Exhibit

Liberty the Tattooed Lady: The Great Bartholdi Statue as Depicted in Tattooing

On View: March 15-January 12, 2024
Opening Reception: Friday, April 5 at 6 PM

The City Reliquary Museum and Daredevil Tattoo are proud to announce Liberty the Tattooed Lady: The Great Bartholdi Statue as Depicted in Tattooing. This new exhibition is the first devoted entirely to the history of Statue of Liberty tattoos. Through a stunning collection of vintage tattoo art–including pieces never put on public display before–it shows how the Statue of Liberty has been embraced and embodied by American tattoo artists since the turn of the century.

Since its unveiling in 1886, the Statue of Liberty has served as a symbol of New York City and the nation. Received as a gift from France to commemorate the Declaration of Independence and the abolition of slavery, Lady Liberty has long represented ideals often associated with the idea of America: freedom and liberty. Antique flash, vintage photographs, drawings, and other related objects on display in this exhibit show that Lady Liberty has been a popular subject in tattooing for as long as she’s stood in New York Harbor. 

Guests will have the opportunity to view a stunning collection of vintage tattoo art, including pieces that have never been on public display before. The history of Lady Liberty in tattoo art is told through a stunning collection of antique flash, vintage photographs, drawings, stencils, paintings and other related objects. 

This exhibition brings together artifacts from some of the most legendary tattooers of the early twentieth century, including–but not limited to–Bert Grimm, Owen Jensen, Dainty Dotty, Lou Normand, and Ralph Johnson. 

This exhibition was curated by Michelle Myles of Daredevil Tattoo Shop & Museum.

Wonder Woman Events!

Art by Isabel Samaras

The City Reliquary’s new exhibit, Wonder Women: NYC’s Heroes of Heterodoxy spans topics of feminism, equality, and community—all subjects that we at the museum hold dear and are determined to highlight and uplift.

In the spirit of Wonder Women everywhere, we have teamed up with some amazing community members to educate, inspire, and entertain you!

Get tickets to all events here, at our Withfriends events page. Museum Members may reserve free tickets through the same page.

Friday, June 24th
Opening Reception

– Open house, museum tours, informative talks, and some surprise performances –
 

Saturday, June 25th
Cartoon Carnival

– Vintage 33mm film cartoon showing with the theme: Wonderful Women –
 

Thursday, June 30th
Carousel


– A comics reading and performances focusing on Women in Comics –

Thursday, July 14th
Bare Book Club

– Women who love to read naked will be reading excerpts from articles, books, slash fiction, and more celebrating the world of comics –
 

Thursday, July 28th
Superhero Burlesque


– A sexy show where all kinds of superheroes take it all off in the name of comics –

Friday, August 26th
Lookalike Contest

– Enter to win a variety of prizes in several categories in this silly and enthralling competition to be the most like Wonder Woman –
Click here to submit a short form to compete!

And More TBA!

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.

Seeking Submissions for Wonder Women Zine! Deadline April 18, 2022!

Black and white illustration of a fist holding a coiled rope and wearing a dark armband
Wonder Woman-inspired illustration by Leslie Lanxinger

The City Reliquary Museum, in collaboration with Desert Island, is conducting a call for submissions of artwork and creative or academic writing related to or inspired by the popular icon, Wonder Woman.  

Submissions will be considered for inclusion in a 32-page comic book, edition of 2000 titled “Wonder Women: NYC’s Heroes of Heterodoxy.” Edited by Desert Island founder, Gabe Fowler and City Reliquary founder, Dave Herman; it will serve as a companion piece to the museum exhibition of the same name on view at the City Reliquary Museum beginning in June 2022. The comic book will be distributed free to supporters of the City Reliquary and Desert Island, and to select comic book dealers throughout NYC. Selected contributors will receive 10 free copies of the publication.

Other contributors to the museum exhibit and limited edition comic book include:

  • Trina Robbins; artist and author, The Legend of Wonder Woman, and It Ain’t Me Babe
  • R. Sikoryak; artist, The Unquotable Trump, and Constitution Illustrated 
  • Robyn Smith; artist, Nubia: Real One, and Wash Day Diaries
  • Tim Hanley: author, Wonder Woman Unbound, and Betty and Veronica: The Leading Ladies of Riverdale
  • Noah Berlatsky: author, Wonder Woman, Bondage and Feminism in the Marston/Peter Comics 1941-1948
  • Karen Green; Curator for Comics and Cartoons at Columbia University
  • Andy Mangels; author, editor; Gay Comix, founder/curator; Wonder Woman Museum 

The publication and exhibition will address additional themes integral to the Wonder Woman comics and their surrounding NYC history including:

  • Early 20th century birth control pioneers
  • Underground and Gay Comix 
  • 1st-, 2nd-, and 3rd-generation feminists 
  • BIPOC representations in comic art 
  • NYC protest activities including women’s suffrage parades, pride parades, the BLM movement
  • Women’s, Transgender, and Queer liberation.    

More about the museum exhibition:

For over a century, all across New York City, the women behind the fascinating evolution of Wonder Woman have rejected social norms and fought tirelessly to break the chains of orthodoxy in its many forms. Beginning with the suffrage movement in Greenwich Village and the nation’s first birth control clinic in Brownsville, the character’s unique history grew to span a polyamorous triad at Columbia University, a mental health clinic in Harlem, a Lower East Side bohemian boutique, the United Nations Building, and Black Lives Matter protests throughout the city. Explore the remarkable women who inspired the triumphant and troubling journey of America’s favorite female superhero in the City Reliquary Museum’s exhibit: Wonder Women: NYC’s Heroes of Heterodoxy. 

Submissions should be received by Friday, April 18th 2022.

Email submissions to: [email protected]

Text: No more than 500 words.

Artwork: Single page or 2 page spread. Final artwork should be 6”x9” per page 300 DPI resolution, black and white or CMYK, pdf or jpg format.


The History of Bazooka Joe! Thursday June 10 at 8 pm

The History of Bazooka Joe

Thursday, June 10 – Presentation at 8 – Doors at 7

$7 General Admission – Free for City Reliquary Members (tickets required)

The City Reliquary is proud to present a very special event celebrating America’s favorite eyepatched rascal Bazooka Joe! A distinguished panel of candy and comics experts will discuss the history of the iconic character and his lasting impact on marketing and design.

Our guests include:

Ira Friedman has spent his career on the merchandising side of pop culture. Since his early days at Starlog and Fangoria magazines, to a stint at Lucasfilm during the original release of The Empire Strikes Back and Raiders of the Lost Ark, Ira landed at Topps in 1988 as the director of new product development. Since that time, Ira has been a fixture at the famed bubble gum and trading card company involved in hundreds of different projects, publishing, and confectionery products – ‘homegrown’ and licensed.

Charles Kochman is the Editorial Director of Abrams ComicArts and editor of the #1 bestselling series Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney. For thirty-five years, Kochman has edited several hundred books for all age groups, including award-winning picture books, middle-grade novels, retrospectives, monographs, graphic novels, and art book collections published by Abrams, DC Comics, MAD magazine, Bantam Books, and Putnam. He is a recipient of the Inkpot Award, presented by Comic-Con International for achievement in comics.

Jason Liebig is regarded as one of the nation’s foremost experts on candy and snack food brand history and is considered an arbiter of candy as pop culture and nostalgia.  As such, he has written hundreds of articles on the subject matter and has served as a brand consultant as well as period television consultant for shows such as Stranger Things, Young Sheldon, Mad Men, and more.  His unique perspective and expert knowledge have led him to become an occasional television host and frequent guest, sharing his love of the candy and snack worlds he loves.  Blog: http://www.collectingcandy.com/wordpress/

R. Sikoryak is a cartoonist and author of the graphic novels Constitution Illustrated, The Unquotable Trump, Masterpiece Comics, and Terms and Conditions (Drawn & Quarterly). His comics and illustrations have appeared in The New YorkerThe New York Times Book ReviewThe NationThe Onion, and more. Sikoryak presents his live comics performance series, Carousel, around the U.S. and Canada. 

Special guest appearance by M. Sweeney Lawless, writer of ill repute. Twitter: @Specky4Eyes

Bazooka Joe and his Gang appeared in mini-comics on Bazooka bubble gum wrappers starting in 1954. The comic concept was the brainchild of Woody Gelman and Ben Solomon, heads of product development at Topps, and the original comic artist was Wesley Morse. Topps, the king of trading card companies, has been based in NYC since 1947.

Admission to the Museum and The Call of Candy exhibit included – come early to check out vintage Topps and Bazooka Joe ephemera as well as that of other NYC candy manufacturers from the 1800s to today!

The City Reliquary Proudly Presents: The Call of Candy!

Candy is the fifth food group, the fourth meal of the day, the one that you eat in between all the other meals. And as candy changed from treats sold by the pound from jars atop counters to mass-produced, mass-marketed chews and bars with colorful names, New York City was home to a thriving collection of candy and chocolate manufacturers, employing thousands of New Yorkers. 
America was growing into a candy-eating and candy-producing nation, and that candy (along with the American practice of eating it other than at mealtimes) would be exported all over the globe, much of it originating from here in the Big Apple. At the beginning of the 20th Century, the waterfronts of the East River were lined with sugar refineries, such as the Domino Sugar Corporation on Kent Street, started by the Havemeyer family, namesake of the street not ten yards from the Reliquary’s front door. 

The refined sugar was used by candy manufacturers all over Brooklyn and the surrounding boroughs. In 1908, Brooklyn produced 130,000,000 pounds of confections, serving not only the 560 candy shops across Kings County, but also for national and international export and sale to the U.S. government for use as military rations.

Female employees wrapping candies at large tables in a factory for Wallace Candies in 1914.
Wallace Candy Factory, 1918

From the Rockwood Candy Company near the Navy Yards, to Phoenix Candy Company of Greenwood Heights and the nearby Topps Chewing Gum of Industry City, to Manhattan’s Huyler’s Candy on Irving Place near Union Square, this exhibition displays wrappers, packages, and ephemera of NYC’s boisterous history of candy-making on an industrial scale.
As declared by the National Confectioners Association in the 1920s, “Candy is delicious food—enjoy some every day!”

Bazooka Joe comics on bubblegum wrappers
Bazooka Joe bubblegum wrappers, manufactured by Topps in Brooklyn, NY

Nov. 17 – A Message from Miriam Sicherman, Closet Archaeology Instructor!

Author, educator, and closet archaeologist Miriam Sicherman

I first visited City Reliquary during the Open House New York weekend in October 2016. I’d heard about this little museum many times, but had never made my way to Williamsburg to see it. As soon as I set foot through the turnstile I knew I had entered a space that I could relate to. From the seltzer bottles to the geological specimens to the pencil sharpeners, everything on exhibit showed an attention to how ordinary things, things that most of us take for granted or completely ignore, can actually be objects of fascination and of great value.

Installation view of the Closet Archaeology exhibit at the City Reliquary
Installation view of the Closet Archaeology exhibit at the City Reliquary

This mindset fit exactly with an unexpected project my elementary students had been working on for months. A curious kid, looking for old coins, had begun excavating lost items from underneath the floorboards of the student coat closet. When other kids joined in, it didn’t take long before a 1912 baseball card was found (Charles E. “Gabby” Street of the New York Americans, who became famous for catching a baseball dropped from the Washington Monument), not to mention an endless stream of candy wrappers from bygone brands, schoolwork, stamps, buttons, puzzle pieces, jewelry, bits of newspaper, and even cigarette boxes. These items swept us back to the life of our East Village neighborhood and its children over the course of more than a century. My students all caught the archaeological bug as we peered under the floorboards of more and more closets throughout our 1913 building. We loved finding, looking at, and researching these artifacts, from the cardboard caps of glass milk bottles to the scrawled 1950s spelling tests. And we wanted others to see them, too!

Obviously, the City Reliquary was a perfect place for an exhibit. I spoke with the person working at the front desk that day and the wheels began turning. Working together with me and my students, the Reliquary staff created a beautiful exhibit in the summer of 2017, artfully displaying these bits of detritus from generations of schoolchildren. My own students were thrilled to be taken seriously as junior archaeologists and couldn’t believe it when they learned that more than a thousand people had come to see their exhibit. The lives of schoolchildren past become real to us know through these objects in a way that the written word or even a photo could never approach.

Buttons, puzzle pieces, gum wrappers, and other items found by the closet archaeology students
Photo by Seze Devres for Ace Hotel New York

The items that the Reliquary exhibits with such care and reverence are exactly the ones we might not otherwise notice. Who cares about an old World’s Fair souvenir or a model of the Statue of Liberty? Well, actually, we all SHOULD care. These are the artifacts that teach us about our past, the past that we’re all a product of, even newcomers to New York. By bringing these objects out into the open and focusing our attention on them, the Reliquary gives us back the collective past of our daily life and situates us in history. We can find out what people of the past loved and tolerated and lived with. By extension, it gives us a fresh perspective on the ordinary objects of our own lives, which someday will be historical artifacts as well.

There is no place like the City Reliquary. By keeping it open, we keep the history of the people of the city of New York alive and visible and accessible to all.

Always civic,

Miriam Sicherman

Digital Exhibition: Mediocre Portraits of Outstanding People

Mediocre Portraits of Outstanding People is the most recent series in the City Reliquary’s slate of digital programming on Instagram! From June 12, 2020 to September 4, 2020, the City Reliquary’s neighborhood artist-in-residence, George Ferrandi, appeared on Instagram Live for an hour on to create a sketch of an reflect on someone who had been influencing her thinking during this remarkable cultural moment.

During this series, George listened to and learned from Black thinkers while attempting to honor them through portraiture, and shared the experience live with our audience.

The full series of drawings-in-process can be viewed on the City Reliquary’s Instagram Stories. You can watch and draw along if you like! – and listen to and learn from these visionary ideas. The completed portraits can also be viewed on Instagram, and will be archived in this album on our Flickr page as well.

Week 1: Civil rights lawyer and legal scholar Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. While drawing this portrait on Instagram Live, George and our audience listened to a conversation between Michelle Alexander and Angela Davis about the need to take active steps toward creating a more just society, and how these can be achieved.

Opening Reception for Glen Eden Einbinder’s Glen Eden Collection on February 20!

Thursday, February 20 at 6:30 pm at the City Reliquary Museum

The City Reliquary and Glen Eden Einbinder invite you to an opening reception for our latest Community Collections exhibit of Glen Eden items! Glen’s eponymous collection (and potentially some extras) will be on view and Glen will be on hand to talk about the many and varied Glen Eden representations he has found from across the world. Light refreshments will be served. Admission is pay-what-you-wish, and all are welcome.

Community Collection: Glen Eden Einbinder’s Glen Eden Collection

Travel brochures and postcards form places named Glen Eden, and fabric in a floral pattern called Glen Eden, from Glen Eden Einbinder's collection.
Some of the many places and things bearing the Glen Eden name.

The City Reliquary welcomes Glen Eden Einbinder and his eponymous collection to our Community Collections case! His wide-ranging artifacts – china, fabric, postcards, camp photos, soap, road maps, and more – share something with each other and their collector: all are named Glen Eden.

Glen started his collection in college when he came across a bottle of Glen Eden whiskey, a now-defunct brand. While the quality of the whiskey was not much to speak of, the coincidence of its name and Glen’s inspired him to keep the label. He subsequently took notice of other instances of objects or places sharing his first and middle name and began to collect their physical representations. The evocative pastoral, idyllic quality of the name Glen Eden lends itself well to a wide variety of products and places, a sample of which are now on view. Glen’s full collection includes numerous postcards and photos of street signs from across the U.S. and from as far away as New Zealand. Closer to home is the Glen Eden girls’ finishing school in Poughkeepsie, NY, represented by vintage magazine advertisements and a painting of an ice skater in a Glen Eden sweater.

Glen’s Glen Eden collection will be on view at the City Reliquary through Fall 2020. He will also be making a special guest appearance at the City Reliquary & Museum of Interesting Things’ Secret Speakeasy on Sunday, January 26 to discuss his collection!

You can also see a video of Glen’s collection at his website.