New York Almanack

History, Natural History & the Arts

Metropolitan Museum of Art

Museums, Diplomats & Art Thieves

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Tiffany reproduction of Cypriot bracelet from the Curium collection of the MetIn September 1887, in broad daylight, a robbery took place at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art (the Met). The thieves got away with a pair of ancient bracelets described in a New-York Tribune crime report as “solid gold, about four inches in diameter, richly carved and studded with all manner of precious gems.”

The police did not recover the items, but Tiffany & Co. created fine replicas (the firm acted as “sole agents” for the reproduction of the Museum’s works of art). Originating in Cyprus, the bracelets were part of the Museum’s “Cesnola Collection,” the formation of which itself was a story of mass thievery. [Read more…] about Museums, Diplomats & Art Thieves

American Art History & A Village Named Broadway

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French painter Adolphe Yvon's "Genius of America," ca. 1868, (Saint Louis Art Museum)A chronology of cultural interactions between Europe and the United States is a narrative about identity formation. It highlights the transfer of the American artist from a pilgrim to the shrines of European genius to an active participant in redefining the boundaries of art and literature.

Increased transatlantic travel during the 1880s forged close cross-cultural exchanges between the United States and Europe. Many American artists visited European cities for study at their great art institutions, to frequent museums and exhibitions, and copy the Masters. [Read more…] about American Art History & A Village Named Broadway

Composing Olana: A Journey Through Frederic Church’s Greatest Work of Art

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Composing Olana: A Journey on Foot Through Frederic Church’s Greatest Work of ArtModeled on her acclaimed On the High Line (now in its third edition from Fordham University Press), Annik LaFarge’s Composing Olana: A Journey on Foot Through Frederic Church’s Greatest Work of Art (Forham, 2026) unfolds as a series of walks along the seven carriage roads Frederic Edwin Church built in 1860s-1880s.

Along the way, LaFarge unpacks the history of everything we see, and much that we don’t, in the greater landscape, from the Ice Age geology that created it to the artists and conservationists who preserved it. [Read more…] about Composing Olana: A Journey Through Frederic Church’s Greatest Work of Art

Staff of the Metropolitan Museum of Art Vote to Unionize

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Some of the staff of the Metropolitan Museum of Art who voted to unionize with UAW Local 2110 in 2026Staff of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan have voted by a 76% margin in a National Labor Relations Board election to unionize with UAW Local 2110. The ballot tally was 542 yes votes for the union with 172 votes against.

The ballots of an additional 100 people remain sealed because they were challenged by the Museum which objected to inclusion of these staff in the union. [Read more…] about Staff of the Metropolitan Museum of Art Vote to Unionize

Art Dealer William Schaus, Sugar Baron Henry Havemeyer & America’s First Rembrandt

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Louisa Jacobson as Marian Brook in a scene from HBO's The Gilded Age (photo by Alison Cohen Rosa)The “Gilded Age,” a term coined by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner in their 1873 novel of that title, indicates a period in American history from the 1870s to the early 1900s in which rapid industrialization and growing prosperity contrasted with extreme poverty and social deprivation.

The era encountered an evolving cultural landscape. Tycoons like Henry Clay Frick, Andrew Carnegie, Andrew Mellon, J. P. Morgan and others used their fortunes to collect art, build museums or sponsor libraries. Critics argued that these “robber barons” masked the exploitation of the workforce by acts of cultural philanthropy. [Read more…] about Art Dealer William Schaus, Sugar Baron Henry Havemeyer & America’s First Rembrandt

An Experimental Museum: Dreier & Duchamp in Manhattan

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Anne Goldthwaite's "Portrait of Katherine S. Dreier," 1915/6 (Yale University Art Gallery)Despite actively participating in art history, female artists tended to act in the shadow of their male contemporaries.

For well into the twentieth century, they were excluded from art schools, galleries and museums. Therefore, few platforms for the exhibition of their work were available. [Read more…] about An Experimental Museum: Dreier & Duchamp in Manhattan

Dutch Doors in Colonial New York

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An artist’s rendering of Daniel Pieter Winne’s houseThe term “Low Countries” is a political and historic concept rather than a geographic one. Prior to modern nation-building, it referred to an area of northern Europe roughly stretching from Pas-de-Calais in France to the area of Schleswig-Holstein in Germany, including French-speaking Wallonia and Dutch-speaking Flanders.

Born in Ghent in 1500 Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain, ruled over the vast Habsburg Empire that included the Low Countries. Flanders was crucial to its economy. [Read more…] about Dutch Doors in Colonial New York

The Archival Legacy of Alexander Jackson Davis

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Andrew Jackson Davis' Lyndhurst in Tarrytown, NY (Metropolitan Museum of Art).The archival legacy of Alexander Jackson Davis (1803-1892) constitutes the largest surviving American architectural archive of the pre-Civil War era.

The 1993 exhibition and publication at the Metropolitan Museum of Art established the scope of Davis’s intellectual and artistic life, a monumental undertaking given the dispersal of his archive to four major New York collections and smaller ones as well. [Read more…] about The Archival Legacy of Alexander Jackson Davis

Sugar, Slave Labor & Art Galleries

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Coat of arms of the confectioners, Lebzelts and Schokolademaker by Hugo Ströhl (1904-1910)Sugarbaker is a relatively common name that began to appear in American censuses from the 1830s onward. As an occupational surname, it derives from the German Zuckerbäcker. Originally, this compound noun referred to the highly rated skill of a confectioner. By the mid-nineteenth century, the word pointed at all those who worked in the sugar refining industry.

Sugar was mega business. First produced in India, it spread to Europe by way of Persia. Venetians played a crucial role as intermediates. A hub of commerce between Europe and the East, its merchants dominated the trade until around 1500 when other regions became involved. The “mystery” skill of sugar refining was brought to America by various groups of European immigrants. [Read more…] about Sugar, Slave Labor & Art Galleries

Catalonia in Manhattan: The Architectural Legacy of Rafael Guastavino

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Andalusian architecture at Bethesda Terrace in the heart of Central ParkAt the start of the 1880s, Barcelona was an expanding city of about 350,000 people. Its medieval walls had been knocked down only twenty-five years earlier. Capital of the autonomous community of Catalonia, city and region developed into Spain’s economic dynamo. Prosperity mushroomed. A self-confident territory strove to re-establish its identity by invigorating local traditions, culture and language. Barcelona became an engine of change and modernity. [Read more…] about Catalonia in Manhattan: The Architectural Legacy of Rafael Guastavino

The Dark History of Brown Brothers Harriman

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Brown Brothers in NYCDocuments at the New-York Historical Society and corporate records show that the founders of Brown Brothers Harriman, based in New York City, built the bank by lending millions of dollars to Southern planters and arranging for the shipment and sale of slave-grown tobacco and cotton in New England and Great Britain. [Read more…] about The Dark History of Brown Brothers Harriman

Cleopatra’s Needle: From Ancient Egypt to New York City

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Cleopatra's Needle, now in New York City, as it appeared in Alexandria in 1803In 1880, the obelisk now known as Cleopatra’s Needle arrived in the city of New York from Egypt. New York’s Cleopatra Needle is one of a pair originally made in Heliopolis (modern Cairo) during the New Kingdom period (around 1425 BCE), inscribed by the 18th dynasty pharaoh Thutmose III and 19th dynasty pharaoh Ramesses II. [Read more…] about Cleopatra’s Needle: From Ancient Egypt to New York City

John La Farge: Eclectic Art Circles in London & Manhattan

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W. P. Frith, A Private View at the Royal Academy, 1883During the late nineteenth century articles that focused on artist’s dwelling and studio as a demonstration of his or her creative personality became fashionable reading.

Between March and April 1884, six installments were published simultaneously in London and New York City of “Artists at Home,” a serial publication of twenty-five photogravures (a high quality print process) by Joseph Parkin Mayall with biographical sketches by the art critic and member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Frederic George Stephens (1827-1907). [Read more…] about John La Farge: Eclectic Art Circles in London & Manhattan

Printing Machinery & Bibliophily: A New York History

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The Mill-Dam at Sleepy Hollow by Currier & Ives ca 1857Twenty-five miles north of New York City on the eastern shore of the Hudson River lies Tarrytown in an area called Tappan Zee (Tappan for the local people of the Lenape; zee is Dutch for sea) in Westchester County, NY. It was home to the Weckquaesgeek who cultivated the land, fished and hunted there. [Read more…] about Printing Machinery & Bibliophily: A New York History

The Urinal Controversy: Walter Pach & Marcel Duchamp’s ‘Fountain’

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Marcel Duchamp, Fountain, 1917, photograph by Alfred StieglitzFounded by Morris, Gustavus and Gotthelf Pach, the photographic studio of Pach Brothers emerged in the wake of the Civil War. The family had moved from Berlin to the City of New York when the boys were young.

Sharing an interest in the emerging process of photography, they roamed the streets of their local neighborhood taking pictures of scenes and residents. The New York directory of 1866/7 lists the Pach Brothers working at 260 Bowery. A decade later they were operating from a studio on Broadway. [Read more…] about The Urinal Controversy: Walter Pach & Marcel Duchamp’s ‘Fountain’

Manhattan DA Returns Stolen Antiquities to Turkey

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Perge Theater HeadManhattan District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg, Jr., recently announced the return of 12 antiquities to the Republic of Türkiye valued at over $33 million. Nine of the objects were recovered pursuant to the recently concluded criminal investigation into antiquities possessed by Shelby White, which resulted in the seizure of 89 stolen antiquities, valued at $69 million and originating from 10 different countries. [Read more…] about Manhattan DA Returns Stolen Antiquities to Turkey

Four Nymphs, a Satyr and Manhattan’s Ladies’ Mile

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Portrait of John David WolfeUntil the mid-1860s the Fifth Avenue area around Madison Square was Manhattan’s “aristocratic” heart. Its brownstone mansions were occupied by the city’s elite. The gradual incursion of commerce into this residential haven started with high-class hotels.

In 1864 Hoffmann House was one of the first to open its doors. Owned by Cassius H. Read, it was located on the corner of 25th Street & Broadway and contained tree hundred rooms with all the latest conveniences. The establishment proudly advertised its lavish furnishings, carefully chosen artworks, and refined French (Parisian) cuisine. At a time that hotel living was becoming a fashionable alternative to owning a family mansion for wealthy New Yorkers, Hoffmann House was recommended as the most comfortable and homelike residence in the metropolis.

During the 1880s the hotel’s “grand salon” became one of New York’s “secretive” attractions for a very specific reason. [Read more…] about Four Nymphs, a Satyr and Manhattan’s Ladies’ Mile

George Deem, Bulldozers and Stalinist Suppression

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George DeemManhattan artist George Deem is remembered for referencing the history of painting by re-imagining Old Masters in a contemporary context. He re-configured iconic pictorial images through visual ploys such as repetition and erasure, or through the addition of components of contemporary life and art. [Read more…] about George Deem, Bulldozers and Stalinist Suppression

Meppel to Manhattan: Duveen, Altman, and the Relocation of European Art

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front of Benjamin Altmans Department StoreMeppel is relatively small Dutch municipality in the north-easterly agricultural province of Drenthe. It is a market town for dairy products, cereals, and pigs. What is the association between this sleepy country place and cosmopolitan New York City? [Read more…] about Meppel to Manhattan: Duveen, Altman, and the Relocation of European Art

Ballston’s Hawkwood Estate: Teddy Roosevelt, Guy Baker & The Countess

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Hawkwood circa 1900Theodore Roosevelt spent a bit of time in Saratoga County, particularly in the years leading up to and including his time as Governor of New York (1899-1900).

TR would often visit a friend, Guy Baker, who lived in Ballston. He hunted on Baker’s Hawkwood estate and sometimes brought members of his family for short visits with the Bakers. [Read more…] about Ballston’s Hawkwood Estate: Teddy Roosevelt, Guy Baker & The Countess

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