New York Archives - Public Seminar

Public Health

Death Rights

The risks of New York State’s new Medical Aid in Dying law

February 19, 2026 • by Megan Robinson

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signed the Medical Aid in Dying Act (MAiD) into state law in early February, months after the legislation passed the state Senate in June 2025. The bill’s passing prompted an extended period of debate, advocacy, and amending, centered on whether mentally competent, terminally ill New ...

Art & Design

Where the Avant-Garde Went to Grow

Behind the scenes of Becoming Bohemia: Greenwich Village, 1912–1923

November 26, 2024 • by Michael Inman and Mary Karmelek

We have really rich, deep collections of materials related to Greenwich Village, especially dealing with this period of the Village's history. When the wider public thinks of Bohemias or avant-garde settings, especially from that time period, the early twentieth century, their thoughts might gravitate towards Paris in the 1920s, or ...

Life As “The Blind Man”

I’m now a different kind of person in the eyes of the world

May 10, 2023 • by Mitchell Abidor

It’s over a year now that I’ve navigated using a white cane, and if I had a dollar for every time someone helped me to cross the street, I’d have a dollar....

Activism

Trump Protests in Lower Manhattan: Pro and Con

A photo essay

April 10, 2023 • by Jo Freeman

Trump was taken out a side entrance before all that press even knew he was out of the building...

Trump Protests in Lower Manhattan: Pro and Con

Rats: A Cautionary Tail

Sex Life of a Vector

Why do rats matter?

April 5, 2023 • by Evangeline Riddiford Graham

Rats continue to bear witness, and the close quarters of our shared history, as well as our many assassination attempts (on their bodies and on their characters), have surely sharpened rats’ noses to the whiff of human hypocrisy....

Rats: A Cautionary Tail

How to Kill 100 Rats

A manager tackles rats with a sense of personal accountability in one very infested coffee shop

April 3, 2023 • by Curran Boyd

Handling a decaying rat can be detrimental to coffee quality control for the rest of your shift. ...

Climate & Ecology

A Botany of Decolonization

An excerpt from Maria Thereza Alves: Seeds of Change

February 13, 2023 • by J. Kēhaulani Kauanui

Colonization is built into the very soil of New York....

The Arts

Edward Hopper: Solitude and Light

A new exhibition is at the Whitney until March 5, 2023

January 5, 2023 • by Mitchell Abidor

If there’s a sure thing in the art world, it’s that any Edward Hopper show will be both an artistic and audience success. The current exhibition at the Whitney until March 5, 2023, “Edward Hoper’s New York,” is certainly a success on both levels....

Interviews

Documenting the City of Refugees

An interview with Susan Hartman on her new book about Utica’s transformation by refugees

October 4, 2022 • by Susan Hartman and Marisa Budlong

I wanted to put in perspective what these refugees had gone through, what the countries they left had gone through, what the refugee camp experience was like. So, there is this part where I talk about when they were each on the run: it is very traumatic material and this ...

Politics

Congressman Lee Zeldin’s No-Good, Terrible, Very Bad Day

But being attacked on the campaign trail might be the best thing that has happened to the Republican candidate for Governor of New York lately

July 26, 2022 • by Claire Potter

Being attacked on the campaign trail might be the best thing that has happened to the Republican candidate for Governor of New York lately...

Congressman Lee Zeldin’s No-Good, Terrible, Very Bad Day

Economy

New York’s Anti-Monopoly State of Mind

How and why the Empire State took center stage in the fight against corporate power

March 9, 2022 • by Pat Garofalo

I traveled up to Albany, New York, this week to help out with the unveiling of a bill in the state legislature there that would prevent New York officials from subsidizing Amazon’s warehouse network. According to Good Jobs First, New York taxpayers have gifted Amazon with nearly $400 million in ...

Technology

The Chip Wars Heat Up

Chips with a side of CHIPS

February 7, 2022 • by Pat Garofalo

"...there’s something much bigger at work here: The Chip Wars, as I’ve dubbed them, are heating up, and revealing some of the tensions between national needs and extraction from local communities."...