Displaying Objects Of or Around New York

Upon entering the Museum of the City of New York’s (MCNY) building on the corner of 5th Avenue and 103rd street, you’re greeted by a primly-dressed entrance staff that is cascaded by light through grand windows which provide a view into the newly renovated, 18,500 square-foot late-Georgian largess of the museum.   Before one enters into the museum proper we must pass its gatekeeper: the gift shop.  Whereas the museum’s architecture exudes elegance, the gift shop interior is capitalistically utilitarian i.e. to simply display and sell their products.  Two desks give way to white walls with shelves and three wooden islands create narrow walkways which restrict interaction. Fluorescent light-bulbs hang from high ceilings while natural light pours in from the courtyard which illuminates the shop’s merchandise.   While the museum shop included in the 95 million dollar renovation project as well, it seemed to lag behind other components of the museum.

Investigating how the Museum of the City of New York’s could afford such a large renovation brings its financial and biannual reports to the forefront. The reports showcase an impressive fiscal turnaround for the museum from the early 2000s.  Its revenue had fallen fall thirty percent from 2001 to 2002, 5.8 to 4.1 million dollars, on the heels of kiboshed relocation from the El Barrio Neighborhood to Tweed Courthouse in Lower Manhattan. Although it is at the head of NYC’s famed Museum Mile – its home since 1932 – moving to the geographical top of the financial district could have brought tidings of a better fiscal position for the museum.  This led to the resignation of then-director Robert R. McDonald and the hiring of the director from 2002 to 2014, Susan Henshaw Jones.  During Director Jones’s tenure MCNY went from 4.1 to 19.6 million dollars in revenue with substantial gains in grants, event income, and earned income, which consists of admissions, program service revenue, membership dues, licensing revenue from MCNY’s images and gift shop sales.

The gift shop represented the smallest amount of revenue growth – 385 to 473 thousand – from 2003 to 2013 which closely follows by percentage the rate of inflation, 23 and 26 percent respectively, over that time.  This means there was no growth in real revenue.  While a gift shop is subject to arguably the most rigid constraints – inventory, space, and staff – of the aforementioned categories, its lack of change relative to the museum’s change in its primary mission might be at play.

The primary mission exempt purpose of the museum until 2008 was “as a public history museum… devoted to the procurement, care, and display of objects associated with New York City”: parsing out procurement, care, and display presents different or otherness as key components.  In procurement, the museum seeks to own that part of history.  Caring for the object allows the museum to interpret how the object should be kept and displayed.  Then, each object is displayed and given its association to New York.  Not integrated entirely as a part of a whole, but presented in its association to New York City. This type of categorization emphasizes the otherness of each display as it associates to New York: above, below, mainstream, or a as a counterculture in relation to New York?

Its current slogan represent a more liberal integration of historical context where the Museum “Presents and interprets the past, present and future of New York City and celebrates its heritage of diversity, tolerance, opportunity, and perpetual transformation.”   This presents each display of the museum as the “past, present, and future of New York city” and as an integral part of New York’s “heritage of diversity, opportunity and perpetual transformation.” However, this gift shop reflects one of its exhibitions display’s – The Hip-Hop Revolution – merchandise as displaying of historical objects in association to New York City, not as an integral part of New York’s perpetual transformation.

The museum shops merchandise can be described as New York City memorabilia, New York City books, and exhibition specific publications, photographs, and music.  The Museum’s online gift shop bears a striking similarity to the physical layout of the store in its white layout and narrow spacing to the physical museum, but has its own official categories (listed in website order): Museum Images, Limited Editions, Books, City Living, Jewelry, Gifts $50 & Under, and Exhibitions.   I will be focusing on the representation of the different histories of New York and how the exhibitions in the physical and online shop environment display them.

The historical books of the shop examine the histories of ethnic groups, periods of time, architectural feats which consist of mostly mid to lower Manhattan landmarks, and different New York controversies (Robert Moses, How the Other Half Lives).  These myriad of books  which cover almost the entirety of the left wall – demonstrate different aspects to New York as an integrated as a part of New York and include the Folk, Saving Places, Landscapes, Paul Rand, and Gilded Age exhibits New York heritage quite extensively.  However, the Hip-Hop Revolution exhibit is represented in a way not to celebrate it heritage in “perpetual changing” of the New York landscape, but as an object of display.  Most prominently displayed in its section are the different t-shirts, mugs, maps, pictures of graffiti from the exhibit.  It does include a couple of books of historical significance of the period, but the exhibit more closely resembles the overtly commodified section of the museum then it’s counterpart representing historical significance.  This is duly signified on the websites by the “Limited Edition” section, which is comprised of common prints from the Hip-Hop exhibit.  This section connotes difference whereas the Museum history and books are an attempt to represent the heritage of New York.

In examining the specific books and representations of the display, the Folk section is the prominently displayed picture of Bob Dylan with Folk City: New York and The American Folk Music Revival.  This is Folk as a part of New York.  The Saving Places landmark exhibit is 50 years of New York City Landmarks.  The Greatest Grid is The Mast Plan of Manhattan.  The Hip-Hop exhibit is represented by Counter Culture and Beneath the Streets.  These are related by proximity to New York, not as New York.

— Chris Cordeiro