The New York Historical

06/01/2026

In the process of writing “official” history, sexual identities considered deviant have often intentionally gone unmentioned.

This poster from our collection is for the first National Coming Out Day, held in 1988. It calls out the fact that there have been historians who have purposefully hid q***rness from the biographies of great writers such as James Baldwin and Virginia Woolf, and talented musicians such as Bessie Smith and Cole Porter. By removing an important part of these figures' identities from the story, historical narratives erased a part of who they were—and didn’t allow young q***r people the opportunity to identify role models.

Here's to telling the full story.

Happy 🌈

📷 Designer: Laurie Casagrande, Publisher: Gay and Le***an Community Action Council American, founded 1987, "Unfortunately, History Has Set the Record a Little Too Straight," 1988.

05/31/2026

Just putting this reminder of what Penn Station used to look like here...

📷 Interior entry hall and ticket office of Penn Station, 1911.
📷Interior main concourse of Penn Station, 1911.
📷Penn Station arcade, 1911.
📷Penn Station, Seventh Avenue and 33rd Street, undated (ca. 1910). High-angle view from the northeast.

All the collection of The New York Historical.

05/30/2026

“My work is at the crossroads between death and rebirth. Discarded materials have been recycled, so they’re born anew, because the artist has the power to do that.” —Betye Saar

During the 2020 pandemic, Betye Saar began rendering her collection of Black dolls in watercolors, bringing them to life in explorations of childhood, ritual, dreams, and make-believe.

Long engaged with mysticism, astrology, and the religious practices of the African diaspora, Saar collects dolls that she feels hold energy from their previous lives—an energy she amplifies in her doll watercolors.

See more in "Betye Saar's Black Dolls," on view through October 4.

🖼️ Betye Saar, Floating Black Doll in Mystic Sky, 2022. Courtesy of the artist and Roberts Projects Los Angeles, California. Photo: Paul Salveson

05/30/2026

"Saar’s reimagining offered these figurines a new context and a life separate from — or possibly in spite of — their original intentions, transforming their meaning, alchemizing negative imagery into something potent, something positive."

Betye Saar's Black Dolls is on view now at The New York Historical. Read more about the exhibition in Hyperallergic: https://bit.ly/4wQXOhQ

Nearing the occasion of her 100th birthday, an exhibition at the New York Historical celebrates Saar’s promised gift of her collection of dolls to the institution.

05/29/2026

Despite being written out of the story of the American Revolution and nation’s founding, women left indelible marks on both the fight for—and against—US Independence, and on the building blocks of the new nation.

The Jean Margo Reid Center for Women’s History marks the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States with a new exhibition that asks: How did the Revolution and living through the experience of war impact New York’s women—and how did women impact the Revolution in New York and beyond?

See this exhibition at The New York Historical through October 25.

05/28/2026

Hospitals refused to admit cancer patients for much of the 19th century. Why? And what changed?

New York City was a leader in bringing specialized cancer care to the US, with the opening of two institutions that revolutionized care—but that also entered into a bitter, years-long rivalry with one another.

Read the full blog at https://bit.ly/43wZrnq

05/27/2026

These bird brooches expressed hope and resistance amid the abridgement of civil liberties during World War II.

Yoneguma and Kiyoka Takahashi learned woodcarving during US-ordered incarceration following Pearl Harbor. They would eventually turn this skill into a successful business.

See examples of these brooches on our first floor.

05/27/2026

in 1971, "Vain Victory" came to La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club. Written and directed by Jackie Curtis and featuring Candy Darling, "Vain Victory" was a continually evolving musical that had frequent script and cast changes across different venues.

The musical was popular yet critically panned. As one critic noted: “…at moments the show reached thrilling levels of highly charged nothing.” Curtis and several of the cast members, including Candy Darling and Mario Montez, were Warhol Superstars, part of the group that surrounded the artist Andy Warhol and appeared in his underground films.

This poster in The New York Historical's collection belonged to Agosto Machado, a Chinese-Spanish-Filipino American performance artist and activist who appeared in the musical.

See this poster and the shoes Candy wore in "Vain Victory" in our installation, "Women Making Theatre in New York City," on view through October 30.

📷 Designer: Rob Lieberman, Vain Victory: The Vicissitudes of the Damned, 1971.

05/25/2026

We had to reshare for . In the course of his research, historian David Blight discovered an account of a Memorial Day (or, as it was first called, Decoration Day) celebration in the aftermath of the Civil War, led by Black people and Union soldiers in Charleston, South Carolina.

On May 1, 1865, Black workmen went to the site of an outdoor Confederate prison in Charleston and reburied the dead Union soldiers that had been left in a mass grave. They built a high fence around the property to protect the site, then joined with white missionaries and teachers in a march of 10,000 around the grounds. Blight believes this event to have been the earliest Memorial Day, founded by African Americans in a ritual of remembrance and consecration.

This clip is just part of the story; visit https://bit.ly/3BYPIst for the full video.

05/24/2026

While you're out celebrating this Memorial Day weekend, remember that New Amsterdammers partied even harder.

In "Old Masters, New Amsterdam," now on view at The New York Historical, paintings by Old Masters including Rembrandt and his contemporaries let us envision life in the little 17th century Dutch settlement that would become New York City.

Here, Russell Shorto points out some of the key features of Jan Steen's "Peasants Merrymaking Outside an Inn," ca. 1676.

Curated by Russell Shorto, Director of the New Amsterdam Project at The New York Historical, and Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., Senior Advisor to The Leiden Collection.

Learn more at https://bit.ly/4c13UEb