FEBRUARY 27, 2025 – No, I did not inadvertently omit “Society” from “The New York Historical.” It was The New York Historical Society that ripped “Society” away.
While a big chunk of the country has gone bonkers over DEI, back here in New York, where I write this, hyper-libs have intercepted the DEI ball and run full tilt in the opposite direction. An example resides in the recent reboot of the New York Historical (Society). This reboot, as it were, was the adopted work product of the Lippencott marketing firm posing as “a global team of strategists, designers, innovators and change agents, united by a passion to make a meaningful impact—since 1943.” At the top of the Lippencott’s page touting their work for the New York Historical (Society), the visitor is greeted by the following text:
For over 220 years, The New-York Historical Society Museum & Library has preserved, collected, and studied foundational documents and artifacts from across our democracy—and championed the importance of history with nation-wide education programs and poignant events for the public. But without a clear external brand to tell their full story, they had been mistakenly pigeonholed as a closed “society,” offering only New York-specific history exhibits.
Frankly, Lippencott lost me with the phrase, “without a clear external brand.” The word “brand” is an arrangement of five letters that has been much in vogue for several years—so much so, that from my perspective, anyway, “brand” signals the user’s lack of imagination. It’s a copy-cat word adopted by people wanting to demonstrate their (unoriginal) marketing prowess in a meeting with other people trying to do the same thing—impress the other people in the room. Apart from being derailed by “a clear external brand,” however, I was at a loss as to what the rest of the sentence meant.
Nevertheless, I continued to the next paragraph:
We began our journey anchoring in an authentic, mission-aligned idea: Our nation in conversation. All expressions of the brand flowed from this idea, blending historical authority with modern day meaning and positioning history as a catalyst for civic responsibility today.
My initial impression did not improve. What was meant by “an authentic, mission-aligned idea”? Would the journey “be anchored” in any idea that wasn’t authentic or “mission-aligned”? The next sentence made me smirk again—thanks to reappearance of the tired word, “brand.” The rest of the sentence, however, was passable.
But then came the kicker: the final paragraph . . .
The new, more concise name – The New York Historical – drops ‘Society’ to emphasize a sense of inclusive and open dialogue, and recontextualizes ‘Historical’ as a powerful, present collective noun.
Good grief. If I’d been a board member present at the meeting when the resolution for changing the Society’s name—by dropping the word “Society”—was presented, I would have objected strenuously.
“What?” I would have said. “The Re-Naming Sub-Committee has met for the past three months working with Lippencott at a staggering cost, and now proposes that we call our organization the ‘New York Historical’?! We’re going to jettison ‘Society’ because—why? ‘To emphasize a sense of inclusive and open dialogue’? What on earth is that supposed to mean? What is so exclusionary about the word society? Is that word worse than the word ‘group’ or ‘party’ or ‘association’ or ‘organization’ or ‘collection of members of the human race’? Because, I’ll tell you what—what makes absolutely no sense to anyone who speaks, reads or writes a language is ‘The New York Historical’! I mean, for crying out loud, contrary to what you’re proposing to put up on our website, ‘historical’ is an adjective, not a noun—collective or otherwise. I’m sorry, but the proposal does absolutely nothing to cast us as being more ‘inclusive’ than we’d be if we just left the name as it is. But by calling this entity The New York Historical, we’re making ourselves look stupid and illiterate. Oh, and by the way, for all you who are so concerned about ‘the brand,’ does our 220-year brand not have some real staying power when it comes to approaching local, state, and national donors, existing and potential? Personally, I can’t see myself trying to explain to why we’ve decided to call this outfit The New York Historical.’ ‘Historical’ what?! And one last thing before I shut my mouth—what have we paid Lippencott so far and how much more are they expecting us to pay? Whatever it was and is, every dollar of it was too much.”
Surely my outburst would not have been well received. I imagine piercing glares and the silence of disapproval, followed by someone’s motion to call the question—the call, the motion, a second, and a voice vote approving the resolution, with I being the lone dissenter.
Fortunately, I avoided all the self-inflicted internal turmoil and public humiliation, and embarrassment associated with taking a stand against a very bad idea. In fact, I did one better. This afternoon I paid the Society $38 to gain admission for my sister and me to experience some fabulous exhibits at the New York Historical (Society) Museum. For what we saw and absorbed, $38 was a bargain.
The first was “Turn Every Page”: Inside the Robert A. Caro Archive – a tribute to the work of Robert Caro, centering on his pivotal work, The Power Broker, the 1,300-page story of Robert Moses, the most powerful non-elected public official ever in New York City. The book can be summed up by a single word: highways. In depth and breadth Caro’s monumental opus is nearly as staggering as the legacy of Moses itself.
The exhibit moved on to Caro’s subsequent magnum opus—the four-volume seminal biography of LBJ (the fifth and final volume is still “under construction”). Having read all four volumes start to finish, I was fascinated by the curation of the archival materials that Caro had accumulated, organized, and synthesized.
On the second floor we visited a grand exhibition of paintings and a special exhibit about Flaco, the beloved Eurasian eagle-owl that had escaped from the Central Park Zoo and spent nearly a year in the wilds of Central Park before meeting its untimely demise.
On the third floor we were dazzled by an enormous exhibit of Tiffany lamps.
Back down on the first, we browsed through the museum gift shop, which, of course, included an impressive inventory of history books—including The Power Broker in hardcover and paperback. Both were of the same weight, which meant that buying either to lug back to Minnesota would cost an additional $35 in excess baggage charges at the airport.
We exited the museum a minute before closing time. As we descended the steps outside down to the street, Jenny said with a laugh, “I think I’ve had enough. My brain has been overworked.”
My sentiments exactly. It was now time for a solid hike through, around and about the southern third of Central Park. We walked for an hour, restoring oxygen to our brains. I marveled at the many wonders we saw along the way[1]. At the top of a knoll marked as the highest point in the park, we looked straight west down 83rd Street. In the haze of dusk we could see all the way across the Hudson to Joisey[2]. It was a beautiful scene.
Show me New York, and I’ll show you lots to write home about.
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© 2025 by Eric Nilsson
