency (you can visit a replica of Reagan’s Oval Office and sit behind the Resolute desk) and our three co-equal branches of government.
“Songs of America,” a vibrant lineup of live music performances taking place at the Museum in collaboration with Jazz at Lincoln Center, features music from across two and a half centuries of the nation, from Revolutionary-era tunes, to blues, classic jazz, turn-of-the-century jazz, soul jazz and Americana. Performances are free with pay-as-you-wish admission during expanded hours from June 18 to July 4.
A rare printing of the Declaration of Independence, which has been in The Historical’s collections for generations though little was known about it, is on temporary view through July 5. It was likely printed by Samuel Loudon, a colonial New York printer who founded The New-York Packet newspaper. in the aftermath of July 4, 1776, and used to disseminate the new nation’s independence to the general public in town halls, houses of worship, and other meeting places.
To mark the opening of the Tang Wing for American Democracy, The New York Historical is hosting expanded hours until 8 pm on Thursdays through Saturdays from June 18 to July 4. Admission during expanded hours on those dates are pay-as-you-wish admission from 5-8 pm.
Founded in 1804, The New York Historical is New York City’s first museum and a nationally renowned research library, with holdings that include more than 14 million works of art, artifacts, documents and ephemera spanning four centuries of American history. Its collections document the founding of the United States, the evolution of New York and the stories of the people and communities that have shaped the nation.
The New York Historical, 170 Central Park West, New York, NY 10024, 212-873-3400, www.nyhistory.org.
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