New York Almanack

History, Natural History & the Arts

New York Historical Society

Ron Chernow Awarded American History Book Prize

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Louise Mirrer, President and CEO of the New-York Historical Society, announced today that Ron Chernow has been chosen to receive the Society’s sixth annual American History Book Prize for his most recent work, Washington: A Life (Penguin Press, 2010). The Historical Society will present Chernow with an engraved medal, the title of American Historian Laureate and a cash award of $50,000 at the beginning of its annual Weekend with History event, hosted by the Chairman’s Council, on April 8, 2011.

Ron Chernow’s previous books include The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance (for which he received the National Book Award), The Warburgs: The Twentieth-Century Odyssey of a Remarkable Jewish Family, Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. and Alexander Hamilton.

Roger Hertog, Chairman of the New-York Historical Society’s Board of Trustees, stated, “With his studies of Hamilton, Rockefeller, the Warburgs and the House of Morgan, Ron Chernow has become the biographer’s biographer. His Washington will undoubtedly become the definitive life of our first President.”

“How can I not be thrilled to receive an award bestowed by a jury that includes distinguished historians under the auspices of one of our foremost historical societies?” Chernow asked. “We are living through an unusually rich period of historical writing, and I have no doubt that the field was crowded in 2010 with many worthy competitors for the prize.”

Washington: A Life was selected from a pool of 99 submissions made by a committee comprised of historians and New-York Historical Society leadership.

In its award citation, the award jury stated, “Ron Chernow’s Washington: A Life is an exceptionally well-written book and offers a truly fresh perspective on the personality of Washington, bringing him to life and paradoxically making him more sympathetic because of the faults (vanity, aloofness, ambition) that are delineated.”

Pam Schafler, Vice Chair of the New-York Historical Society and Chair of the Chairman’s Council, added, “We are delighted that Ron Chernow is being recognized for this latest biography, which joins his distinguished body of work. His remarks are sure to be a highlight of our Weekend with History gala dinner on April 8.”

Now being presented for the sixth year, Weekend with History offers participants the opportunity to engage in two days of presentations and informal conversations with leading historians and cultural figures. The event is hosted by the Chairman’s Council, comprised of the Historical Society’s most committed supporters. Individuals may be invited to join the Council by Trustees and senior staff of the Historical Society and by existing members of the Council.

The American History Book Prize was previously awarded during Weekend with History to Doris Kearns Goodwin for Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln; David Nasaw for Andrew Carnegie; Daniel Walker Howe for What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848; Drew Gilpin Faust for This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War; and Gordon S. Wood for Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815.

An honors graduate of Yale and Cambridge, Ron Chernow has received wide acclaim for his deeply researched yet vivid explorations of the course of individual lives within the structures and institutions of American history. In addition to winning the National Book Award, Chernow received the prestigious George S. Eccles Prize for Best Business Book for The Warburgs and was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award in biography for his lives of both John D. Rockefeller and Alexander Hamilton. Alexander Hamilton was also the first recipient of the influential George Washington Prize for the year’s best book on the founding era.

For more information on Weekend with History or the Chairman’s Council, please contact Corrie Manis at 212-485-9221 or cmanis@nyhistory.org.

FDR, Eleanor Roosevelt Discussion Event

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The New-York Historical Society will host a discussion on Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Thursday, March 31, 2011, 6:30 p.m, at the New York Society for Ethical Culture, 2 West 64th St. at Central Park West, to be presented in conjunction with the building of the FDR Four Freedoms Park. The program features historian Douglas Brinkley, Ambassador William J. vanden Heuvel, Roosevelt scholar William E. Leuchtenburg, and author Hazel Rowley.

In his State of the Union Address on January 6, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt looked forward to a world in which everyone enjoyed four essential freedoms: freedom of speech and expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. These values were central to both Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, who made it her personal mission to codify those rights in the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Experts discuss the speech and its far-reaching influence, and also delve into this extraordinary couple’s influence on one another.

William E. Leuchtenburg is a professor emeritus at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a former Bancroft Prize winner, and the author of six books on FDR. Hazel Rowley is the author of several books, including Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: An Extraordinary Marriage. William J. vanden Heuvel is Chairman of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park, LLC, as well as Founder and Chair Emeritus of the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute. Douglas Brinkley (moderator) is a professor of history at Rice University and a fellow in history at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy. He is a member of the board of the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute.

The cost is $20 for non-members; $10 for members. Call SmartTix at 212 868-4444 or visit SmartTix.com to purchase tickets.

Photo: The Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park is a memorial to Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Four Freedoms, located at the southernmost point of Roosevelt Island, in the East River between Manhattan Island and Queens in New York City. It was designed by the architect Louis Kahn.

New-York Historical Society Closing for Construction

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To accommodate its major construction project, the New-York Historical Society (N-YHS) galleries will close to the public today, Tuesday, February 1 until its grand reopening on November 11, 2011. The N-YHS Library will to remain open until June 3, 2011, with its reopening scheduled for September 9, 2011.

The galleries are scheduled to re-open on November 11, 2011. Re-designed by Platt Byard Dovell White Architects, the renovation will bring a new level of openness to the building, improve the Society’s ability to engage and inspire the public and showcase its collection and exhibitions. Also included in the Historical Society’s transformation will be the new DiMenna Children’s History Museum and the new Barbara K. Lipman Children’s History Library, designed by Lee H. Skolnick Architecture & Design Partnership, and an 80-seat Italian restaurant by Stephen Starr.



The N-YHS Reading Room and the Department of Prints, Photographs, and Architectural Collections will close on Friday, June 3, 2011 as part of the renovations of the museum. The facilities will be upgraded with new carpeting and the stained glass windows will be cleaned and re-installed to provide improved lighting.

There will be limited telephone reference service during the closing, and mail and email service will continue during the renovations. To email Printed Collections: reference@nyhistory.org. To email Manuscripts: mssdept@nyhistory.org. To email Graphic Collections printtroom@nyhistory.org. Phone Numbers: Printed Collections: 212-485-9225, 212-485-9226, Manuscripts: 212-485-9265, Graphic Collections: 212-485-9227. The library will re-open on September 9, 2011.

Hudson River School Focus of Major Travelling Exhibit

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Forty-five paintings from the collection of the New-York Historical Society will tour the United States in 2011 and 2012 in the major traveling exhibition Nature and the American Vision: Masterpieces of the Hudson River School. Though very seldom loaned, these iconic works of 19th-century landscape painting will now be circulated to four museums throughout the country as part of the Historical Society’s traveling exhibitions program Sharing a National Treasure.

Nature and the American Vision will allow audiences to enjoy and study superb examples of the Historical Society’s collection of Hudson River School paintings while the galleries of the N-YHS are closed for a transformative $65 million renovation project.

The Historical Society’s rich holdings of American art date back to the second half of the 19th century, when the museum acquired, through generous donation, the extensive painting collections formed by pioneering New York art patron Luman Reed (1787-1836). By 1944, the Society was also home to the extraordinary collection of Hudson River School art amassed by Robert Leighton Stuart (1806-1882), another of New York’s prominent 19th-century art patrons. Works once belonging to these pioneering American collectors form the core of the traveling exhibition.

“Our mission for the Sharing a National Treasure program is to ensure that audiences throughout the United States have access to the great artworks and priceless artifacts of the New-York Historical Society, New York City’s first museum and one of the nation’s oldest collecting institutions,” stated Louise Mirrer, President and CEO. “Nowhere is this mission more vital than in the traveling exhibition Nature and the American Vision. This tour keeps in public view some of the most important works of Thomas Cole, Frederic Church, Albert Bierstadt, John Kensett, Jasper Cropsey, Asher B. Durand, George Inness and many others: the first artists to have created a consciously American tradition of painting.”

The Hudson River School emerged during the second quarter of the 19th century in New York City. There, a loosely knit group of artists and writers forged the first self-consciously American landscape vision and literary voice. That American vision—still widely influential today—was grounded in a view of the natural world as a source of spiritual renewal and an expression of national identity. This vision was first expressed through the magnificent scenery of the Hudson River Valley region, including the Catskills, which was accessible to writers, artists and sightseers via traffic on the great river that gave the school its name.

The exhibition tells this story in four thematic sections. Within these broad groupings, the paintings show how American artists embodied powerful ideas about nature, culture and history—including the belief that a special providence was manifest to Americans in the continent’s sublime landscape.

The American Grand Tour features paintings of the Catskill, Adirondack, and White Mountain regions celebrated for their scenic beauty and historic sites, as well as views of Lake George, Niagara Falls and the New England countryside. These were the destinations that most powerfully attracted both artists and travelers. The American Grand Tour also includes paintings that memorialize the Hudson River itself as the gateway to the touring destinations and primary sketching grounds for American landscape painters.

American Artists A-Field includes works by Hudson River School artists who after 1850 sought inspiration further from home. The paintings of Frederic Edwin Church, Albert Bierstadt, Thomas Hill and Martin Johnson Heade show how these globe-trotting painters embraced the role of artist-explorer and thrilled audiences with images of the landscape wonders of such far-flung places as the American frontier, Yosemite Valley and South America.

Dreams of Arcadia: Americans in Italy features wonderful paintings by Cole, Cropsey, Sanford R. Gifford, and others celebrating Italy as the center of the Old World and the principal destination for Americans on the European Grand Tour. Viewed as the storehouse of Western culture, Italy was a living laboratory of the past, with its cities, galleries, and countryside offering a survey of the artistic heritage from antiquity, as well as a striking contrast to the wilderness vistas of North America portrayed by these same artists.

In the final section of the exhibition, Grand Landscape Narratives, all of these ideas converge in Thomas Cole’s five-painting series The Course of Empire (c. 1834-36), imagining the rise of a great civilization from an unspoiled landscape, and the ultimate decay of that civilization into ruins scattered in the same wilderness. These celebrated paintings explore the tension between Americans’ deep veneration of the wilderness and their equally ardent celebration of progress, recapitulating the larger story told in Nature and the American Vision.

Nature and the American Vision: Masterpieces of the Hudson River School will travel to The Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, TX (February 26- June 19, 2011); the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA (July 30 – November 6, 2011); the Columbia Museum of Art, Columbia, SC (November 17, 2011 – April 1, 2012); and the new Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR (May – August, 2012). The paintings will then return to their renovated home.

The ideas and beliefs explored in the exhibition are also investigated in an award-winning 224-page catalogue by Linda S. Ferber: The Hudson River School: Nature and the American Vision, published by Skira Rizzoli Publications, Inc. Featuring 150 full-color illustrations of works from the acclaimed collection of the New-York Historical Society, the catalogue places the splendid paintings in the traveling exhibition into a broad historical and cultural context. Dr. Ferber received the 2010 Henry Allen Moe Prize for Catalogues of Distinction in the Arts from the New York State Historical Association for the volume.

Times Square Photos Wanted by New-York Historical Society

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Photographers are encouraged to share their perspective on historic location in New York City by January 31, 2011 for a chance at a first place prize of $500. The New-York Historical Society is soliciting digital photographs of contemporary Times Square from West 42nd to 47th Streets at Broadway or Seventh Avenue. Photographers should look to capture exterior architecture, outdoor portraits, group snapshots, billboards and advertisements and interior images of notable area buildings. Everyone, from serious amateur photographers to tourists is welcome to participate.

Photograph submissions should be sent to contest@nyhistory.org in either GIF, JPG, or PNG format, and be at least 3000 x 3600 pixels to 6000 x 7200 pixels (or 20” x 24”). Please include a title for the photo, a description of the relevance of the photo to Times Square, where and when the photo was taken and the identity of each person who is depicted in the photo and the photographer’s name so work can be attributed. Complete submission guidelines are online.

Photo: Times Square, 1922.

NY Historical Society SeeksTimes Square Photos

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The New-York Historical Society is soliciting digital photographs of contemporary Times Square from West 42nd to 47th Streets at Broadway or Seventh Avenue. Photographers are encouraged to share their perspective on historic Times Square in New York City by submitting photos taken between November 21, 2010 to March 31, 2011

Photographers should look to capture exterior architecture, outdoor portraits, group snapshots, billboards and advertisements and interior images of notable area buildings. Everyone, from serious amateur photographers to tourists are invited to submit photographs.

Photograph submissions should be sent to photos@nyhistory.org in either GIF, JPG, or PNG format, and be at least 1,200 x 1,500 pixels *or 8” by 10”. Include the photographer’s name so work can be attributed. Complete submission guidelines are online.

Photo: Times Square, 1922.

Important Slavery Collection Goes Online

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The New-York Historical Society has announced the launch of a new online portal to nearly 12,000 pages of source materials documenting the history of slavery in the United States, the Atlantic slave trade and the abolitionist movement. Made readily accessible to the general public for the first time at www.nyhistory.org/slaverycollections, these documents from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries represent fourteen of the most important collections in the library’s Manuscript Department.

The collections include account books and ship manifests documenting the financial aspects of the slave trade; legal papers such as birth certificates and deeds of manumission; and political works and polemics. The materials range from writings by the abolitionists Granville Sharp, Lysander Spooner and Charles Sumner to the diary of a plantation manager and overseer of slaves in Cuba, Joseph Goodwin, and that of a former slave in Fishkill, New York, James F. Brown.

The site also provides access to the archives of abolitionist organizations such as the New-York Manumission Society and the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, as well as the records of the African Free School, which document the education of free blacks in early nineteenth-century New York.

“The creative use of digital technology is a key priority in making the Society a highly accessible world-class resource for all,” stated Jean Ashton, Executive Vice President of the Historical Society and Director of the Library. “This project is a landmark achievement in our efforts to offer scholars, educators and students anywhere in the world immediate access to materials from the Society’s museum and library collections.”

The project was completed with the support of a $190,000 appropriation secured by Senator Charles E. Schumer’s office to digitize the Historical Society’s library collections. “As more and more of our world goes online, we must make sure that our historical records keep up,” said Senator Schumer. “By digitizing thousands of pages of materials documenting the history of slavery in the United States, the New-York Historical Society will make this collection accessible to any American interested in our history.”

Over the past six years, the New-York Historical Society has showcased documents, art and artifacts relating to the abolitionist movement and the network known as the Underground Railroad by publishing the papers of the African Free School in print and on the web, and through the following exhibitions:

Grant and Lee in War and Peace

Lincoln and New York;

Alexander Hamilton

Slavery in New York

New York Divided: Slavery and the Civil War;

French Founding Father: Lafayette’s Return to Washington’s America.

Established in 1804, the New-York Historical Society (N-YHS) comprises New York’s oldest museum and a nationally renowned research library. N-YHS collects, preserves and interprets American history and art; its mission is to make these collections accessible to the broadest public and increase understanding of American history through exhibitions, public programs and research that reveal the dynamism of history and its impact on the world today. N-YHS holdings cover four centuries of American history and comprise one of the world’s greatest collections of historical artifacts, American art and other materials documenting the history of the United States as seen through the prism of New York City and State.

Grateful Dead Exhibit at the NY Historical Society

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Tracing the career and achievements of a band that became one of the most significant cultural forces in 20th century America, the New-York Historical Society presents The Grateful Dead: Now Playing at the New-York Historical Society. The exhibition, on view until July 4, 2010, represents the first large-scale exhibition of materials from the Grateful Dead Archive, housed at the University of California Santa Cruz.

Through a wealth of original materials, the exhibition will explore the musical creativity and influence of the Grateful Dead from 1965 to 1995, the sociological phenomenon of the Deadheads (the band’s network of devoted fans) and the enduring impact of the Dead’s pioneering approach to the music business. Among the objects in the exhibition will be documents, instruments, audio and video recordings, album art, photographs, platinum records, posters, programs, newsletters, tickets, and t-shirts and other merchandise. Highlights will include the band’s first record contract, tour itineraries, backstage guest lists, decorated fan mail, rare LP test pressings, drawings for the fabled Wall of Sound amplifier array, scripts for the Grateful Dead ticket hotline, notebooks of Dead archivist Dick Latvala, life-size skeleton props used in the band’s “Touch of Grey” video and large-scale marionettes and other stage props.

“Despite the Grateful Dead’s close association with California, the band and New York have been an important part of each other’s history from the first time the Dead played here in 1967 to the band’s year-on-year performances in New York from the late 1970s through 1995,” commented Dr. Louise Mirrer, President and CEO of the New-York Historical Society. “This exhibition not only celebrates the band’s relationship with New York but its tremendous impact on American culture.”

“The Grateful Dead Archive is one of the most significant popular cultural collections of the 20th century,” said Christine Bunting, the head of Special Collections and Archives at the University Library at UC Santa Cruz. “We are delighted that the Historical Society is presenting this unprecedented exhibition, providing the public and the thousands of fans with such an exciting overview of the band’s musical journey.”

The Grateful Dead: Now Playing at the New-York Historical Society provides unique glimpses into the political and social upheavals and artistic awakenings of the 1960s and 1970s, a tumultuous and transformative period that shaped our current cultural and political landscape, and examines how the Grateful Dead’s origin in northern California in the mid-1960s was informed by the ideology and spirit of both the Beat Generation and the burgeoning Hippie scene, including the now-legendary Acid Tests. The exhibition also explores how the band’s refusal to follow the established rules of the record industry revealed an unexpected business savvy that led to innovations in a rapidly changing music industry, and also to a host of consumer-driven marketing enrichments that kept fans in frequent contact with the band.

Co-curated by Debra Schmidt Bach, Assistant Curator of Decorative Arts, and Nina Nazionale, Director of Library Operations at the New-York Historical Society, the exhibition will be organized thematically, beginning with an examination of the Grateful Dead’s early days in the Bay Area and its first performance in New York City. Other major exhibition themes include the band’s musical artistry, the business of the Grateful Dead, and the band’s special relationship with its fans.

Materials in the exhibition will be drawn almost exclusively from the extraordinary holdings of the Grateful Dead Archive, established in 2008, along with a small number of objects on loan from Grateful Dead Productions and private collectors. A series of public programs will complement the exhibition.

About the Grateful Dead Archive

The Grateful Dead Archive, housed at the University of California at Santa Cruz, University Library, represents one of the most significant popular cultural collections of the 20th Century. It documents the Dead’s incredible creative activity and influence in contemporary music history from 1965 to 1995, including the phenomena of the Deadheads, the band’s extensive network of devoted fans, and the band’s highly unusual and successful musical business ventures.

The Archive contains original documents, clippings, media, article and other publications about the Dead and its individual members, its tours and performances, productions, and business. Among the resources that will be invaluable for researchers are show files, programs, newsletters, posters, cover art, photographs, tickets and stickers. These artifacts document three decades of the band’s recordings and its performance of thousands of concerts. A collection of stage props, tour exhibit material, and, of course, tee-shirts gives dimension and visual impact to the collection. An unusual feature of the Archive will be the correspondence and art contributed over the years by supportive Deadheads and held as very important by the Dead.

The Archive, when processed, will be widely and freely accessible to fans and scholars It will be housed on the UCSC campus, and material from it will be prominently displayed and available for listening, viewing, and research in a dedicated Grateful Dead room located in UCSC’s new and renovated McHenry Library.

It is expected to take two years to process the Archive; parts of the collections will be debuted in stages as processing progresses. Material in the Archive will be physically preserved, its content described in detail in an electronically available finding aid, and digital copies, when appropriate, will be offered for viewing and listening from a UCSC Grateful Dead web site.

Photo: Amalie Rothschild, Fillmore East Marquee, December 1969. Special Collections, University of California, Santa Cruz. Grateful Dead Archive. Provided.

New-York Historical Society Celebrates Immigrant Heritage

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On Tuesday, April 20 from 4:30-6:30 pm, the New-York Historical Society will participate in the citywide Immigrant Heritage Week observance with a panel discussion about the upcoming exhibition, Nueva York. During the first half of the program, curators will discuss highlights of the exhibition, which explores how Spanish-speaking people have affected virtually every aspect of the City’s development from commerce, manufacturing and transportation to communications, entertainment and the arts from as early as the 17th century through today.

The second half (45 minutes) of the program will be a workshop for teachers and others interested in exploring how this dynamic history can be brought to life for learners of all ages through a rich collection of documents, manuscripts, photographs, and multimedia resources, including film and music.

All attendees must enter the New-York Historical Society through the loading dock at 5 W 76th Street. RSVPs are welcome to schoolprograms@nyhistory.org. Admission is free.

This event will serve as a preview to Nueva York, an exhibition exploring New York’s long connection with Spain and Latin America. Organized by the New-York Historical Society and El Museo del Barrio, Nueva York will be on view from September 17, 2010, through January 9, 2011.

This year, Immigrant Heritage Week is celebrated from April 15 to April 21. Throughout the week, a collection of family friendly events, film screenings, art exhibits and walking tours will promote and reflect the diversity of the immigrant communities in our City.

Photo: Ellis Island Immigrants by National Photo Co., ca. 1909-1932. Library of Congress Photo.

New-York Historical Society Wins Lincoln Award

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The 2009 Barondess/Lincoln Award was presented at the Round Table’s 537st meeting by Len Rehner, Past President of the CWRT of New York and Chairman of the Awards Committee, and Charles Mander, Current President. Accepting the award for the The New-York Historical Society were three recipients: Dr. Louise Mirrer, President and Chief Executive Officer; Harold Holzer, Chief Historian; and Richard Rabinowitz, Chief Curator for the Exhibit.

The Barondess/Lincoln Award was established in 1960. Dr. Barondess was a distinguished charter member and former vice president of the Civil War Round Table of New York, and this award is presented in his memory. These awards, in the form of a copy of a bust of Lincoln, is given annually “to any person or institution and for any contribution to the greater appreciation of the life and works of Abraham Lincoln.” Previous winners have included Doris Kearns Goodwin, Craig Symonds, Gabor Boritt, William Gienapp, William C. Davis, Gary Wills, William Safire, and Gore Vidal, just to name a few.

In its exhibit, “Lincoln and New York,” Awards-Committee Chairman Len Rehner described to the audience how “Lincoln can be seen and felt through the incredible artifacts and memorabilia on display.” He explained how “This evocative show takes one back in time to the visit Lincoln paid to New York in February, 1860 to deliver his Presidential credentials speech at the Cooper Union. Room after room reveals the New York City of then and the political whirl over the impending Presidential election. You step into another dimension—be it a saloon with its spittoons or the handbills advertising the excitement of this new man’s appearance.”

ABOUT THE RECIPIENTS

A preeminent educational and research institution, The New-York Historical Society is home to New York City’s oldest museum and one of the nation’s most distinguished independent research libraries. Founded in 1804, the Society is dedicated to presenting exhibitions and public programs and fostering research that reveals the dynamism of history and its influence on today’s world. Its holdings cover four centuries of American history, and include one of the world’s greatest collections of historical artifacts, American art, and other materials documenting the history of the United States as seen through the prism of New York City and New York State.

Named President and Chief Executive Officer of The New-York Historical Society in 2004, Dr. Louise Mirrer holds a Ph.D in Spanish and Humanities from Stanford University and has over 20 years of experience as an academic administrator, most recently serving as Executive Vice Chancellor for Academics at CUNY. An eminent scholar in her field, Dr. Mirrer has published widely on language, literature, medieval studies, and women’s studies, both books and articles, in Spanish and English. Her most recent book is Women, Jews, and Muslims in the Reconquest Castile.

One of the leading public historians in the United States with over thirty years of experience in creating new museums, exhibits, media presentations, and educational programs, Richard Rabinowitz is the founder and president since 1980 of the American History Workshop. A scholar of American social and religious history, Dr. Rabinowitz has taught at Harvard, Skidmore and Scripps colleges. His book, The Spiritual Self in Everyday Life: The Transformation of Personal Religious Experience in Nineteenth-Century New England has been recognized as a “thoughtful analysis of what it has meant to be religious in America.” An award-winning museum and exhibit planner, Dr. Rabinowitz graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College and received his Ph.D in History of American Civilization from Harvard University.

A prolific writer and lecturer and a frequent guest on television, Harold Holzer was Co-Chairman of the United States Lincoln Bicentennial Commission. He has authored or co-authored over thirty books on Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War. Mr. Holzer has won four Barondess/Lincoln Awards from the Civil War Round Table of New York; a 2005 Lincoln Prize, perhaps the most prestigious award in the field, for Lincoln at Cooper Union(2004); the coveted Nevins-Freeman Award from the Civil War Round Table of Chicago; and three Awards of Achievement from the Lincoln Group of New York. Educated at the City University of New York, he is currently senior vice president for external affairs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
ABOUT THE CIVIL WAR ROUND TABLE OF NEW YORK

Founded in 1951, The Civil War Round Table of New York generally meets the second Wednesday of the month from September to June. Members assist each other with research, discuss preservation strategy for endangered battlefield, and listen to a distinguished speaker talk about a particular aspect of the war. For the year 2009/2010, the meeting location will be the 3 West Club, 3 West 51st Street in Manhattan.

For more information on the Civil War Round Table of New York, please contact The Civil War Round Table of New York at our mailing address: 139-33 250th Street, Rosedale, New York 11422. Or, if you prefer, call , or email us at basecat@civilwarhome.com. Check out our website at www.cwrtnyc.org.

ABOUT THE LINCOLN MASK

A number of years ago, Dr. Mark D. Zimmerman was attempting to negotiate the purchase of a Roman death mask at an antique store. Hanging nearby was a plaster mask the origin of which no one seemed to know other than it had been included in a large estate sale whose contents were not well documented. As it turned out, it happened to be the mask of Abraham Lincoln.

After several years of Internet searches and endless phone calls to private individuals, major museums, private collections, and many other sources, Dr. Zimmerman realized that this mask was an authentic 19th century cast from the original 1860 Leonard Wells Volk life mask. The mask was evaluated at a major university archival research center. Comparisons were made with their own authentic Lincoln Plaster Mask, and the facial markings, structure and measurements necessary to provide authenticity were exact.

Dr. Zimmerman took the plaster cast to the Bronzart foundry in Sarasota, Florida, and they carefully reproduced the exact mask in bronze from the plaster using the “lost wax technique.” The Bronze mask weighs approximately 15 pounds with the base of polished black absolute granite weighing 14 pounds. Abraham Lincoln’s exact signature is inscribed in the front of the base. The face swivels on a brass pin imported from Italy. The total height is approximately 15 inches and the mask alone is 12.5 inches.

Through his generosity, Dr. Zimmerman donated these pieces of art to the Civil War Round Table of New York to be used as the Barondess/Lincoln Award.

Photo: Recipients of the Barondess/Lincoln Award for The New-York Historical Society: Harold Holzer, Chief Historian; Valerie Paley, Historian For Special Projects (accepting for Dr. Louise Mirrer, President and CEO); and Richard Rabinowitz, Chief Curator (Photo Credit: R. L. Burke)