Museum of the City of New York BIENNIAL REPORT FY2011 & FY2012 A MESSAGE FROM THE CHAIRMAN AND THE RONAY MENSCHEL DIRECTOR Council, the Office of the Manhattan Borough President, and the Executive Budget of the City. These public grants total $64.6 million. We are exceedingly grateful to Mayor Michael Bloomberg, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer. Many of our supporters know that the Bloomberg administration brought us downtown, in October, 2011, to take on the management of the South Street Seaport Museum. Managers uptown at the City Museum took on a second job downtown and a staff of approximately 25 was hired to curate and install exhibitions, create school programming, and re-organize the archives and library. Bowne & Co. Stationers, a working collection of 19th- Photograph Pollard Don by Photograph Julie Skarratt by century letter presses and wood and metal type, was re-opened, James G. Dinan Susan Henshaw Jones Chairman Ronay Menschel Director and a brand-new sister shop, Bowne Printers, was about to open in November, 2012, when the city and the Seaport District were DEAR FRIENDS: hit by Hurricane Sandy. Needless to say, Sandy was devastating. During the past two fiscal years, the City Museum continued With no working building systems and FEMA funding as a distant on its trajectory of renewal and growth, completing the second possibility, we were compelled to say that the City Museum could phase of the Museum’s Modernization and Expansion Project with no longer shoulder the management of the Seaport Museum. climate control and renovated galleries on the southern half of the There is much to occupy us uptown, however, where the City Museum, from the first to third floor—in effect, expanding overall Museum’s most exciting project ever is taking shape. We are at exhibition space by returning the third floor to its original gallery work on a core exhibition that will cover the sweep of New York’s uses and creating the new Tiffany & Co. Foundation Gallery, to be history, and the size and the complexity of the story mean that we unveiled in late 2013. will dedicate our entire first floor, including the James G. Dinan Right now, on the third floor, in a space that once housed offices, and Elizabeth R. Miller Gallery, to this purpose. The theme we the exhibition Making Room: New Models for Housing New Yorkers are working with now focuses on our past and present as a city of is bringing visitors to a beautiful gallery with windows facing Central aspirations, to which so many have traveled and in which so many Park that can be darkened when light requirements so dictate. have flourished—not only titans of business, great composers, Making Room—focusing on the need to design and build small and or political leaders, but also everyday New Yorkers who worked flexible units to house single New Yorkers—showcases the work of hard, educated their children, and made a difference in their city agencies as well as creative designers, thus demonstrating again communities. Ideas and innovation have fueled this city, as well our role as the city’s official museum. as our resilient spirit. In so many respects, the American dream Straddling the two fiscal years was the Museum’s most remains very much alive and well in New York City. For verification, successful exhibition ever—The Greatest Grid: The Master Plan ask any cabdriver! of Manhattan, 1811–2011. Conceived and curated by ex-officio We extend the heartiest thanks to all our terrific supporters— trustee Hilary Ballon and designed by Cooper Joseph Studio, who make our work possible. the exhibition content and design were, simply put, stunning. The show and the book that accompanied it were a triumph of scholarship synthesized into highly digestible and engaging forms. We had lines of visitors on the first floor waiting to get into the exhibition, and the companion book edited by Dr. Ballon flew out of our Museum Shop and out of bookstores around the city. Very happily, the final phase of the renovation is about to James G. Dinan, Chairman begin, rehabilitating the northern wing of the building, including the auditorium and a new, larger theater for Timescapes. It will take around 24 months to complete. At the end of the day, we now estimate that we will have spent a total of $93 million, with funds in hand from the private sector, every member of the Board of Trustees, and from the City of New York, including the City Susan Henshaw Jones, Ronay Menschel Director Page 2 CAPITAL CAMPAIGN $5,000,000 AND ABOVE Mitchell S. and Nancy Steir Mr. and Mrs. Robert T. Cornell James G. Dinan and Elizabeth R. Miller Elizabeth Farran Tozer and W. James Tozer Jr. Jan Cowles Heather and William Vrattos Mr. and Mrs. Mark D’Arcy $1,000,000 TO $4,999,999 William Randolph Hearst Foundation James and Nancy Druckman Charina Endowment Fund Mr. and Mrs. James L. Gammon Mr. and Mrs. William T. Comfort $100,000 TO $199,999 Bruce S. Gelb Puffin Foundation Louis Auchincloss William T. Georgis Larry and Sandy Simon The Barker Welfare Foundation Mark Forrest Gilbertson Tiffany & Co. Foundation Lois M. Collier Micah S. Green Todd DeGarmo/STUDIOS Architecture Mr. and Mrs. Douglas A.P. Hamilton $500,000 TO $999,999 Marjorie Fortgang/M. Fabrikant & Sons Dr. and Mrs. Frederic P. Herter Nancy and James Buckman Laura Lofaro Freeman and James Freeman Mr. and Mrs. Ian D. Highet John and Jill Chalsty Lionel Goldfrank III Jane and Michael Hoffman Marvin and Mary Davidson Rachel and Ara Hovnanian The Hyde and Watson Foundation Barbara J. Fife/The Joelson Foundation James Cayne and Patricia Cayne Charitable Trust Joseph and Michelle Jacobs The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Alexandra Lebenthal and Jay Diamond Michael B. Jeffers Margaret T. Morris Foundation Mary Ann and Martin J. McLaughlin Patricia Kavanagh and James Grant Hebe Dowling Murphy Mr. and Mrs. George Braniff Moore Mark Kessel Ronald Purpora/ICAP Corporates LLC Mr. and Mrs. Hans W. Kertess $200,000 TO $499,999 KPMG LLP The Bank of New York Mellon $50,000 TO $99,999 Stanford G. and Sandra T. Ladner The Booth Ferris Foundation Hon. Jonathan Bing, New York State Assembly Jody and Giulio Martini Mr. and Mrs. Jeremy H. Biggs Con Edison Martin Mertz Jennifer and James Cacioppo/ Vernon Evenson Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Miller One East Partners LP Leslie V. Godridge Gurudatta and Margaret Nadkarni Donna and Dermott W. Clancy/ Lorna B. Goodman The National Trust for Historic Preservation Dermott W. Clancy Corporation James E. Hanley Deidre O’Byrne Deban and Thomas M. Flexner Sylvia Hemingway Jane B. and Ralph A. O’Connell George Link Jr. Foundation, Inc. The New York Community Trust Mr. and Mrs. Anthony M. O’Connor James A. Lebenthal Tracey and Ken Pontarelli Olmstead Properties MBIA Foundation, Inc. Allison Whipple Rockefeller and Richard S. Pechter Polly and Newton P.S. Merrill Peter Clark Rockefeller Pershing LLC New York State Council on the Arts Daryl Brown Uber/William E. Weiss Foundation Andy and Libbet Regan Diane and Jim Quinn Fred and Suzanne Rheinstein Mary Ann and Bruno A. Quinson $1,000 TO $49,999 Joseph and Randi Sack Valerie and John W. Rowe Elaine Murray Adley Gerald Tankersley Debbie and Daniel Schwartz Hilary M. Ballon Peter C. Trent Hon. José M. Serrano, New York State Senate Toni Fillet Carney The Volcker Family Foundation, Inc. Photograph floorgalleries of new the by third Whitney Cox Photograph Whitney by Cox During Phase II of the Museum’s Modernization and Expansion Project, completed on Phase II construction also renovated spaces on the ground, fourth, and fifth floors of the January 4, 2012, the galleries on the first, second, and third floors of the South Wing Museum to create centralized administrative offices. This enabled staff to move out of were renovated to create modern, climate-controlled exhibition spaces that fully accord makeshift offices that were established in former exhibition galleries, in preparation for with 21st-century conservation standards. renovating those galleries and returning them to the public. Page 3 EXHIBITIONS Photograph Cutty by McGill Photograph C. by Bay Millin Photograph Hinderaker Andrew by Photograph C. by Bay Millin Photograph Hinderaker Andrew by Photograph Cutty by McGill Top Left: Susan Gutfreund and Museum trustee Elizabeth Farran Tozer with Phyllis Magidson, the Museum’s Curator of Costumes and Textiles. Above: Iris Apfel and Alexandra Lebenthal. NOTORIOUS AND NOTABLE Photograph C. by Bay Millin Top: Jeanne Katzman, Nathan Katzman, Steve Katzman, Aram Katzman, Daniel Rose, 20th Century Women of Style Nick Katzman, Annie Katzman, Sarah M. Henry, Ph.D., Deputy Director and Chief » September 14, 2010 through January 2, 2011 Curator, and Susan Johnson, Curatorial Associate. Middle Right: Daniel Rose. Notorious and Notable: 20th Century Women of Style, co-organized by the Museum of the City of New York and the National Jewelry Institute, highlighted 81 influential women whose style and larger-than-life stories embody the city’s distinctive glamour and drama. Described in The New GLORIOUS SKY York Times as “a sweeping, three-dimensional ‘best dressed’ list,” the show featured clothing worn by women who commanded attention through Herbert Katzman’s New York November 5, 2010 through February 21, 2011 their wealth (Brooke Astor, Mrs. J. P. Morgan, Jacqueline Kennedy » Onassis, Gloria Vanderbilt, A’Lelia Walker), talent (Marian Anderson, Glorious Sky: Herbert Katzman’s New York featured nearly 90 paintings Lauren Bacall, Isadora Duncan, Lena Horne, Bette Midler, Jessye Norman), and works on paper by Herbert Katzman (1923–2004), an expressionist professional accomplishments (Bella Abzug, Betty Furness, Clare Booth painter who first came to prominence when his work appeared in the Luce, Geraldine Stutz, Diana Vreeland), scandal (Edith Bouvier Beale, seminal 1952 Museum of Modern Art exhibition Fifteen Americans.