When the Museum of the City of New York decided to mark its centennial with a massive exhibit exploring what the city has meant to artists, let’s just say there was no shortage of exhibits.

More than 400 objects were assembled for “This Is New York: 100 years of the city in art and pop culture”, while capturing how the city has served as a muse, setting and subject for visual artists, filmmakers, writers, fashion designers and musicians over the past century. The stories they told in and about New York are as plentiful as they are diverse.

“No one feels neutral about New York,” Sarah M. Henry, the museum’s chief curator and acting director, told Artnet News. “The impeccable quality of this sighting and the way the artists drew attention to New York’s flaws are as much a part of the story as the odes to the things we love about the city.”

Installation view of ‘This Is New York: 100 Years of the City in Art and Pop Culture’ at the Museum of the City of New York. Photo: Brad Farwell for the Museum of the City of New York.

The show is divided into separate segments.

Interactive exhibits dot the show, including a sound installation loaded with 100 songs inspired by the city’s five boroughs and a digital library, designed by design studio Dome Collective, where visitors can listen to books read by Matthew Broderick, Ronnie Chieng and Tessa Thompson.

A highlight, however, is You Are Here, an installation that immerses viewers in more than 400 film scenes shot from and about New York. do the right thing And ghost hunters are represented, as well as excerpts from A hard worker For Breakfast at Tiffany’s For midnight cowboyall cleverly and thematically put together by production company RadicalMedia.

Installation view of ‘This Is New York: 100 Years of the City in Art and Pop Culture’ at the Museum of the City of New York. Photo: Brad Farwell for the Museum of the City of New York.

A massive project, MCNY planned and assembled the exhibit over five years, a period that overlapped with the 2020 closings. According to Henry, it was a moment that surfaced for the museum team about how the distinct qualities New York could also make it more vulnerable to a pandemic. This divergent vision, as the show shows, is just the tip of the complexity of inhabiting – let’s face it – the biggest city in the world.

“We’re not the welcome center and New York doesn’t need it either,” Henry said. “The object of the exhibition is those conflicting perspectives, experiences and emotions that a place as complicated and challenging as New York can conjure up.”

Here are eight must-see highlights from the exhibition.

Alice Neel, 108th and Madison (1945)

Alice Neel, 108th and Madison (1945) to “This Is New York: 100 Years of the City in Art and Pop Culture.” Photo: Min Chen.

“I love you Harlem,” artist Alice Neel wrote in her diary in the early 1940s, “for the deep rich vein of human feeling buried beneath your fire engines.” This affection for her neighborhood Neel also painted in her street scenes that immortalized El Barrio, she wrote, for “your poverty and your loves”. This particular oil depicts the city’s sanitation workers doing their job not far from the MCNY itself.

The dress and gloves that Robert De Niro wore angry bull (1980)

Dress, underpants and boxing gloves angry bull to “This Is New York: 100 Years of the City in Art and Pop Culture.” Photo: Min Chen.

One of the most striking costume choices in Martin Scorsese’s Oscar-winning film, this ensemble, designed by John Boxer and Richard Bruno, was best seen in scenes recreating boxer Jake LaMotta’s fights in Madison Square Garden. It will only be visible for three months.

Elinor Carucci, Emma in her room, shelter in place time, Corona Days (2020)

Elinor Carucci, Emma in her room, shelter in place time, Corona Days (2020). Courtesy of Edwynn Houk Gallery.

During the lockdown, photographer Elinor Carucci turned her camera to her own family in isolation, capturing her husband and teenage twins, Eden and Emma (seen here), sheltering in place in their 950 square foot apartment . His series would illustrate not just an individual, but a shared reality, further reflected in Kadir Nelson Back home (2021), a painting, included in the exhibition, which depicts the bliss of a post-vax reunion.

The pendant of Uncut Gems (2019)

Pendant of Uncut Gemswith the Carrie Bradshaw tutu set from sex and the city. Photo: Brad Farwell for the Museum of the City of New York.

You know highly meme scene Since Uncut Gems where Adam Sandler, playing a jeweler, holds up this diamond-encrusted Furby pendant and says, “I started this shit”? Well, that object is here, the work of designer Catherine Miller who oversaw the casting, casting and hand setting of the 14-karat gemstones on the instantly iconic locket.

Handwritten lyrics by Jimi Hendrix for “My Friend” (1968)

Handwritten lyrics by Jimi Hendrix. Photo: Min Chen.

Hendrix lived in New York for four years beginning in 1966, during which time he left his mark at studios like Electric Lady and apartments in Greenwich Village and the Upper East Side. The city also marked the musician who, in his song “My Friend”, transformed Harlem into a fantastic setting for an encounter with “a stagecoach full of feathers and footprints”.

Edward Hopper, new york movie (1939)

Edward Hopper, new york movie (1939) to “This Is New York: 100 Years of the City in Art and Pop Culture.” Photo: Min Chen.

One of Hopper’s lesser-seen works, on loan from MoMA, this painting depicts a pensive usher against the backdrop of an opulent movie theater. The painter’s signatures flourish here, from the visual sumptuousness of the New York setting to the haunted atmosphere of urban alienation.

The T-shirt that Chloë Sevigny wore in Children (1995)

t-shirt Children. Photo: Brad Farwell for the Museum of the City of New York.

Directly from Sévigny’s own collectionthis t-shirt saw her character Jennie go through a day of partying, drug use, sex and skateboarding in Larry Clark’s seminal life-changing film. Children. Sevigny calls the object one of his “most prized possessions.”

Faith Ringgold, tar beach (1988)

Faith Ringgold, tar beach (1988) to “This Is New York: 100 Years of the City in Art and Pop Culture.” Photo: Min Chen.

Ringgold’s story quilt, which chronicles the creative daydreams of artist Cassie Louise Lightfoot’s eight-year-old heroine, is included here for its framing of a Harlem rooftop as a site of socializing, dreaming and flight . “My women actually fly,” Ringgold said of her “Women on a Bridge” series, of which this quilt is a part. “They’re just free, totally.”

“This Is New York: 100 years of the city in art and pop cultureis on view at the Museum of the City of New York, 1220 5th Ave, New York, through June 21, 2024.

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