Join The City Reliquary on Friday, October 2nd for free entry to the museum from 7-10pm and a special talk with author Rolando Pujol at 7:30pm.
Rolando Pujol is a lifelong journalist and the creator of The Retrologist, where across Instagram, Substack and other platforms he chronicles America’s vanishing roadside culture. By day, he is the executive producer of digital content, innovation, and strategy at WABC-TV Channel 7 Eyewitness News in New York.
In “The Great American Retro Road Trip,” Pujol takes readers on a coast-to-coast celebration of the nostalgic pleasures of America’s vintage signs, quirky roadside attractions, and offbeat fast-food relics.
City Reliquary board member Kyle Supley will lead a conversation with Pujol as they explore his work documenting nostalgic roadside Americana.
Entry is free and capacity is limited. Please RSVP but note that this event is first come, first served.
Today, and every day, our thoughts are with the city and its people. On the 25th anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center, we at The City Reliquary are reflecting on New York City’s strength in the aftermath via a collection of paper artifacts. With this in mind, we wanted to share a note from our founder, Dave Herman, retired FDNY firefighter.
Sometimes the most ethereal objects can hold long lasting memories.
Lifted by a plume of smoke, millions of pieces of paper floated into a cloudless sky over Manhattan on the morning of September 11th.
From a distance, fluttering white specs appeared like a pigeon mumbler’s flight.
These pages instantly became the artifacts of our collective history. Most of them drifted away, some landed in Brooklyn, or sank into the Mahicantuck, the river that flows both ways.
In the days and weeks following this moment of tragedy, a tapestry of paper pages was woven by our community and blanketed the city. Our neighbors, united, built the sincerest memorial with heartfelt and desperate urgency.
The streets of the city were still softened by documents, newspapers, receipts, and mundane paper detritus that rained from the falling towers.
The public walls, fences, and street furniture were swathed with paper posters swiftly collaged together with photos, names, phone numbers and addresses. Descriptions of tattoos, clothing, and hairdos that were last seen on loved ones, typed up or scrawled in with ball point pens or markers. Some were stapled with original Polaroid photos. Some blurred by multiple generations of Xerox copies.
These sincerest love letters were shared with us, the people of New York, a de facto support system of saddened survivors.
The temporal pages of that moment have become the cornerstone of a new New York.
The preservation of these paper relics is a commitment to collective memory. The City Reliquary Museum was born from the resilience of a city unified and strengthened in its sincere passion. We are the love letter to New York. You are New York.
– Dave Herman
Founder, City Reliquary Museum & Civic Organization
Retired FDNY L104
“The Southside” Williamsburgh, Brooklyn, NYC
See below to explore our collection of paper artifacts collected in the aftermath of 9/11.
Remembering the Faces and Names of Our Neighbors
A collection of found photographs of individual flyers of missing New Yorkers. Photographer unknown. Contact information has been removed to respect the privacy of the families.
Paper Relics Collected in the Aftermath of the Attacks
A single page of a Polish newspaper that became airborne and landed in Brooklyn from the World Trade Center after the collapse of the Twin Towers, 2001.
A Polaroid photo of a letter posted in Lower Manhattan with the words “Thank you for all your help in New York City.” Photo by Dave Herman, 2001.
A postcard reading “New York Needs Us Strong.” The back reads “Every New Yorker has been touched by Sept. 11 and its aftermath. If you need to talk, help is available.” 2001.
Photograph of clouds of smoke and debris after the towers collapsed with a boat in the foreground. The first volunteer responders arrived by boat to transport civilians off of Manhattan Island. Photographer unknown, 2001.
Photograph of clouds of smoke and debris after the towers collapsed. Photographer unknown, 2001.
Photograph of clouds of smoke and debris after the towers collapsed. Photographer unknown, 2001.
Photocopy of a painting by Adam Petrella, which he distributed from his newsstand on the corner of Bowery and Canal St, 2001.
A series of xeroxes of black and white photographs scanned and rescanned to varying degrees of abstraction and image degradation. The images comprise a dreamscape of various locations in New York City, many on the peripheries of its outer boroughs. An exploration of everyday borders, outposts and spaces, the works utilize weather, light and shadow to reveal an ethereal and fleeting infrastructure we inhabit and move through.
On August 26, The City Reliquary will host a screening of O’Hare’s short film,The Light at Dusk, a photo-montage film that interweaves still photographs of New York City and upstate New York with a spoken text dealing with themes of memory, time, and the uncanny.
The screening will be followed by a conversation with multi-media artist Brent Wahl and a celebration of the release of O’Hare’s latest book, Memories of a Weather Exposed Skeleton. This, along with his 2020 release Evanescent Cities, will be available for purchase.
O’Hare’s exhibit in our front room, his short film, and his latest book share many of the same images, allowing audiences the opportunity to engage with his work in a range of formats.
Akiva Listman and The City Reliquary share a longstanding and thorough appreciation for New York City, both sharing the objects they cherish.
A place most famous for its sweeping skylines, the truest spirit of New York often rests right beneath our feet. This exhibition honors the physical objects that witness the City’s daily rhythm and reflect it back to us through their wear and surface qualities. Small pieces of the city, which could otherwise go unrecognized, on display for our delight and understanding.
Join us for a screening of Patrick O’Hare’s “The Light at Dusk,” a photo-montage film that interweaves still photographs of New York City and upstate New York with a spoken text dealing with themes of memory, time, and the uncanny.
Both the stills and the poems are at times fragmented, cryptic, and on the edge of a disembodied state of awareness. The exploration is of a city as a lonely void, and the country as a place of haunted shapes and forms, that eventually merge with each other and produce a state of mind that transcends the idea of regions and embraces a kind of perpetual transition, impermanence, uncertainty, and foreboding.
The forces and refractions of weather and visual phenomenon in both urban infrastructure and the rural and small-town landscapes provide gestures of a fragile beauty that hover on the edge of futility. A cinematic narrative that follows the contours, specters, illuminations, and visual portals of the everyday.
The short screening will be followed by a discussion with Brent Wahl, a multi-media artist whose photography stages questions about collective identity, our relationship to reality and perception, and the ways we frame our existence. Through ambiguity, contextual, and optical shifts, his work reveals unexpected connections and complicates meaning within the frame. Wahl is a Senior Lecturer at the Weitzman School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania.
Following the conversation, O’Hare’s new book “Memories of a Weather Exposed Skeleton” will be available for purchase, alongside his 2020 release, “Evanescent Cities.” O’Hare’s exhibit in our front room, his short film, and his latest book share many of the same images, allowing audiences the opportunity to engage with his work in a range of formats.
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Come celebrate the opening of two new exhibits that explore the ephemeral everyday in NYC!
In the back gallery, we are thrilled to host Akiva Listman’s “I Appreciate You.” This exhibition honors the physical objects that witness New York City’s daily rhythm and reflect it back to us through their wear and surface qualities. Small pieces of the city, which could otherwise go unrecognized, on display for our delight and understanding.
In the front room, The City Reliquary is pleased to present Patrick O’Hare’s “Views from the Skeletal City,” a series of xeroxes of black and white photographs scanned and rescanned to varying degrees of abstraction and image degradation. The images comprise a dreamscape of various locations in New York City, many on the peripheries of its outer boroughs. An exploration of everyday borders, outposts and spaces, the works utilize weather, light and shadow to reveal an ethereal and fleeting infrastructure we inhabit and move through.
Stop by on August 7th between 7-10pm | FREE ENTRY for all!
