Posts in Museums

Illustrating Your Ride: Fred Cooper and The Subway Sun

Illustrating Your Ride: Fred Cooper and The Subway Sun

Illustrating Your Ride: Fred Cooper and The Subway Sun

By Es-pranza Humphrey

When the Interborough Rapid Transit Company opened to the public in 1904, there was an active effort to beautify the underground stations and its metal vessels in order to ease the anxieties of riders who were hesitant to travel throughout the unknown. The initiative to beautify included the presence of a variety of posters presenting transportation etiquette and advertising products and services as a way to capitalize on the fact that passengers spent an average of fifteen minutes in a train car during their commute. Among the advertisements for Viceroy Cork Tipped Cigarettes, Rheingold Lager Beer, and Heinz Cream of Tomato Soup, were a series of in-car posters that helped riders navigate the subway to visit some of New York City’s most scenic wonders. This series was called The Subway Sun.

Built Environment, Manhattan, Metropolitan Region, Urban Planning, Museums, TransportationRachel PitkinJuly 16, 2025Comment

Shirley Chisholm at 100: An Interview with Zinga Fraser and Sarah Seidman

Shirley Chisholm at 100: An Interview with Zinga Fraser and Sarah Seidman

Shirley Chisholm at 100: An Interview with Zinga Fraser and Sarah Seidman

Interviewed By Dominique Jean-Louis

“I think what connects Chisholm to this political moment is how 1972 was also a time of political turmoil and conflict between a true representative democracy and political autocracy in the form of the Nixon administration. Today, Chisholm would be in the fight for our nation to not fall prey to political leadership that does not believe they are accountable to the Constitution or the American people.”

Postwar New York, Poverty & Inequality, Race & Ethnicity, Metropolitan Region, Contemporary Era, Interviews, Brooklyn, Museums, Politics, WomenRachel PitkinJune 10, 2025Comment

Reading from Left to Left: Radical Bookstores in NYC, 1930-2000s

Reading from Left to Left: Radical Bookstores in NYC, 1930-2000s

Reading from Left to Left: Radical Bookstores in NYC, 1930-2000s

By Shannon O’Neill

As pivotal spaces for leftists to strategize and engage one another, political party bookstores were key in supporting the labor movement, pushing for racial equality, working on behalf of revolutionary freedom fighters, and participating in global solidarity and struggle. In doing so, they created the space for their customers to not only radically reimagine their worlds, but to participate in activating their radical imaginations.

Postwar New York, Built Environment, Poverty & Inequality, Metropolitan Region, Arts & Culture, Contemporary Era, Housing & Realty, Business & Labor, Manhattan, Media, Museums, Politics, Race & Ethnicity, WomenRachel PitkinFebruary 5, 2025Comment

The Power Keys

The Power Keys

The Power Keys

Exhibition Review, “Robert Caro’s the Power Broker at 50” and “‘Turn Every Page’: Inside the Robert A. Caro Archive,” New-York Historical Society.

By Fran Leadon

Those tiny notes, scrawled on index cards and scraps of paper and taped to lampshades or thumbtacked to his famous office corkboard, are included in two microscopically immersive exhibitions at the New-York Historical Society, both of which showcase the society’s acquisition, five years ago, of Caro’s voluminous papers. That trove has now yielded “Robert Caro’s The Power Broker at 50” (curated by Meredith Mann), which focuses on Caro’s Pulitzer-Prize winning 1974 biography of Robert Moses, and “‘Turn Every Page’: Inside the Robert A. Caro Archive” (curated by Michael Ryan, Edward O’Reilly, and Debra Schmidt Bach), which emphasizes the nitty-gritty of Caro’s writing process, especially as it relates to The Years of Lyndon Johnson, his sprawling four-volume biography of the 36th president (the long-awaited fifth volume is still in the offing).

Politics, Postwar New York, Reviews, MuseumsRachel PitkinNovember 13, 2024Comment