The education team has also offered 24 lesson plans and more than 125 programs for teachers to enhance-and according to feedback “transform”-their teaching of these complex topics in the classroom.Īmanda Phingbodhipakkiya, Raise Your Voice, 2022. Education has been a major component of Activist New York: the show is the most-requested field trip to the Museum and has served 85,000 students, teachers, and chaperones.
Jaffe, Activist New York: A History of People, Protest, and Politics, was published by NYU Press in 2018 and will soon be available online for free to teachers. Crowd-sourced images of protests, meetings, or other activist forms that use the hashtag #ActivistNY appear in the gallery and are share on the Museum's social media channels. An online version of the show launched in 2016, and features all exhibition content and case studies past and present. The Museum held 50 Activist New York public programs over the past decade, with over 5,000 people in attendance. The exhibition also extends beyond gallery walls. As Activist New York has reaffirmed, the past is never past, and activism isn’t either. Even a new section on laundry workers in Chinatown and beyond in the 1930s turned out to be about connecting with the community-often grandchildren or other family members whose grandparents worked in Chinese hand laundry businesses.
Most recently, I worked closely with activists and artists to include a sampling of objects relating to activism today, from masks to food takeout containers from mobilizations during the pandemic. Official planning conversations with lifelong activists and community members shaped new sections on the Young Lords and trans activism in 2019. Harris, we installed a new final section on the Movement for Black Lives in consultation with activists, and updated this content again in 2020. The content I’ve been most proud to add not only broadens the range of diverse and marginalized activist voices through images and objects, but involves collaboration and community members.