The Insider's Connection

How are big stories told in small spaces? How do small stories get lost in big spaces? Take a walk down Cortlandt Alley in TriBeCa and if you’re staring at your phone, you’ll miss a tiny room that contains huge significance. Mmuseumm at 3 Cortlandt Alley (between White and Franklin Streets) is 36 square feet–6 feet 3 inches tall, 6 feet deep, 6 feet wide–and abundant with stories. Since 2012, the museum has displayed a rotating collection of “modern-day artifacts,” engaging relevant contemporary issues through object-based storytelling. The objects, carefully curated by Alex Kalman, ask the viewer to endow significance onto them to glean clarity about human nature and our world in this moment. The room is rich with meaning, but you have to look for it. Once you’re in the museum, an audio tour is accessible toll-free through your…

New York’s history is abundant with public demonstration. Particularly in the past 100 years, empowered New Yorkers and their allies have organized in public parks, outside government buildings, across bridges and tunnels and boroughs, in support of issues from Women’s Suffrage in 1920 to Environmental Sustainability in 2019. Public assembly is a pervasive response to injustice and tragedy: a key strategy that innumerable activists have employed to fight what they believe in and change the course of history. But information about these ambitious motivated New Yorkers and the things they cared about is often hidden in narratives of a larger historical moment. Whose job is it to remember the stories of the protests/public actions that shaped the city we live in today? New York City’s LBGTQIA+ community is the most visible in the month of June and if you’re in Lower…

What do we miss when don’t remain curious? Where are stories hidden in obscure pockets of Manhattan? Whose work tells the story of the City? Whether you’re a New Yorker or a visitor, you’ve probably passed through the 14th Street subway station at 8th avenue. Home to the A, C, E, and L trains, the station spans 2 blocks north and contains an inconspicuous, mystical work of art that thousands of commuters miss each day while staring at our phones. Where did it come from? What’s the point? This subway station was renovated in the 1990s, at which point $200,000–1% of the station renovation budget–was allotted to the commission of a unique project by Arts for Transit. The MTA’s Arts for Transit program commissions permanent public art in MTA-owned transit hubs; Life Underground is among the most famous and widely-publicized…

Is large-scale art expected to speak for a neighborhood or community? York Avenue–named after US Army Sergeant Alvin York for honorable actions in World War II and grounding the neighborhood in its German roots–has rapidly gentrified in the recent decades. Yorkville, or the Upper East Side, continues to shift and evolve; it’s structures, residents, and community look different today than it has in the past. When a neighborhood changes, is its history threatened? How much should developers consider a neighborhood’s past when contributing to its future? In the early 2000’s, a 28-story condo building was being developed on 83rd and York. The new building’s lobby faces a 6-story tenement on the opposite corner and at the time, that building was covered in graffiti. Fielding complaints from soon-to-be residents, the developer made a deal with the tenement building’s owner to hire artist…

What aspects of a neighborhood expose its roots and history? Where do you get information about the communities that shaped your neighborhood? How did New York’s “Germantown” completely relocate in a matter of a few years, and why don’t we hear about it more often? At the turn of the 20th century, New York City had the largest German population in the world outside of Germany. German immigrants settling in New York City found their way to Kleindeutschland–“Little Germany” or, the Lower East Side–in the decades leading up to 1900. Kleindeutschland bustled with highly-educated German immigrants, new businesses (picture Germany beer saloons on every corner!), art, traditions, and a gradually increasing population. A few years into the 20th century, however, Germans started moving uptown in huge numbers for a fresh start. The story often told: uptown, they’d have access to…

This Memorial serves as a market for America’s Merchant Mariners resting in the unmarked ocean depths. The American Merchant Mariners Memorial statue, built by Marisol Escobar and dedicated in 1991, is tucked away in Battery Park south of Pier A. The statue portrays a striking image: four men on a sinking ship, calling for help clinging to life. This image is based on a true event, developed from a photograph, and has come to represent thousands of lives lost. How can one piece of art represent a chapter of history? On March 22, 1943, an American ship called the SS Muskogee was hit by a torpedo and sunk by a Nazi U-Boat on its way from Venezuela to Halifax. The ship was transporting petroleum and carrying a crew of 34 men, led by Captain William Betts. 10 mariners held tight…

As the 19th century came to a close, city planners in New York faced a big question: how can disparate neighborhoods in a sprawling metropolis be integrated into one accessible, cohesive New York City? In the face of rapid technological innovation and population growth, sustainable integration was urgent. The Williamsburg Bridge is an iconic example of building for–and then with–New Yorkers. At the time, multiple transit systems were spread throughout New York City, making public transportation complicated. To come into Manhattan from Williamsburg via trolley, commuters would pass through an underground terminal on the edge of the East River, and then connect to buses and trains that would take them into different neighborhoods. Today, the trolley station lay empty and abandoned under Delancey Street–as it has been since 1948– as local artists and engineers submit proposals for how to best…

Do you commute on the subway? If you do, you’re one of millions who swipes their MetroCard each day, and probably does not consider the first people who traveled underground in Manhattan and the subway’s lost history. Alfred Ely Beach was the editor and published of The Scientific American, an inventor, a publisher at The New York Sun, and a patent lawyer. In 1867, he worked in an office on the crowded corner of Chambers Street and Broadway. Traffic congestion, especially down Broadway, was an increasingly pervasive problem in Manhattan and Beach had a hugely ambitious idea: public transportation for New Yorkers, entirely underground. Beach struggled to get the approval and permits he needed from Tammany Hall–New York’s corrupt political organization overseen at the time by William “Boss” Tweed. To legally begin construction, he’d have to possess a franchise, which…

What do we miss when we’re not looking for stories? How are little-known stories preserved by chance? Are we participating in history simply by existing in public space?  Gulielma Elmore Sands and Levi Weeks were both boarders at 208 Greenwich Street in 1799. On the night of December 22, they planned to elope. Gulielma bundled up in a shawl and a hat to brave the cold night and find her soon-to-be husband. They were going out to meet somewhere private, she told another boarder. This was the last time Gulielma was seen alive. The next week, neighborhood residents claimed they saw an article of women’s clothing floating in Manhattan Well. Gulielma was missing. Her body was found eleven years later on January 2, 1800, with strangulation marks on her neck, in a well in Lispenard’s Meadow. Today, Lispenard’s Meadow is…

What does public art look like in New York City? What happens when the City changes, but the art remains the same? How does art in public space appeal to modern audiences if you can’t find it on social media? Walter De Maria is not a household name. Though he made large-scale, location-specific art pieces that have captured public attention in cities throughout the world, he kept a low profile in his life and career. He was a mystery to the press, seldom making public appearances or speaking out about his life or work. De Maria preferred to make art for outdoor spaces; wide accessibility to the public was essential to him, but he offered very little explanation for his art. Communicating what his pieces mean, it seems, was never De Maria’s priority. After his death in 2013, today’s audiences…

 What is the ownership of a work of art? Who has the rights to build–and/or destroy–art that is deemed disruptive? Who decides what story gets told? If you were alive in the 1930s, you knew Diego Rivera’s work. Known for his communism, his short temper, and his extremely detailed depictions of social and cultural life, he is regarded as one of the best visual artists of all time, and a shaper of the Mexican mural movement. In 1932, Nelson D. Rockefeller commissioned Diego Rivera to make a giant mural for the lobby of 30 Rockefeller Center. Although Rockefeller didn’t agree with Rivera’s politics, he was an acclaimed art collector and wanted to have work from the best artists of the day. River was undeniably on that list. Rockefeller paid Rivera $21,000 (or $361,362 in 2019!) to paint a 63-foot-long mural…

How does an idea become a legacy? What makes a landmark? More than 50,000 people cross the corner of Maiden Lane and Broadway every day. New Yorkers are in constant motion, seldom pausing to look up or down or remind ourselves that we’re living history. If you pause on this corner, you’ll see a clock. The glass is scratched and faded, but it tells the correct time and more importantly, it tells a story. It’s been telling a story in that very ground for over 120 years. It took more than 2 years to design and install this sidewalk clock in 1897. William Barthman, a jewelry designer with an opulent storefront at that corner (Barthman Jewelry has since moved to Brooklyn), wanted to place a bold, alluring contraption outside his shop to attract customers. The clock was built by Frank…