Good morning. Today we’ll look at the new leader of the New York Hall of Science, which opened 60 years ago this week. We’ll also get details from two security guards who said a senior adviser to Mayor Eric Adams attacked them and then had them arrested.
This has been a week for job changing.
Glenn Lowry, who has been the director of the Museum of Modern Art since 1995, said that he would step down next September.
Lincoln Center Theater named Lear deBessonet its next artistic director. She will succeed André Bishop, who is retiring in June.
And the New York Hall of Science named Lisa Gugenheim its president and chief executive. She had been the director of the American Museum of Natural History, where she played a major role in planning the $465 million Richard Gilder Center for Science, Education and Innovation, which opened last year.
“New York Hall of Science” is a mouthful in everyday conversation, so Gugenheim has already learned the shorthand for her new workplace: NYSCI, pronounced “nye-sigh.”
Gugenheim will move into her new office as the museum turns 60. Its curvy building, designed for the 1964 World’s Fair in Queens, opened in September of that year, five months after the fair’s opening. At $7.6 million ($77.2 million today), it cost twice the original estimate.
“Expenses rose and schedules lagged because of the unconventional, hard-to-estimate construction,” Ada Louis Huxtable, The Times’s architecture critic, wrote then.
Still, she loved it, calling it a “cathedral of science.”
Gugenheim said that it remains “a unique museum in a unique place” because of NYSCI’s hands-on approach to science and technology learning, driven by a philosophy it calls “design, make, play.” The museum also operates a science-and-technology-themed preschool that has an enrollment of 250 3- and 4-year-olds.
“That makes it unique in its commitment to families and young people, and in its potential for the future,” Gugenheim said.
Gugenheim said NYSCI also had a long track record in cross-disciplinary programs. “The traditional boundaries between biology, physics, chemistry, engineering and technology can limit the accessibility of learning,” she said. “NYSCI’s approach of open-ended exploration across disciplines can result in even deeper engagement.”
At the natural history museum, Gugenheim worked to reimagine the role that museums play in education, including school field trips to places like science museums.
Field trips have changed as science curriculums have been altered, but 400,000 children still flock to the natural history museum every year, and field trips are memorable. Gugenheim said she was “pretty sure” her first visit to the museum was when she was in second grade.
The natural history museum broadened its offerings after the Gilder Center opened. Last year, it started a pilot program that lets classes treat the entire museum like a classroom every day for a week. Gugenheim said the idea was to make a more lasting impression than was possible in just one day.
With the opening of the Gilder Center, she decided to move on, she said. Her departure followed that of Ellen Futter, the museum’s longtime president, and the arrival of Sean Decatur as Futter’s successor. He had been the president of Kenyon College in Ohio.
NYSCI, with an annual budget of more than $24 million, had been looking for a new president since Margaret Honey’s departure in December after 15 years in charge. The museum provides training for 3,000 teachers every year and mentoring programs for 1,000 high school and college students.
It also runs a Science Career Ladder program that lets students work as “explainers” at the Hall of Science, answering questions from visitors. NYSCI says that 70 percent of the students from the program have gone on to work in science, technology, engineering or mathematics.
Weather
Enjoy a sunny day with highs in the upper 70s. At night it should be mostly clear, with temperatures in the mid-60s.
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
In effect until Oct. 3 (Rosh Hashana).
The latest New York news
Remembering 9/11
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Mourners throughout the city: Commemorations for those killed in the attacks 23 years ago took place across the city. President Biden and other politicians, including Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, joined those assembled at ground zero.
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Families of cancer victims fighting for benefits: Some families are still pushing for recognition after their loved ones died from cancers that they believe are linked to Sept. 11, but that the federal government won’t recognize as such.
More local news
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Plea deal for Justin Timberlake: The singer and actor, who was arrested on drunken-driving charges in the Hamptons in June, is expected to plead guilty to a lesser offense.
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Noguchi Museum employees fired over kaffiyehs: Three employees of the Noguchi Museum were fired last week for defying its updated dress code by wearing kaffiyehs, a symbol of Palestinian identity.
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Juilliard School receives $20 million: Juilliard received a $15 million gift to help expand creative work across music, dance and drama. An additional $5 million gift will go to the school’s jazz program to support scholarships, performances and teaching.
Guards say a top Adams aide attacked them, then had them arrested
Last fall, two security guards said a senior adviser to Mayor Eric Adams attacked them at a migrant shelter in Midtown. The police arrested the guards, apparently because the adviser told them to do so.
The charges were dropped within a couple of weeks, and the city’s Department of Investigation began looking into the conduct of the adviser, Timothy Pearson. He was one of several city officials whose cellphones were seized by federal agents last week as part of a separate investigation.
My colleagues Dana Rubinstein and William K. Rashbaum write that Pearson went to the Midtown South precinct station house after the arrests had been made and confronted the two guards. Pearson is a retired police inspector. When he arrived at Midtown South, the two guards, Leesha Bell and Terrence Rosenthal, were in handcuffs while their arrests were being processed.
“I told you all I’ll have your jobs,” Pearson said, according to Bell.
Hours later, after Bell had been taken to a cell, the Midtown South precinct commander stopped by and said that Pearson wanted to speak to her. Pearson had suggested that mutual apologies were in order, the commander said, adding that if she didn’t acquiesce, she might not be released.
Bell declined. Now she and Rosenthal are preparing a lawsuit against Pearson and the city, accusing them of false arrest and malicious prosecution. The lawsuit, expected to be filed in the coming weeks, will also include an excessive force allegation from a third guard, Angelica Weldon, who accused Pearson of pushing her into a wall during the melee, fracturing her shoulder.
The mayor, who is a retired police captain, has known Pearson for decades. Adams has defended him since the shelter incident, saying he has never known Pearson to be violent. The mayor also called him a Sept. 11 hero.
Adams hired Pearson in 2022 to work as his senior adviser for $243,000 a year, even as the city’s only casino was paying Pearson between $250,000 and $500,000 to work as its vice president of public safety, according to city records. Pearson left the casino job after it was reported by The Times.
Pearson’s portfolio under Adams has included conducting spot checks at migrant facilities. Bell and Rosenthal said last month that they believed that Pearson had retaliated because they had followed standing orders from their supervisors to check the identification of anyone who wanted to enter.
At Midtown South, Bell was released with a criminal summons charging her with disorderly conduct — a violation, less serious than a misdemeanor. It was dismissed on Nov. 2. Misdemeanor charges against Rosenthal were dismissed after the Manhattan district attorney’s office concluded that Pearson’s allegations were unlikely to hold up in court.
METROPOLITAN diary
Cafe Borgia
Dear Diary:
I was having a cappuccino at Cafe Borgia on Bleecker Street 40 years ago. It was summer, and I was sitting inside the cafe.
The windows were open. Outside the one near me, two men were talking and smoking cigarettes. One had red hair and was very cute. When his friend stepped away, I leaned out the window and asked if I could have a cigarette.
He offered me the pack. I took one, and he lit it for me. His friend soon returned, and they resumed their conversation.
When I was ready to leave, I stopped at their table and suggested we get a drink at Jimmy Day’s a few blocks away.
We did, his friend eventually left for the Bronx and a year later the redhead and I were married.
P.S. I had never smoked before and never did again.
— Robin Kornhaber
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.
P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.
Melissa Guerrero and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at [email protected].
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