Shedding the Austere in the Dio-Zone
From a nation of dedicated historians whose private acts of stewardship play the long game on and on until tomorrow, we come to the premier collection of collections, a researcher’s high reading room, a Luce Center, a grand hall or two… The New York Historical Society is shiny and sparkly, the new and now much more familiar brand of well-executed renovations nonpareil in museum design. Award-winning! The cafe and shop, too. Trophies hidden here, in little things like fancy private restrooms and high-tech phone charging devices on the wall (but do they work?), amongst the marble, the extra staff, the headphones for each of us on our tour.
When I arrived a handsome man waiting at the door asked me if I was a researcher. He, a researcher, mightily chuffed, was looking for Rheingold Beer papers and memorabilia. He knew he was in the right place; but he was not sure they would believe him or let him in. He was proud and he was a New Yorker, and this was his final stop. He’d reached his destination. He felt like Indiana Jones.
If it was Roebling they found, his survey kit and all, and if it was Hamilton who named Bedloe’s Island, and if those dire, non-negotiable terms of Grant’s said surrender, it is to the New York Historical Society we should always refer. We should be thankful for their authority, we should rely upon it far more often. Why don’t we? Why don’t they?
We have Clara Driscoll to thank for the dragonfly wings, the lattice on lamp shades, overlaid on Edison’s incandescent bulbs. They extenuated penetrating electricity, got the city turned on. Mr. Tiffany thought men should stick to the geometric shapes and the women were more talented in designing the floral patterns, the softer things in life. Right?
Perhaps that was so, but then there was some “Hotbed” downtown to concern ourselves with. Why was it called suffrage, anyway?
We all know there is no one more Jones-y than those who catered to Teddy Roosevelt, his visions for the animal kingdom, while listless, wily and no longer de rigueur, he boasted a similar brim to the hat. We have him to thank for the Department of the Interior, and for the National Reclamation Act of 1906. We have his whole time period to thank for all the great many lofty and lost ideals that really no longer are tolerable, by any means whatsoever. If museums as old as the ones we visited today are held up on high for any reason, it is that one. Forget the 1970s wood paneling our tour guide was concerned about. Bless the dioramas, and bless the changing eras of America.
