> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.urgentmatter.press/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Museum of the City of New York traces 250 years of activism in new permanent show - URL: https://www.urgentmatter.press/museum-of-the-city-of-new-york-traces-250-years-of-activism-in-new-permanent-show/ - Published: 2026-09-23T04:29:09.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-23T04:29:09.000Z - Description: The exhibit is the cornerstone of the museum’s new Puffin Foundation Center for New York City Activism. - Author: Adam Schrader A dress worn at a 2025 ICE protest in Lower Manhattan, a noisemaker from the Civil War–era draft riots, and Gloria Steinem’s address book are among the objects in the Museum of the City of New York’s new permanent exhibition on activism. The exhibition, “Raise Your Voice: New York Activism,” was previewed for the press Tuesday and opens to the public Friday. It covers more than 250 years of protest and organizing in New York. “Every object on view was made, used or carried by someone responding to something right here in New York,” Stephanie Hill Wilchfort, the museum’s director and president, said at the preview. The show’s curator, Sarah Seidman, told Urgent Matter that organizing the exhibition by tactic lets it cover many issues across eras while focusing on the tools and the ‘how’ of activism. “Protest is not new. It does just change form a little bit,” said Seidman, the museum’s Puffin Foundation Curator of Social Activism. She said the show argues that demonstrations get more organized as they grow larger but that does not necessarily mean they become more effective. The exhibit is the cornerstone of the museum’s new Puffin Foundation Center for New York City Activism, which is housed in a renovated wing of the Fifth Avenue museum. The center’s second opening show, “Halumii Ktapihna: Lenape Legacies and Futures,” was made with the Éenda-Lŭnaapeewáhkiing Collective and brings together more than 30 contemporary artists. The museum announced the Puffin Foundation’s gift on May 18 in a [press release](https://www.mcny.org/press-release-puffin-foundation-center?ref=urgentmatter.press) calling it a multimillion-dollar gift and the second-largest in the museum’s history. “Erasing or repressing our shared culture seems to be all the rage these days across the country and a little bit down south from us,” Neal Rosenstein, president of the Puffin Foundation, said at the preview. “But here at the museum and center, we’re celebrating our past and future with this expansion.” ## Sign up for Urgent Matter This article is provided free with the support of paying subscribers. Not ready for a paid subscription? Sign up for a free account today. Subscribe Email sent! Check your inbox to complete your signup. No spam. Unsubscribe anytime. The exhibit is organized around four tactics: demonstrations, organizing, art and media, and direct action. A final section, “Your City, Your Move,” includes a poster-making station, a digital interactive on fixing neighborhood problems and voter registration for visitors 18 and older. The demonstrations section is in an anteroom hallway and runs as a chronological timeline of major public demonstrations in the city, grouped into five eras. The other three sections fill the main gallery, Seidman said. “You can have a big demonstration, but someone needs to plan that demonstration,” Seidman said. Besides the draft riot noisemaker, the demonstrations section has a women’s suffrage banner and sash and a 1947 Peter Hopkins painting of communists and police fighting in Union Square. It also has photographs from the first Pride march in 1970 and a collection of protest flyers. The organizing section has Steinem’s address book, political campaign buttons spanning more than 150 years, strike pledge cards from the Longshoremen’s Association and a sketchbook by artist Molly Crabapple. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/3c/26/3c26cf7a-2384-4a8d-82e1-f44702177698/content/images/2026/09/IMG_5479.jpg) The art and media section has posters and paintings by Ben Shahn, Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya and Nicole Eisenman. It also includes postwar conservative publications such as National Review and a station where visitors can listen to activist music from the 20th century onward. In his remarks, Rosenstein told the audience to try the music station. He listed Billie Holiday’s *Strange Fruit*, Bob Dylan’s *Masters of War,* Public Enemy’s *Fight the Power* and Patti Smith’s *People Have the Power*. The direct action section has the ICE protest dress and early 20th-century photographs of the Visiting Nurse Service of New York’s public health work. It also has images of the 1964 civil rights school boycott, Hiram Maristany’s photographs of the Young Lords’ 1969 “garbage offensive” and material from mutual aid groups. Seidman said she wanted signs and newspapers from different periods to sit near each other, including movements “along the political spectrum too.” She said the mix is intentional. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/3c/26/3c26cf7a-2384-4a8d-82e1-f44702177698/content/images/2026/09/IMG_5487.jpg) The Republican Party Going to the Right House. Currier and Ives, 1860\. Lithograph. Museum of the City of New York, Gift of Mrs. Harry T. (Natalie) Peters, 1956\. Photo by Adam Schrader/Urgent Matter Seidman called one object, an actual silkscreen, “one of my favorite objects in the show.” She said silkscreens and stencils come up throughout the show because they are inexpensive materials that grassroots activists can get. “It’s pretty cheap and mobile,” Seidman said of silkscreening. She said the screen shows “how groups like Mobile Print Power have used it.” Asked how the show handles conservative activism, Seidman pointed to people who confronted anti-Vietnam War protesters. She said “there were protests in both directions,” and that a photograph on display “is where they physically clashed” on Wall Street. She said the show also has anti-abolitionist material connected to an 1834 riot, along with a “vote yes” sign from the Staten Island secession movement. She said National Review is included to show how New York “has been a hub for conservative intellectuals, as well as progressive intellectuals.” ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/3c/26/3c26cf7a-2384-4a8d-82e1-f44702177698/content/images/2026/09/IMG_5481.jpg) A Guerilla Girls mask is pictured next to a silkscreen on display at the Museum of the City of New York's new exhibition, “Raise Your Voice: New York Activism." Photo by Adam Schrader/Urgent Matter Seidman said she tried to find images of 19th-century abolitionist protests in Brooklyn that she had read about, but couldn't find any for this show. “Stay tuned, because our next exhibition in the rotating gallery is going to be on abolition, so let’s see if I can dig anything out,” she said. Asked whether the show connects to Occupy Wall Street, Seidman said, “Not so explicitly.” She noted the same protest sites appear repeatedly, making the show a little Manhattan-centric because many large demonstrations took place near City Hall or Wall Street. Seidman said her team first aimed to show how many demonstrations had happened in the city. They then looked further at crowd sizes and how organized they were versus spontaneous, which was more common in the 19th century. “I love the organizing section, and just any time I can show behind-the-scenes work is super exciting to me,” she said. Visitors can open drawers in the gallery, Seidman said. One holds a letter asking a suffragist to speak at a house or on a street corner at a set time. She said that when she flipped through one item to pick a page for display, it showed “go Xerox flyers, just day-to-day activities.” “It was thrilling to dig deep into that process for me,” Seidman said. She said objects cut for space will rotate into the gallery over time. “As soon as I have to cut it, I just erase it from my memory, otherwise I’d be hung up on it,” she said. The show includes some loans, mostly in the art and media section, Seidman said. “But we also dove deep into our own collection and kind of plumbed it in some different ways,” she said. Some works are long-term loans from owners who want them kept in family collections. The museum also bought new works for the show, Seidman said. “One exciting one was Hiram Maristany’s photographs for the Young Lords, which had been a long-term goal,” she said. She said the curators also took a new look at objects the museum already owned, including a set of courtroom drawings from Michael Stewart’s 1983 case. Urgent Matter asked Seidman whether a protest-themed show for visitors of all ages could draw criticism of indoctrinating young people. She said the museum is “very comfortable presenting multiple perspectives.” “Your trash isn’t being picked up in your neighborhood, here are some things that you can do. We want people to be involved in their communities, in the broadest way.” Elisabeth Sherman, the museum’s chief curator and deputy director, said the exhibition is meant to give visitors something to use after they leave. “We want people to be able to come with their kids and their parents all at the same time, and groups of friends of all ages, and everyone to have a rich and meaningful experience,” she said. Sherman said several interactives use RFID tags. When a visitor places a tagged object on a sensor, it identifies the object. She said the “Your City, Your Move” interactives and a language interactive work this way. “They are current technologies but not groundbreaking,” Sherman said. “We don’t want things to go out of date in five minutes.” Wilchfort said “Halumii Ktapihna” is the first show in the renovated Puffin Foundation gallery and presents the Lenape people as part of the city’s present and future. “This is not a history exhibition. It is an exhibition of a living culture and what its artists are making today,” she said. She credited Monxo Lopez, the museum’s curator of community history, with leading the Lenape exhibition together with the collective. The collective was represented at the preview by Greg Stonefish, a curatorial advisor and founding member. Wilchfort thanked the Puffin Foundation and Valerie and Jack Rowe for supporting “Halumii Ktapihna.” She thanked the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, the City Council and the New York State Council on the Arts for supporting both exhibitions. She said the collective, the American Indian Community House, the Prospect Park Alliance and others will host the third annual Lenape Pow Wow in October at the LeFrak Center at Lakeside in Brooklyn. Wilchfort said the museum is there “to build civic pride and to foster civic engagement.” “This work is easy when it’s easy, but it’s times like the present when you’re the most powerful and purpose-driven,” she said. The foundation’s relationship with the museum goes back to 2009\. That year, Puffin founder Perry Rosenstein worked with the museum to create the Puffin Gallery for Social Activism, an endowed curator position and the exhibition “Activist New York,” which closed July 19 to make room for the new center. Neal Rosenstein said his late father started the relationship, “including the original Activist New York Gallery down the hall.” He said his stepmother, Gladys Rosenstein, the foundation’s executive director, had championed the relationship for more than 15 years but could not attend. Under the gift, the center will hold at least six public events a year and run rotating exhibitions. A 12-year annual fellowship begins in 2027, and each fellow will create one of the six yearly programs. The center will also start a series of publications. In his remarks, Rosenstein pointed to the worker protections that came after the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. “Loud and proud LGBTQ activists responded to Stonewall and the AIDS epidemic, helping to challenge and change the biases and hearts of the country,” he said. “This is an extraordinary exhibit which traces our history, which is really a people’s history, of New York,” Rosenstein said. He closed with a dedication that also appears in the July release: “A truly democratic society champions freedom of expression and the right to protest.” *Urgent Matter is reader-supported. Please* [*consider subscribing*](https://www.urgentmatter.press/nasa-administrator-questioned-goddard-library-review-emails-show/#/portal) *to support independent arts journalism.*