Waterfront at Brooklyn Historical Society DUMBO

FAIN: GI-235119-16

Brooklyn Historical Society (Brooklyn, NY 11201-2711)
Paul Pearson (Project Director: August 2015 to June 2019)

Implementation of a new permanent exhibition at the Brooklyn Historical Society’s new Empire Stores museum interpreting the long history of Brooklyn’s waterfront.

Brooklyn Historical Society (BHS) seeks a Chairman’s Special Award Implementation grant in the amount of $1,000,000 from the NEH Museums, Libraries, and Cultural Organizations program to support final design, production and installation of its major, long-term exhibition Waterfront, which will be housed at Brooklyn Historical Society DUMBO, the institution’s new 3,200 square foot satellite museum in Brooklyn Bridge Park (BBP). The establishment of Brooklyn Historical Society DUMBO allows BHS to contextualize the waterfront for many of the 5 million locals and tourists visiting BBP yearly; to share its engaging, rigorous, and interdisciplinary approach to history with new, larger, and more diverse audiences; to set new professional standards for creative and hands-on public engagement with the humanities; and to play a central role in debates about the future of Brooklyn’s waterfront and and waterfronts across the world. Waterfront opens in 2017.