NEW YORK, NY.- The Museum of the City of New York presents From Teaspoons to Titanic: Recent Acquisitions, a sprawling and poignant showcase pulled from the Museum’s rich collection of more than 750,000 objects and images that preserves a New York City known only to history and memory and catalogues the perpetual change that characterizes the five boroughs and their inhabitants. From Teaspoons to Titanic is comprised of 40 artifacts and artworks, all acquired by the Museum since 2013, ranging from photographs to silver spoons to paintings and even a deck chair from the RMS Titanic – reflecting the dynamic diversity of the city itself.

The exhibition features items such as Jan Staller’s haunting photos of an abandoned 1970s west side; a rare book documenting Fifth Avenue, block by block, in 1911 – with bonus photographs and handwritten notes by Louis Auchincloss; Danny Lyon’s images of lower Manhattan in the midst of reconstruction during the mid-1960s – making way for the World Trade Center and a new ramp to the Brooklyn Bridge; information cards completed by the Hebrew Immigrant and Sheltering Aid Society to assist new arrivals in the early 20th century that humanize the familiar story of New York as a melting pot; artist Richard Haas’s preparatory paintings for street murals from the late 20th century, which trace the roots of the public art movement in the city; works from several notable photographers like Leland Bobbe, R.D. Smith, Danny Lyon, and Ed Grazda, spanning nearly half a century and documenting the changing nature of the city and its people; and selections from a remarkable set of souvenir spoons commemorating New York scenes that harken back to the city’s Gilded Age. The ornate beauty of the sterling silver spoons hints at the peaks and valleys of wealth and poverty that have always been part of New York City’s story.

“The Museum’s collections are always growing, and the selection of artifacts and artworks on display in From Teaspoons to Titanic provides a window into how our collections bring the city’s story to life,” said Whitney Donhauser, Ronay Menschel Director of the Museum of the City of New York. “The Museum’s collections of 750,000 objects and images show ‘how New York became New York.’ We are proud to showcase an entire exhibition’s worth of assorted treasures as a lens through which visitors may better understand the city and also as a sneak preview of what’s to come this Fall with our landmark exhibition New York at Its Core – the first and only Museum presentation of New York’s vivid 400-plus years of history.”

From Teaspoons to Titanic contains a diverse array of 40 items and works of art spanning over a century of New York City history. Highlighted objects and sections include the following:

DECK CHAIR FROM THE RMS TITANIC
While the Titanic’s tragic voyage is legendary the world over, how deeply the event affected New York City is less well known. New York was the planned destination of nearly 200 of the approximately 1,500 people on board who lost their lives, among them some of the city’s leading citizens, as well as immigrants planning to restart their lives in America. The tragedy was memorialized in New York with church services, concerts, and printed tributes. The deck chair in this exhibition is one of only approximately 10 known and authenticated chairs surviving from the wreck.

STERLING SILVER SPOON COLLECTION
This New York City-centric collection of souvenir spoons was produced during the “souvenir spoon craze,” which swept the nation from the 1880s into the 1940s. Design subjects on display include the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty, the Washington Arch, the Williamsburg Bridge, the Times Building, Pennsylvania Station, Grant’s Tomb, the Flatiron Building, and individuals like minister and social reformer Henry Ward Beecher and actor Edwin Forrest.

RICHARD HAAS MURALS
Richard Haas, who moved to New York from his native Wisconsin in 1968, developed a reputation for his large-scale paintings on the blank facades of buildings created in the trompe l’oeil (“trick the eye”) style. They helped give urban areas a new lease on life and played a pioneering role in the growth of public art in the city. Pieces in this show include a working drawing for the mosaic façade of the Home Savings Bank of America located in Forest Hills celebrating this historic district and a finalized maquette of the Peck Slip mural still visible today in lower Manhattan.

PHOTOGRAPHY
From Teaspoons to Titanic reflects the richness of the Museum’s prints and photography collection with a broad array of images from celebrated New York City photographers. The works on display reflect the beauty and grit of the city and its inhabitants from time periods both romanticized and reviled today.

Jan Staller
Jan Staller’s 1976 explorations of the deteriorating Miller Highway—known as the West Side Elevated Highway, and abandoned in 1973—was the impetus for his interest in those areas of New York that were deserted and ignored. The photographs he made during this period, taken while walking the city at twilight, capture the transitory experience of atmosphere, where daylight, weather, and artificial light combine in otherworldly ways at the outskirts of Manhattan.

Danny Lyon
In 1966, when Danny Lyon was living in a loft on the corner of Beekman and Williams Streets in downtown Manhattan, 60 acres of buildings below Canal Street were slated for demolition, including nearly half the structures in his immediate neighborhood. Lyon spent the next three years photographing the area, creating a record of each building before it was torn down to make way for the World Trade Center, a new ramp to the Brooklyn Bridge, and a Pace University expansion, among other projects. Many of Lyon’s images were the only ones that survive of entire blocks in the areas of Fulton and Beekman Streets and West Street along the Hudson River.

R.D Smith
From the end of World War II through the 1970s, the Bowery was known as New York City's "Skid Row." Infamous for its "Bowery Bums" – largely alcoholic and dispossessed people – the avenue running north/south from Chatham Square to Cooper Square was considered a no man’s land. On a cold December day in 1970, R.D. Smith began to photograph the Bowery neighborhood and portrayed stories that humanized many of these people – oftentimes showing despair intertwined with dignity.

Leland Bobbe
In the 1970s, New York native Leland Bobbe was a young street photographer documenting two of New York’s most notorious neighborhoods—the Bowery and Times Square. The photographs of Times Square in this exhibition allude to the sex trade that held sway in the area at that time.