The New York Historical

The New-York Historical Society Museum, established in 1804, is the city’s oldest museum and one of the country’s foremost institutions dedicated to preserving and interpreting American history. Its mission is to illuminate the rich tapestry of the nation’s past through art, artifacts, and archives that span more than four centuries. As both a museum and a center for scholarship, it offers visitors an immersive experience into the cultural, political, and artistic forces that have shaped New York and the United States at large.

Among its many treasures, the museum’s photography collection holds a special place. It provides an invaluable visual record of American life from the mid-19th century to the present day. Early daguerreotypes, glass negatives, and vintage prints capture the rapid transformation of New York—from its crowded immigrant neighborhoods to its growing skyline—offering a vivid chronicle of urban and social evolution. The collection also includes powerful documentary images and fine art photography that explore themes of identity, community, and change.

Photographers such as Jacob Riis and Berenice Abbott are represented in the museum’s holdings, their work bearing witness to the challenges and triumphs of a modernizing metropolis. More recent acquisitions extend the story, featuring contemporary artists who use the camera to question history, memory, and representation. Through temporary exhibitions and thematic displays, the New-York Historical Museum continues to bring these works to the public, connecting photography’s visual language to the broader narratives of American democracy and progress.

By preserving these remarkable images and contextualizing them within the nation’s historical fabric, the museum invites visitors to see how photography has not only documented history but shaped it. Each photograph, whether centuries old or newly made, becomes part of an ongoing dialogue about who we are, where we’ve been, and how we choose to see our shared past.