The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs announced on Tuesday the largest expansion of the city’s Cultural Institutions Group program in nearly 50 years with the addition of five new members across the boroughs.
The move cements the partnerships between the city and the organizations — BRIC in Brooklyn, the Noble Maritime Collection on Staten Island, Pregones/Puerto Rican Traveling Theater, the Bronx Children’s Museum and the Louis Armstrong House Museum in Queens.
As members, the institutions are offered financial support (the city will provide nearly $3 million annually to the five organizations) and will no longer pay rent in their spaces, which are city-owned. In return, the new members will provide cultural programming for residents at discounted rates, including free membership for city residents with an IDNYC card.
The five additions join a storied portfolio dating to the formation of the Cultural Institutions Group in 1877 with the American Museum of Natural History. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Botanical Garden, Bronx Zoo, Brooklyn Museum and Brooklyn Children’s Museum followed suit before 1900. There are now 39 members.
BRIC is the first addition of a media organization. As the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is shuttering after federal funding cuts, leaving local radio and television stations in limbo, the city subsidy is a relief for Wes Jackson, BRIC’s president.
“It gives us some room to breathe,” he said.
With the new financial support, BRIC, which operates BRIC TV and radio and Brooklyn Free Speech TV and radio, plans to refresh its content, offer more classes and expand the “Celebrate Brooklyn!” festival beyond Prospect Park, Jackson said.
The last time five organizations were awarded membership at once was in 1978 with the Bronx Museum of the Arts, the Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning, the New York State Theater, the Queens Museum of Art and Queens Theater in the Park.
The Cultural Institutions Group’s most recent addition before this was the Weeksville Heritage Center in Brooklyn, in 2019.
Several of the new members have previously received support from the city. Recent renovations at the Louis Armstrong House Museum were aided by $1.9 million from the city. Pregones/Puerto Rican Traveling Theater built its cultural and administrative headquarters with over $10 million in city aid. And the Bronx Children’s Museum had received $1.1 million.
“We wanted to make sure that the organizations that we’ve invested deep capital resources in are well maintained and supported for generations to come,” Laurie Cumbo, the city’s commissioner for the Department of Cultural Affairs, said in an interview.
Earlier this year, in his State of the City address, Mayor Eric Adams promised to expand the Cultural Institutions Group with five new members. (His previous budget proposal drew scrutiny from arts organizations.)
This is a necessary reprieve, said Coco Killingsworth, the chair of the Cultural Institutions Group and the chief experience and impact officer for the Brooklyn Academy of Music. After weathering financial challenges during the Covid pandemic, arts organizations are still rebounding from economic turmoil and shifts in philanthropy. Without an increase in city support, cultural institutions were facing financial cuts down “to the bones,” Killingsworth said, and reassessing business models.
Now, the expansion will allow organizations like the newly renovated Louis Armstrong House Museum, which opened in 2003, to join a partnership of cultural giants in preserving a legacy in the city that dates back centuries, Killingsworth said.
“We made clear over and over again that New York is not New York without culture and art,” Killingsworth said.
Michaela Towfighi is a Times arts and culture reporter and a member of the 2025-26 Times Fellowship class, a program for early career journalists.
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