Posts Tagged ‘Exhibits’

Undiscarded: Stories of New York, Episode 9 (Newsstand)

If you like Undiscarded, tune into The Brooklyn Public Library’s flagship podcast, Borrowed. Brooklyn has so many stories to tell, and a lot of them start at the library

New York City is teeming with personalities larger than life itself – unapologetically brash, no-nonsense folks who can be intimidating but will always have your back. One of the greatest privileges of hosting this podcast project is not just delving into the city’s rich history but also acquainting myself with the colorful characters who populate it.

One of my favorite aspects of this project is the opportunity to interact with my enthusiastic guests, each passionate and worthy of a podcast feature themselves! But I especially love learning about unforgettable New Yorkers such as Charlie DeLeo (Episode 1 – lightbulb), Bill Butler (Episode 7 – Rollerskate), Asha Wabe (Episode 2 – Mannequin), who have come up in our episodes. But one of my favorites (even though you are not supposed to have one) was the story of Adam Petrella, who ran the beloved Petrella’s Point Newsstand at the border of Little Italy & Chinatown for nearly three decades.

Petrella’s Point, Adam’s newsstand, became an episode obsession for me and my co-planner, Jacob. Now reconfigured and preserved within a museum, it’s a vibrant red manifestation of old New York, bursting with hand-drawn art and declarations. This newsstand, unlike the sterile silver rectangular kiosks that now litter the city, embodies the spirit of a New York gone by.

The newsstand encapsulates themes significant to many New Yorkers – the disappearance of historical institutions, evolving neighborhoods, political changes impacting local life, the city’s vanishing quirkiness, and the passionate preservationists striving to keep these memories alive. The City Reliquary, in essence, serves as a container for these invaluable relics of New York, and Petrella’s Point exemplifies their work perfectly.

Petrella’s Point was more than a newsstand. It was a community hub where locals picked up their daily essentials and experienced Adam’s unique take on the neighborhood. His stand, dotted with humorous and helpful directions, also showcased his own artistic creations – the famous Bruce Lee and Marilyn Monroe drawings and pictorial narratives of the neighborhood’s changes over the years. As noted by Dave Herman on our podcast, Adam’s stand served as a source of inspiration for the City Reliquary.

Just like the Jewish delis we discussed in episode 3, newsstands too have dwindled over time. Once numbering over 1,500 in the 1950s, now only about 300 stand, primarily in Manhattan. The shift from paper to digital news played a part, but politics as always contributed to this decline. In 1997, Mayor Giuliani increased the annual fee charged to news vendors from $538 to $5000, and sometimes even more if the location was more desirable. The Street Furniture Bill of 2003, introduced during Bloomberg’s term, called for the removal of the diverse, sometimes ramshackle newsstands, to be replaced by homogenous silver structures. These changes led to protests by Adam and a handful of newsstand operators, but to little avail. The original Petrella’s Point was even torn down covertly in the night in 2004 by a bank that moved in on his corner, only to be restored after community outcry. The bank agreed to pay for it’s replacement which was wood unlike it’s metal sturdy predecessor. Adam salvaged what he could from the dumpster and fortified the new newsstand with metal planks. Sadly, Adam’s passing in 2006 marked the end of Petrella’s Point as we knew it, saved ultimately by the Reliquary.
Here are some shots of Newsstands over the years in NYC.

The nostalgia for what Petrella’s Point represented still lingers. A Reliquary version of the stand was displayed at the Dumbo Arts Festival thanks to Dave Herman. The in April of 2013 three artists Anne Libby, Elise Mcmahon, and Sophie Stone created an homage to Adam’s beloved stand. The Petrella’s Import pop-up sold indie zines, journals, art and also regular Newstand fare. As the city frequently transforms, lamentations for the loss of its originality and individuality are common. Fortunately, we can still celebrate the memory of these characters and institutions through the City Reliquary.

Additional Reading & References:
About Adam
-Adam Petrella, 85, newsstand owner who had an artist’s soul – The Villager/NY AM
-Remembering Petrella’s Point – EV Grieve

The Newsstands Battle/History
As Bloomberg’s New York Prospered, Inequality Flourished Too – NY Times
Newsstands of Tomorrow Get Mixed Reviews Today – NY Times
News Vendors Face Prospect Of Last Stand – NY Times
How New Yorkers Are Fighting to Save the City’s Struggling Newsstands – Thrillist

Patrellas Imports
BLNK: Petrella’s Imports – Artfcity
Petrella’s Imports Revives the Lost Individuality of NYC Newsstands – Hyperallergic


The Latin Quarter Revue: Behind the Curtain

May 20, 2023 through January 2024

The City Reliquary is proud to partner with guest curator Kirsten Larvick on a new exhibition, The Latin Quarter Revue: Behind the Curtain, which explores the nightclub era by way of a singular New York cabaret: the Latin Quarter, which originally operated in Times Square from 1942 to 1969.

A combination of archival footage, photos, ephemera, and more will reveal the life–and afterlife–of this iconic New York nightlife space, offering a glimpse into the midcentury American dream through the eyes of some of the incredible artists who shaped it.

A joint effort by Boston nightclub impresario Lou Walters (father of famed reporter Barbara Walters) and theater and cinema entrepreneur E.M. Loew, the club was inspired by the cabarets of the Paris Latin Quarter district from which it took its name, and other areas of the rive gauche. This 630-seat restaurant-theatre in the heart of Times Square was a global destination. Performers included Broadway talent, beautiful showgirls, and major headliners such as Mae West, Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, comedians from Shecky Greene to the Ritz Brothers, and adagio dancers Francios Szony and Nancy Claire.

By the mid-1960s, the US experienced political and cultural upheaval that forced a re-evaluation of the American Dream. In New York, these changes transformed the landscape of Times Square into the gritty arena it would remain into the 1980s. Amidst this backdrop, the once sumptuous cabarets were seen as gaudy remnants of yesteryear’s naivete. By the end of the decade many clubs turned out their lights, including Lou Walters’ World Famous Latin Quarter.

Kirsten Larvick is a documentarian and archivist. She directed the award-winning John Hemmer & the Showgirls (2017), which tells the story of John Hemmer, a singer at the Latin Quarter in the 1960s. She is the founder of the Al Larvick Fund and a board co-chair of the Women’s Film Preservation Fund.

The Latin Quarter Revue: Behind the Curtain is dedicated in loving memory of John Hemmer and the many other Latin Quarter performers who are no longer with us.

The City Reliquary Presents: BIRD SHOW

BIRD SHOW documents the ways humans & birds notice, help, and threaten each other. Like all New Yorkers, wild birds are jostling for space and rubbing shoulders with others as they go about their day. Sometimes those interactions are with humans, sometimes with other wildlife; often these interactions are to the detriment of birds, sometimes, to the detriment of humans, and sometimes, to the benefit of both.

Curated by our own Board Member and Designer About Town Jacob FordBIRD SHOW exhibits art and artifacts illustrating these human-bird interactions and asks how we can better adapt to our fellow creatures and create a better habitat for us all. 

Taxonomized incorrectly as science fair, fairly as art gallery, but most specifically as museum exhibition, BIRD SHOW looks at humans watching birds, and the birds staring back.

Work & artifacts by

  • Andrew Garn
  • Gabriel Willow
  • Nina Katchadourian
  • Alex Tomlinson
  • Bird Union
  • Stephen Mallon
  • Daniel LaCosse
  • Duke Riley
  • Christian Cooper
  • Ryan Mandelbaum
  • Adrian Brandon
  • NYC Audubon
  • Project Safe Flight
  • National Transportation Safety Board
  • National Pigeon Association
  • Et cetera & more

BIRD SHOW will be on view through June 5, 2022.

Nov. 12: Opening Reception for NYC Trash! Past, Present, & Future

NYC Trash

Join us for a brunch reception on Sunday, November 12 at noon to celebrate the opening of NYC Trash! Past, Present, & Future.

We will be joined by Council Member Antonio Reynoso, representative for District 34 and Chair of the council’s Committee on Sanitation and Solid Waste Management. Representatives from the Bureau of Recycling and Sustainability of the NYC Dept. of Sanitation will distribute free bags of compost to promote their new curbside Organics Collection program.

$5 admission includes complimentary coffee courtesy of Oslo Coffee Roasters and light refreshments. Brunch cocktails and Brooklyn Brewery beer available by suggested donation.

This exhibition presents the stories behind New York’s solid waste, from “one man’s garbage is another man’s gold” to the inventive ways New Yorkers are reusing and recycling. It traces the trajectory of waste management in New York, from the squalid nineteenth-century tenements documented by Jacob A. Riis, to the Dead Horse Bay landfill and the beginnings of the NYC Department of Sanitation at the turn of the century. It also addresses the mid-century landfill of Fresh Kills on Staten Island and the ecological restoration project currently underway to convert this site into park space.

The exhibition culminates in profiles of seven artists and nonprofits that offer innovative ways of considering waste now and in the future:

  • Mierle Laderman Ukeles, whose work highlights overlooked social aspects of trash disposal. Update: Mierle Laderman Ukeles will attend the Nov. 12 reception for NYC Trash. Unfortunately, her artwork “The Social Mirror” will not be on display at the Reliquary. DSNY has discovered damage to the truck that precludes moving it from its storage facility. Ukeles’s 1983 work The Social Mirror will be on display at the Reliquary for the November 12 opening reception.
  • Larry Racioppo, NYC 2016 Best Unknown Photographer, whose work focuses on the urban landscape. See his recent blog post for the Brooklyn Public Library.
  • Hack:Trash:NYC, aims for zero waste sent to NYC landfills by 2030. Their 2017 hackathon invites creative solutions to waste management.
  • Industrial/Organic, dedicated to converting organic food waste to high-value resources
  • Lower East Side Ecology Center, a nonprofit that collects electronic waste and separates it for reuse and recycling
  • Materials for the Arts, a nonprofit that collects and distributes art supplies and materials to nonprofit organizations with arts programming and public schools
  • RISE Products, creates nutritious ingredients from upcycled organic byproducts, which reduces waste and preserves the environment

The exhibition will also explore the role of trash as cultural archive through objects selected from the Treasure in the Trash collection of Nelson Molina. In his thirty years on the job as a DSNY employee, Molina amassed a monumental collection of ephemera picked from the castoffs of everyday New Yorkers. Read more about his museum in this New York Times article.

NYC Trash! runs from November 2, 2017 to April 29, 2018. A display of trash art by a number of local artists will complement the exhibition and will open in the Reliquary sculpture garden on April 5, 2018.


This exhibition is generously sponsored by:

Jacquelyn Ottman (author of The New Rules of Green Marketing and founder of WeHateToWaste.com)
Sims Municipal Recycling

Sun Bear Media

Be a part of the our exhibition, “NYC Trash!: Past, Present, & Future”!

Jacob A. Riis, "Italian Home Under a Dump," ca. 1890. Museum of the City of New York (90.13.1.208)

Jacob A. Riis, “Italian Home Under a Dump,” ca. 1890. Museum of the City of New York (90.13.1.208)

CALL FOR EXHIBITORS:
NYC Trash! Past, Present, & Future

The City Reliquary invites proposals for its upcoming exhibition, NYC Trash! Past, Present, & Future, which will open in October 2017 and run through April 2018. From Jacob A. Riis’s images of 19th-century squalor to plans for waste management in the 21st century and beyond, this show will explore the diverse ways that New Yorkers relate to and deal with their trash.

Waste management experts, collectors of NYC Department of Sanitation ephemera, enthusiasts of reuse/recycling, and anyone invested in the past, present, or future of trash in New York City are encouraged to submit their ideas. Contact [email protected] with your name, phone number, and a brief description of your exhibit idea including any AV and/or size & space requirements.

The curators are particularly interested in contributions that address projects related to reuse and recycling and how the city must deal with its waste in the future, but all proposals will be considered. The deadline for submissions is August 14, 2017.

July 1: Opening Reception for “The United States: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow”

 

USL_LetsLookInside_SSUS-3_300dpi11x17_CityReliquary_Exhibit-3Flat copy 2

New extended date!
The United States: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow

June 29 – August 20, 2017  Sept. 24, 2017
Opening reception: Saturday, July 1 @ 7 PM
Admission: $5


The City Reliquary proudly presents, in partnership with the New York Chapter of the SS United States Conservancy
The United States: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow. This exhibition celebrates the extraordinary career of the luxury liner known as “America’s Flagship” and her relationship with the City of New York. The show will run from June 29th to September 24, 2017.

The opening event at The City Reliquary on Saturday, July 1 at 7 PM will commemorate the 65th Anniversary of SS United States’ famous record-breaking Maiden Voyage. There will be an 8 PM screening of the film Colossus On The River (1965; Runtime: 15 min.). Beverages available by suggested donation, with beer courtesy of The Brooklyn Brewery and a specialty cocktail courtesy of Montauk Rum.

This show will trace the life of the ship, from young speed queen and popular cover girl to aging star of yesteryear and nearly forgotten “has-been,” and finally–with your help–to one of the great comeback stories in U.S. history.


About the SS United States:

SaveTheUnitedStatesCopyright2cropped_72dpi_PStipUpon its completion in 1952, the SS United States immediately won the Blue Riband for setting a new Transatlantic speed record–a record that remains unbeaten.
In her heyday, the ship welcomed celebrities from the golden age of Hollywood, such as Marilyn Monroe, Judy Garland, Mahalia Jackson, Salvador Dalí, Grace Kelly, and Joan Crawford. During the 1964 New York World’s Fair, it was touted as the fastest and most luxurious way to travel to Europe.
With the advent of jet technology, however, overseas travel began to look less exciting and became less profitable. In 1969, the SS United was abruptly withdrawn from service while docked in Newport News, Virginia for annual maintenance. She was moved to South Philadelphia in 1996 where she remains today.

The SS United States Conservancy purchased the ship outright in February 2011. They hope to find a new purpose for the fastest, finest, and largest ocean liner ever to be built in the United States.

Want to get in touch with the SS United States Conservancy’s New York Chapter? Drop them a line at [email protected]

June 3: Opening Reception for Closet Archaeology: An Accidental Time Capsule

CA extended

Saturday, June 3 @ 2 PM
Admission: $5

In the winter of 2015 in the Children’s Workshop School in the East Village, a Manhattan fourth grader peered into the dusty crevices beneath his classroom closet floorboards. He wondered what treasures might have fallen there in the 104 years since the building was constructed. His classmates took notice and joined him in poking under the boards and pulling out artifacts of everyday life.

Through this “closet archaeology,” the students excavated an accidental time capsule built over a century by the students who had also once sat in their classroom. These junior archaeologists have unearthed love notes, spelling tests, caps from glass milk bottles, portraits of silent film stars, penny candy wrappers, and more. They have even found former students, now adults, who remember losing these items. The project was covered in The New York Times. Miriam Sicherman runs the Closet Archaeology Instagram account.

The City Reliquary is proud to present the first formal exhibition of Closet Archaeology after featuring it at Collectors’ Night 2017.

The Opening Reception on Sat., June 3 at 2 PM will include presentations from some of the junior archaeologists from the Children’s Workshop School as well as professional collectors and anthropologists:

Beverages available by suggested donation, with beer courtesy of The Brooklyn Brewery.

See the slideshow below for a selection of objects, and see even more of Miriam’s students’ finds on the Closet Archaeology Instagram.

 

 

May 7: Heroes of the Knish Closing Reception

Silver_fig01_17_600_dpi

Sunday, May 7, 2-5 PM
Admission: $5, available at the door

Join us as we bid farewell to our exhibition, Heroes of the Knish: Making a Living and Making a Life. This show traced the history of the iconic New York City street food from its origins in Eastern Europe to its arrival in the US with Jewish immigrants, to its popularization through early knish makers such as Mrs. Stahl, Mano Hirsch, Ruby the Knishman, and Yonah Schimmel.

The event will celebrate the knish in style, with live music from All That Jazz (Rachel Levine on vocals, Christopher Bandini on guitar) and a curator’s talk from Laura Silver, author of Knish: In Search of the Jewish Soul Food.

We’ll serve an international spread of knishes and knish cousins such as dumplings from Vanessa’s Dumpling House, pierogi from classic Greenpoint spots, and more!

Photo credit: Barbara Pfeffer

The Triangle Waist Factory Fire Memorial Quilt

To commemorate the 106th anniversary of the Triangle Waist Factory Fire, The City Reliquary will display Robin Berson’s memorial quilt in its front room exhibition space until May 2017.

The Triangle Waist Factory Fire
On Saturday, March 25, 1911, at 4:45 pm, almost closing time, a fire broke out on the 8th floor of the Triangle Waist Company located one block east of Washington Square Park at Washington Place and Greene Street. The owners had locked the doors to the stairwells and exits to prevent workers from taking unauthorized breaks and to reduce theft. Fire escapes collapsed by the weight of the workers dropping them to their deaths. Workers on the 10th floor were warned by telephone and escaped to the roof. No one warned the workers on the 9th floor. A locked exit door trapped the workers on the 9th floor. Surrounded by flames many of the workers jumped to their death. Fire trucks arrived but their ladders only reached the 6th floor and the rescue nets could not hold the force of the bodies jumping from such a height. The heroic elevator operators ran the elevators as long as they could as workers pressed into the cars; some tumbled down the elevator shaft. In the end, 146 people died.

Triangle 3 Triangle 2

 

 

The Triangle Fire—and the memorial quilt—represent an appalling moment in history, but one that drew an intelligent, far-reaching reform response across America. The fire became a rallying cry for the international labor movement and resulted in numerous state and national workplace reforms. Many of our fire safety laws were created in response to this tragic event. That is the history we must keep alive, for the sake of every working person in the country (and, in this globalized world, every worker everywhere). The need is greater than ever.

The Memorial Quilt

The Triangle Factory Fire Memorial quilt is one of two quilts in the series Workers Memorial Quilts created by quilter, author, and historian Robin Berson. The two quilts honor garment workers who died in twin workplace disasters that bookended the past century: the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911 and the Tazreen fire and Rana Plaza collapse of 2012 and 2013 in Bangladesh.


Conceived, Designed, and Sewn: Robin Berson
Contributors: Sandra Cain, Donna Choi, Deanna Gates, Pauline Hazard, Genevieve Hitchings, Maureen Hyslop, Jennifer Merz, Rena Rappaport, and Lea Williams Rose

To make this quilt, Robin Berson put out a call to a number of quilters’ guilds, assorted artists’ circles—and quite a few women. The quilt includes blocks by four quilter’s guild members: Sandra Cain, Pauline Hazard, Maureen Hyslop, and Rena Rappaport; two members of Robin’s knitters’ circle: Lea Williams Rose and Deanna Gates; and three students from an FIT class on illustration: Donna Choi, Jennifer Merz, and Genevieve Hitchings.  Robin created the rest of the blocks herself, in some cases working from old family portraits and archival photos, but in most cases tinkering elaborately with enlarged images from small photos in 110-year-old newspaper clippings.

In addition to the factory worker victims, the quilt also depicts the two heroic elevator operators, Joey Zito and Gaspare Mortilalo; and the African American porter, Thomas Horton.

Texts on the quilt include passages from beloved labor songs and quotes from notable American figures on the rights of workers—from Frederick Douglass to Dwight Eisenhower to Myles Horton—plus a listing of all the victims’ names.

The memorial quilts have been displayed at numerous small museums and galleries in New York City; the Cathedral of St. John the Divine; Iona College; the Virginia Arts of the Book Center, through the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities. In March 2015 they were featured at the conference of the UN Commission on the Status of Women, hosted by Fordham Law School. For International Women’s Day 2016 they were part of a day-long presentation on the Triangle Fire at Hofstra University. The Triangle Quilt is featured in the book Quilts and Human Rights, with a foreword by Desmond Tutu.

For more information see:
www.rememberthetrianglefire.org
http://www.workermemorialquilts.org/

Heroes of the Knish covered in the Forward!

Photo Credit: Barbara Pfeffer

Photo Credit: Barbara Pfeffer

Our upcoming exhibition, Heroes of the Knish just received this excellent writeup in the Forward! Don’t miss the opening reception this Sunday, Feb. 12 @ 2 PM!

The Forward is a periodical delivering incisive coverage of the issues, ideas and institutions that matter to American Jews. Now in its 120th year of operation, and with digital and print editions in both English and Yiddish, the Forward reaches more than 1.2 million average monthly users. Its public service mission is to promote an informed, connected and inspired American Jewish citizenry through outstanding journalism.