The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs (DCLA) has announced five new members of its Cultural Institutions Group (Cig)—an exclusive programme for private arts organisations that operate on public land to receive long-term support from the city, including an annual operations subsidy.
One arts organisation from each of the city’s five boroughs was inducted into the group—Brooklyn’s Bric, Manhattan’s Pregones/Puerto Rican Traveling Theater, the Bronx Children’s Museum, the Noble Maritime Collection on Staten Island and the Louis Armstrong House Museum in Queens. This is the biggest expansion of the city programme, which now has 39 total members, since the 1970s.
Local politicians and employees of the newly honoured cultural institutions gathered at Bric on 30 September—the Staten Island contingent came in on a yellow school bus—for what Laurie Cumbo, New York City’s commissioner of cultural affairs, dubbed a daytime “party” celebrating the announcement.
In her introduction, Cumbo made special mention of all of the arts organisations in the city headed by people of colour, noting the importance of supporting these kinds of institutions in historically underserved communities. “In New York City, we understand the power of the arts,” she said. “And we want every single New Yorker leading an artful life.”
The building in downtown Brooklyn that houses new Cultural Institutions Group inductee Bric (as well as UrbanGlass) Photo: Till Lesser
Adolfo Carrión Jr, one of the city’s deputy mayors, noted that there were only 93 days left in the current mayoral administration. At the event, both he and Cumbo made special mention of all of the administration's accomplishments in the past four years—but they only uttered Mayor Eric Adams’s name a couple of times. (Just two days prior, Adams had dropped his bid for re-election, withdrawing from a heated mayoral race. Adams, who famously loves a good party, was not present at the Bric event.)
Coco Killingsworth, the chair of Cig, defined members of the programme as “private, non-profit organisations whose role is to be a public good. They’re places of joy, refuge and restoration—and the pride of their boroughs.”
Cumbo, with her characteristic enthusiasm, served as emcee of the event. She introduced the directors of each of the five new Cig members in turn. After each speaker, musical interludes served as examples of the type of work the organisations support. These included a local singer-songwriter representing Bric, a reading of a Jesús Colón text accompanied by violin and piano, Bronx Children’s Museum staff performing their signature storytime song, sea shanties courtesy of the Noble Maritime Collection and a group of jazz musicians—one of whom expertly played Louis Armstrong’s trumpet while wearing white gloves to protect it.
Bruce Harris, programme director of the Louis Armstrong House Museum in Queens, performs with a group of fellow jazz musicians at Bric on 30 September Photo: Ellen Qbertplaya
“This day is about more than institutional recognition; it’s about support,” said Wes Jackson, the president of Bric—a media and arts organisation known for its summertime concert series in Prospect Park, as well as for its exhibitions and educational programming. “Art is essential to a thriving city, and we are doing the work to keep the city together by cultivating empathy and understanding.”
Of the other new Cig members, the Pregones/Puerto Rican Traveling Theater was one of the first bilingual theatres in the US, and the Louis Armstrong House Museum has a 60,000-piece archive—the largest of any jazz musician (Cumbo called it “a neighborhood museum with a world-class presence”). The Noble Maritime Collection “celebrates New York’s working waterfront and makes it accessible to everyone”, said its director, Ciro Galeno Jr. Meanwhile, the Bronx was the last borough in the city to open a children’s museum, in 2022. “We are regularly sold out, which is not something many museums can say,” said Denise Adusei, director of Bronx Children’s Museum.
Cig, established in 1869 with the American Museum of Natural History as its founding member, is composed of museums, historical societies, performing-arts organisations, botanical gardens and zoos across New York City. Art museums in the group include the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum, Bronx Museum of the Arts, El Museo del Barrio, Studio Museum in Harlem, MoMA PS1 and the Queens Museum.
