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
– Vintage33mm 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 –
Hello City Reliquary website visitor! For the latest listing of our upcoming events, please visit our Withfriends page here! You can purchase tickets or reserve Member tickets to all upcoming events through that site.
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 Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, The Nation, The 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 Panorama Challenge is postponed in light of the ongoing COVID-19 situation. We hope to reschedule this event later in the year when we can once again safely gather to celebrate our love of New York City, and we hope to see you there. We’ll announce a new date when we have more information.
The 13th Annual Panorama Challenge Friday, April 17, 2020: Doors 5 PM, Open Museum Galleries 5-7pm, Game 7 PM Queens Museum, Flushing Meadows-Corona Park
General Admission: $15 advance/$20 day of game
City Reliquary & Queens Museum members: $12 advance/$15 day of game
SEEKING KNOW‐IT‐ALL NEW YORKERS AND LOVERS OF NYC!
On the occasion of this year’s Panorama Challenge the Queens Museum’s galleries will be open after hours from 5 – 7pm, so that participants can visit the newly opened exhibition season, which features a wide range of perspectives and explorations of the city of New York. Exhibitions on view include After the Plaster Foundation, a show on artists’ experiences with home, displacement and real estate in the city, Ridgewood Reservoir for the 21st Century (Community Partnership Exhibition in the Watershed Gallery), and Bruce Davidson: People in Public Places. Make sure to visit the exhibitions and expect a few related questions in the Challenge!
Panorama Challenge quizzes players on all things NYC. MC Gary Dennis reads questions while our judges highlight clues on the Panorama using lasers (well, laser pointers). Players in teams of 10 (or so) use those clues to determine the correct answer.
Quizmaster Jonathan Turer returns for his ninth year with another fresh batch of questions. This year, categories may include: ‘Women in Song’ (audio clues), ‘Brush Up on Your Shakespeare’ and ‘Bruce (Davidson) in NYC’ which will focus on works from the photographer’s exhibit at the Museum. And, to celebrate the 13th Challenge: ‘Unlucky’. Start building your teams accordingly!
Teams may organize as Panorama Challengers or Panorama Pros. Challengers are first‐timers or casual trivia fans. Their questions will be easier! Pros are returning contestants and dedicated enthusiasts of our city’s hidden corners. They answer twice as many questions per round (60 total!) Friendly tour guides from The Levys’ Unique New York! will help match contestants to teams.
The winning Pro team will join the ranks of legendary past winners when its name is etched on the Panorama Challenge Trophy housed at the Queens Museum!
A new prize will be awarded this year in honor of the late Lee Gelber, long-time Panorama Challenge judge and ‘Dean of New York Guides’. To commemorate his love of jokes and puns, the team with the funniest or cleverest name will be added to “The Dean’s List”, a trophy that will live at the museum along with the ‘big prize’.
Food and beverages will be available by suggested donation. A free shuttle, generously provided by DaVinci Limo & Tours, will travel between the Queens Museum and under the Mets‐Willets Point 7 stop from 5:30-7 pm and 9-10 pm.
Westinghouse workers admire the time capsule created by the company for the 1939 World’s Fair in New York
POSTPONED UNTIL FALL
In light of the changing COVID-19 situation in NYC and to allow our speaker to avoid unnecessary air travel, we have decided to postpone Time Capsules: Relics of History and Hope until Fall 2020, when we’ll celebrate the 80th Anniversary of the Westinghouse time capsule. Hope to see you then!
Thursday, March 19 at 6:30 pm at the City Reliquary
Precious antiques and relics are usually either handed down from generation to generation, traded by collectors, or preserved and exhibited in museums such as the City Reliquary. But with time capsules, one can transform an ordinary artifact of the present into an instant relic, packaged and sealed for future antiquarians
In this talk, Prof. Nick Yablon will discuss the origins of this practice in Gilded Age America, drawing on his new book, Remembrance of Things Present: The Invention of the Time Capsule. In keeping with this museum’s emphasis on cultural ephemera, he will focus less on the written messages than on the artifacts that he found in various chests and boxes around the country—from handcrafted objects and exotic oddities (such as Robespierre’s molar) to manufactured items such as shoes or a telephone.
What kinds of insights or hopes did people hope to convey by depositing these things? Why did historians and museum curators disdain such ordinary artifacts until well into the twentieth century? And could such deposits, as material links spanning the centuries, foster respect for the rights of posterity?
Copies of Remembrance of Things Present will be available for purchase and signing, and the Museum will have a special selection of rarely-displayed artifacts on view in keeping with the time capsule spirit of the event.
The Loft at Prince Street – 177 Prince Street, Manhattan
Advance Tickets $20 – Includes admission to the Museum of Interesting Things vintage film event following at 6 pm
Proceeds benefit the City Reliquary Museum
Your favorite collectors of historical curiosities are joining forces! We hope you’ll join us for a very special benefit event hosted by the Museum of Interesting Things! On Sunday, January 26 from 4 to 6 pm, the City Reliquary Museum will hold a Secret Speakeasy pre-show at The Loft on Prince Street. We’ll have unusual facts and artifacts from the collection of our founder Dave Herman, plus additional surprises! And your ticket includes admission to the Museum of Interesting Things vintage 16mm film jukebox (and more) at 6 pm. Refreshments will be available (it is a speakeasy, after all!) and there will be many marvels to see in this beautiful Soho space.
Advance tickets are highly recommended and available here! Your purchase will benefit the City Reliquary Museum and help us produce events and exhibits throughout 2020!
Many thanks to Denny Daniel and the Museum of Interesting Things!
Come and experience a retro-tech time-travel experience unlike any other! (Perhaps you read about it in the New York Times?) Immerse yourself in the 1950s through incredible Midcentury 3-D photographs — taken mostly by amateurs with the Stereo Realist Camera system. Emmy-winning writer and comedian Eric Drysdale has been collecting the amazing images produced by this largely-forgotten technology for 25 years and will share them with you in your own (for the night) high-quality restored vintage stereo viewer. New York City will be highlighted, but all of America is the star. Don’t miss this intimate yet spectacular trip to the past!
There are only 12 tickets available for this evening, so we highly recommend purchasing in advance to guarantee your seat (and stereo-viewer)!
On a now-vanished island in Jamaica Bay, a community of new immigrants and African-Americans transformed the city’s waste into industrial products and built a neighborhood from scratch. In her bookBrooklyn’s Barren Island: A Forgotten History, author Miriam Sicherman (of Closet Archaeology fame) traces the development of this oft-forgotten community from the 1850s to 1936, when they were evicted to create New York City’s first municipal airport.
We will celebrate the release of Brooklyn’s Barren Island with a talk and book signing by Miriam Sicherman at the City Reliquary Museum on Thursday, November 21 at 7 pm! Join us to learn more about this fascinating fragment of NYC history.
Come and experience a retro-tech time-travel experience unlike any other! Immerse yourself in the 1950s through incredible Midcentury 3-D photographs — taken mostly by amateurs with the Stereo Realist Camera system. Emmy-winning writer and comedian Eric Drysdale has been collecting the amazing images produced by this largely-forgotten technology for 25 years and will share them with you in your own (for the night) high-quality restored vintage stereo viewer. New York City will be highlighted, but all of America is the star. Don’t miss this intimate yet spectacular trip to the past!
There are only 12 tickets available for this evening, so we highly recommend purchasing in advance to guarantee your seat (and stereo-viewer)!
The City Reliquary is pleased to announce our Fall event series, Cinema City! Presented by Screen Slate contributor and NYC trivia expert (part of the reigning Panorama Challenge championship team!) Cosmo Bjorkenheim, each Cinema City program will explore New York City’s many and varied depictions in film through clips and discussion. From early Edison experiments to recent blockbusters, studio standards to cult favorites, you’ll see New York in a whole new light!
On Saturday, October 5, 2019, Cinema City kicks off with an exploration of Coney Island on film! Coney Island’s thrill rides and colorful entertainment have made it a popular on-screen destination for more than 100 years. As its fortunes have changed, so too has its depiction on film. Cosmo will trace the history of America’s playground from dream destination to Darren Aronofsky fever dream in this hour-long program. You’ll have plenty of time to explore the City Reliquary’s collection afterward!
It wouldn’t be a film screening – or, indeed, a trip to Coney Island – without refreshments! Included in your ticket is an array of unique Coney Island-themed snacks from culinary creatives Lucia Jazayeri and Anna Gelb, a.k.a. Forest Dinners. Lucia is the Creative Director for Clover Food Lab. Anna is the Director of Events for Outstanding in the Field. You’ll also receive a drink from our friends at Brooklyn Brewery! (Non-alcoholic beverages will also be available.)
See you in the Cyclone line! Get your tickets here!
