City Museums Look to the Future

In their most traditional form, museums encapsulate the past, and the Museum of the City of New York’s first permanent installation, open this month, fulfills that expectation. Visitors to New York at its Core are treated to objects that evoke 400 years of the city’s history: the coffee pot of an 18th-century family disgruntled over the tax on tea; Boss Tweed’s cufflinks; a 1978 guestlist from Studio 54; and a baseball signed by the 1955 Brooklyn Dodgers, among 400 or so other artifacts.

But the exhibition doesn’t quit at the past or present. Following the two historical galleries, the exhibit ends in a room called the Future City Lab, where data manipulations and interactives take the place of artifacts. Rows of sleek tables, decorated with graphs and embedded with tablet screens, invite visitors to contemplate open-ended, forward-looking questions: How can we foster a more inclusive city? How can we meet the housing needs of New Yorkers? How can New York City enhance its natural environment and cope with climate change? What can we do to provide economic opportunities to the next generation? How can we make it easier for people to get into and around the city?