After 220 years of existence, New-York Historical Society is changing its name to the New York Historical, and will christen a new wing devoted to American democracy after H.M. Agnes Hsu-Tang and Oscar L. Tang, in honor of their $20 million gift, the museum announced on Sunday.
The name change — which becomes effective on Tuesday — is intended to distinguish the museum from the many other historical societies around the country, but also to be more welcoming, given that “society” in a title “has a bit of a highfalutin’ vibe,” said Ken Weine, the museum’s senior vice president and chief content officer.
Weine acknowledged that “the New York Historical” doesn’t necessarily make grammatical sense, but he likened it to the former Apple marketing campaign, “Think different.”
“Brands can take a little bit of license,” Weine said. “We will officially be known as the New York Historical, but the shorthand can be, ‘Hey, I’ll see you at the Historical.’ That could be a name that we fall upon years down the road.”
The new Tang Wing for American Democracy, designed by Robert A.M. Stern, is under construction and will open in 2026, which the museum notes will coincide with the nation’s 250th anniversary.
The Tangs, who are married, also recently made significant contributions to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and to the New York Philharmonic. Hsu-Tang is an archaeologist and historian of ancient art. (Her husband is a financier.)
The wing, which wraps around 76th Street at Central Park West, will include new gallery spaces, classrooms, the museum’s first conservation lab and a rooftop garden overlooking Central Park.
Among the artifacts likely to be featured in the wing are items from George Washington’s inauguration, including an armchair he used in the Senate chamber of Federal Hall after being sworn in, the Bible and a section of the wrought-iron balustrade that adorned the new capitol on Wall Street.
The galleries will also include works such as a portrait of the Dutch-Seneca chief Gayë́twahgeh — or Cornplanter — who fought with the British during the Revolutionary War, and a sculpture by Augusta Savage, who overcame poverty, racism and sexual discrimination to become an influential artist and community organizer during the Harlem Renaissance.
“Our collections are, as we say, American history through the prism of New York,” said Louise Mirrer, the museum’s president and chief executive, adding that the new wing aims “to help people understand that this is an institution around American history.”
The Tang gift completes fund-raising for the $175 million construction project, the museum said, with about $75 million of that from public sources. (The city contributed $57 million.)
“Oscar and I understand our responsibilities as immigrants and citizens of this country that began as an experiment,” said Hsu-Tang, who serves as chairwoman of the museum’s board. “We want to make sure that democracy will survive and that American history — the good, the bad, the ugly and the beautiful — will be not just from one perspective, but for all.”
The museum’s new name eliminates the hyphen, which has been used since the institution’s founding in 1804, when the city’s name was spelled “New-York” (as was that of The New York Times when it was founded in 1851 as the New-York Daily Times).
The rebranding comes with a new tag line, “Our nation in conversation” (formerly “Because history matters”), and new graphics of blue (presidential), orange (a nod to the history of New York as a Dutch colony) and white (which Mirrer said is a symbolic color for Navajo culture).
“New York” will remain in the name “to remind people of the important role that New York plays, not only in the economy of the nation and the world, but really in the history of this nation,” Mirrer said. “People should be aware that this city was really the seat of so many things that would evolve into the America that we prize.”
With the new wing, the museum is seeking to emphasize its national relevance and stress that it is not just a New York museum.
“People forget that New York was the first capital of the United States,” Hsu-Tang said. “In 1789, George Washington was inaugurated downtown. The first Supreme Court met here. The first 10 amendments were drafted in New York. It is not just the city of commerce that we think of. It is not just the city of arts and culture that most people think of. It was really the beginning of the modern presidency.”
The new wing will also house the museum’s Academy for American Democracy, which teaches sixth graders about the development of American democracy, allowing the program to expand to 30,000 students from 3,000. And the new wing will be the home of the museum’s masters program in museum studies, founded in 2019 with the City University of New York.
The wing’s top floor will house another institution, the American LGBTQ+ Museum, which was established in 2017 but has been operating without a physical home.
The partnership, Mirrer said, made sense financially (the LGBTQ+ Museum was responsible for helping raise $70 million in public funds) and because “it would be interesting to incubate another institution.”
“We felt that the story that they would tell of the struggle for full civil rights as American citizens,” she added, “was a story that was very consistent with the ways in which we wanted to present ourselves to young people and to the public.”
Ben Garcia, the executive director of the LGBTQ+ Museum, said the association with such a storied institution would help “ensure that queer history is interpreted and told thoughtfully and in more museum spaces around the country.” Rather than try to construct its own building from scratch, Garcia added, the LGBTQ+ Museum can “focus on the work of creating compelling exhibitions and programming.”
Under Mirrer, who started in 2004, the Historical Society has tried to move from its patrician past — it was founded at the dawn of the 19th century by elite New York men who had lived through the American Revolution — into the current era, building a board that is now one-third female and about one-quarter people of color.
The museum’s staff also has become more diverse, including the noteworthy appointment earlier this year of Wendy Nalani E. Ikemoto as its chief curator and vice president, one of the first people of Indigenous descent to lead curators at a major museum in the United States.
And last year, the museum exhibited landscape paintings by the contemporary Cherokee artist Kay WalkingStick with highlights from its collection of 19th-century Hudson River School paintings.
“We are all historically connected,” Hsu-Tang said. “I’m very proud to serve this institution that has been really a steward of the evolution of America.”
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