My Hand-tinted Summer: The Cabinet Card Collection
The Museum holds an amazing collection of cabinet cards and carte-de-visites featuring an array of Broadway entertainers, opera singers, and popular personalities (as well as some of their pets), … Continue reading
When Portraits Were King: Conversation with Curator Bruce Weber
Curator of Paintings & Sculpture Bruce Weber explains the importance of self-image in 18th century New York, the evolution of the city’s painting scene, and the detective work underlying the … Continue reading
Napoleon Sarony: Celebrity Photographer
Before paparazzi and the celebrity media we all live with today, there were 19th century photographers, like Napoleon Sarony (1821-1896), who became internationally renowned for their celebrity portraits. Born in Québec, Sarony began his … Continue reading
Urban Woodsman: Theodore Roosevelt and his Buckskin Suit
Traversing the Dakota back country atop his horse, a young Theodore Roosevelt arrived at a “desolate, little mud-roofed hut” belonging to Mrs. Maddox [1]. She “had acquired some fame in … Continue reading
Carl Van Vechten and Modern New York
A guest post this week from the City Museum’s Curator of Architecture and Design, Donald Albrecht. Earlier this year, Farrar, Straus and Giroux published Edward White’s book The Tastemaker: Carl … Continue reading
Power, corruption, and Tammany Hall: sketches of lesser known New York City mayors, 1869-1913
Today the 109th mayor of New York City will be elected. In honor of this occasion, we delved into our portrait archive to find some of the most fascinating mayors … Continue reading
Mora – Photographer of the Rich and Famous
What do rich Gilded Age socialites, stuffed bears, and elaborate costumes have in common? They’re all features in these very atypical Gilded Age portraits. As I was cataloging the Museum’s … Continue reading
Photographing Our Painting Collection
Here in the Museum of the City of New York’s Collections Department we have embarked on an exciting new project to digitize selected objects from our paintings holdings. This is … Continue reading
Treasures and “Shandas” from the Collection on Yiddish theater
In the early decades of the twentieth century, the streets of the Lower East Side were plastered with theatrical advertisements for Der yidisher kenig lir and Mentsh un Tayvl. Second … Continue reading
Gender Bending in 19th Century New York
In the summer of 1836 in New York City, a white man named Robert Haslem met a black woman named Mary Jones on Bleecker Street. The two proceeded down Greene … Continue reading
MCNY Blog: New York Stories 