A Museum Show of Broken Umbrellas and Old Coffee Cups

It's natural to associate cities with the structures that grace the front of postcards. The Eiffel Tower in Paris, the Colosseum in Rome, the Statue of Liberty in New York. But the things that truly mediate our relationships to a city are typically of a much smaller scale. The metro card we pluck from our wallets everyday, for instance, or the rusty fire escape that stares back at us from the bedroom window.

For a moment, at least, these underrated icons of the city are getting their place in the spotlight. A selection of 62 are being featured in a new exhibition called "Masterpieces of Everday New York: Objects as Story," running now through September at the Sheila C. Johnson Design Center at Parsons The New School for Design in Manhattan. Inspired by the British radio series "A History of the World in 100 Objects," program curators Radhika Subramaniam and Margot Bouman invited New School faculty to submit objects to go on display.