July 6, 2021
Renderings of the proposed New York Historical Society expansion COURTESY OF THE NEW YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY
On July 1st, Louise Mirrer, President and CEO of the New
York Historical Society (NYHS), announced that the Society will begin a $140
million expansion of its historic building on Central Park West. The 70,000
additional square feet will house the new American LGBTQ+ Museum.
The new space will showcase much of the artifacts the NYHS
acquired as early as 1937, but hadn’t had the opportunity to display, despite
the collection’s steady growth. A plan by the NYHS to develop that land into
condos met fierce resistance in 2007, the New York Times reported at the time.
There hadn’t been plans to expand until 2019, when the Board members of the
American LGBTQ+ Museum, a startup with no home, reached out to the NYHS about
working together.
“Suddenly we’ve reached this moment, a tipping
point where more and more people are saying, ‘We better record this history,
integrate it and celebrate it before we lose it,’” Burns said.
In 2018 the nascent board of directors began raising money
and settled on a museum charter in 2019.
The institution, which aims to tell the “untold stories of
regular lived lives, activists’ lives, lives lost in queer New York and queer
America,” will complement the downtown Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, the only
dedicated LGBTQ+ art museum in New York.
The expansion will be helmed by Robert A.M. Stern
Architects and move the museums into a 10,000-square-foot lot that Historical
Society trustees purchased in 1937. The expansion is planned as a “phased
project,” with the first beginning in summer 2022. Museum officials hope to
have the work done by 2024.
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