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While museum receptions often ask guests to dress up, not down, many attendees at the Museum of the City of New York last Tuesday, September 29, wore T-shirts with different messages:
“Make Good Trouble.” “Drag Is Not A Crime.” “Resist.” “Save Our Planet.”
The statement pieces were on theme for the opening of The Puffin Foundation Center for New York City Activism in the newly renovated wing of the Museum of the City of New York and the new permanent home for Raise Your Voice: New York Activism, an exhibit chronicling more than 250 years of civic engagement and social movements in New York City, including those that are currently ongoing.
“Erasing or repressing our shared culture and history seems all the rage these days,” said Neal Rosenstein, President of the Puffin Foundation. “But here we’re celebrating the future with an expansion,” referring to a previous partnership between the Museum and The Puffin Foundation dating back to 2009, when the Puffin Gallery for Social Activism launched. For full disclosure, the Puffin Foundation also partially funds this publication.
People packed the second floor during the museum’s after-hours and browsed the items on display in the new wing—all created and used by people responding to an issue the city faced.
Gloria Steinem’s address book. A dress worn at an ICE protest in Lower Manhattan. Photos from the first Pride march in 1970. A noisemaker from the Civil War Draft Riots. Artist Molly Crapapple’s sketchbook.
Attendees enjoyed champagne and crab puffs over raucous chatter as they discussed their relationship to the exhibit and activism in New York City. Many were activists who have spent decades fighting for change — and whose work is now commemorated at the museum.
Peter Frishauf, 77, was 20 years old and serving as an editor on the New York University student newspaper when he helped publish a special poster issue calling for a campus-wide strike against the Vietnam War. The paper is on display in one of a dozen orange-framed display cases visitors flipped through as part of a collection of protest flyers, spanning early 20th-century letterpresses to the digital prints of the modern day.
“We want to leave the world a better place than we found it,” Frishauf said. “Activism is a way to do that.”
Puffin Foundation Curator of Social Activism Sarah J. Seidman divided the exhibition into sections focused on how New Yorkers have driven change through the years through demonstrations, organizing, art and media, and direct action. The movements archived include women’s rights, civil rights, the Young Lords, ACT UP, immigration and transgender activism.
“It opens up new avenues for thinking about how New York City has been such a unique site of mobilization for change for centuries,” said Sarah J. Seidman, the Puffin Foundation Curator of Social Activism. “It’s done that for me, and I hope it does it for all of you and all of the visitors who come through in the years to come.”
Hae-Lin Choi, 49, the co-founder of Hands Off New York, a coalition of community groups against federal overreach by the Trump administration, donned an “Abolish ICE” shirt in the style of the Knicks logo. She stood beneath the vivid yellow canvas she created with the text, “New York Is For All of Us.”
Choi said that while she was there to celebrate the new wing, she also came for the much-needed hope she feels when examining New York City’s history of activism.
“It feels like we’re so inundated with really challenging things, from ICE in the street to the midterms being sabotaged,” Choi said. “Being in this place, you see that we have fought really big fights before, and we have won. We have this place now in this city, where generations of activists can learn from previous generations, especially when you feel discouraged.”
Many of the attendees echoed that the night’s celebration of social activism offered a stark contrast to efforts by the current federal administration.
“You can make an exhibition about activism when activism is not under fire, and that’s an easy time to do it,” said Stephanie Hill Wilchfort, Ronay Menschel Director and President of the Museum of the City of New York. “But it’s harder in moments like the present.”
For activists like Frishauf, the night was a chance to look at how far we have come, but also examine how movements can fail to achieve their goals.
“We all thought that we were ending war and creating world peace, and you can tell what a great job we did,” he said, referring to student demonstrations against the Vietnam War. “So I apologize to the younger generation for failing the world and failing all of us and not being able to do that.”
“But we did try,” Smith said. “We were war resistors and war protesters.”
Visitors were encouraged to engage with the exhibit through the section “Your City, Your Move,” which includes voter registration for people over the age of 18, a poster-making station, and an interactive show on how to address problems in their own neighborhood.
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The night also celebrated the opening of “Halumii Ktapihna: Lenape Legacies and Futures,” the first exhibit in the new wing’s rotating gallery, featuring artwork that explores contemporary Lunaapeew culture.
As she examined ceremonial garments made by Lunaapeew artists, Caroline Smith, 29, said she had visited the Puffin Activism Center before, but was excited about its expansion with the new, permanent exhibit.
“Activism is building on what we’ve done in the past and learning what worked and what didn’t, and really just continuing the work of our predecessors,” she said. “To have that all documented in one place is really powerful.”
Rosenstein dedicated the wing to “generations of New Yorkers, past and present, who took to the streets and challenged institutional power to fight for better lives and justice.”
The reception concluded with attendees gathering near the floor’s gleaming white spiral staircase for remarks and a performance from the all-women “Resistance Revival Chorus.” The crowd joined them to sing and clap along to protest songs including Woody Guthrie’s “All You Fascists Bound to Lose” and Ella Baker’s “Ella’s Song.”
Attendee Aroma Morris, 68, said the new wing is important for people to realize that many of the rights and freedoms they enjoy today came from hard-fought battles by people who came before them.
“A lot of people need to see this kind of information,” Morris said. “They never lived it. Some people would like to forget it.”
