Series 8: Exhibitions and Special Projects, circa 1865-2020, inclusive

Sub-series 8.1: The Long Island Historical Society Museum contains lists of donations made to the museum department, museum and lecture reports, special committee proceedings, and other documentation pertaining to the Long Island Historical Society's museum. Additionally, this sub-series includes a museum accessions catalog and a natural history scrapbook. The accessions catalog serves as the primary record of the museum's contents, while the natural history scrapbook provides details about the museum's activities from the mid-1880s to 1900. The scrapbook includes newspaper clippings, meeting minutes, ephemera, and correspondence related to the donation of specimens and artifacts to the museum.

Sub-series 8.2: Community Documentation Projects records from the five community documentation projects that BHS staff conducted from the late 1980s to the mid-1990s: Brooklyn's Hispanic Communities/Our Borough's Latino Voices, AIDS/Brooklyn, the Crown Heights History Project, Brooklyn's West Indian Carnival, and Eighth Avenue: Sunset Park's Chinese/American Community. Materials include photographs, research materials, press releases, journal articles, public relations material, and documentation related to the administration of each project, particularly during exhibition development. Audiovisual content includes recordings of advisory committee meetings and exhibition videos providing an overview of some of the projects.

This sub-series also contains correspondence, notes, and drafts related to Documenting Brooklyn (also referred to as The New Brooklyn), an unpublished collection of essays about each documentation project, written by their respective project directors. Authors include Ellen M. Snyder-Grenier (Chief Curator, 1984-1992), Dr. Jill Vexler, Robert Rosenberg, Dr. Craig Wilder, Greg Ruff, and Dwandalyn Reece King (Chief Curator, 1992-1995). The book was co-edited by Executive Director David Kahn (1982-1996) and Professor Philip Kasinitz.

Sub-series 8.3: In Pursuit of Freedom: African Americans and the Antislavery Movement contains correspondence, research files, photographs, meeting minutes, promotional material, and documentation related to exhibition design and curriculum development.

Sub-series 8.4: Brooklyn's History Museum includes correspondence, installation photos, separation and transfer forms, project planning documentation, and catalog worksheets. The catalog worksheets describe the condition and provenance of the objects used in the exhibition. These worksheets are similar to the 'Shellens Rejects forms,' which contain information about objects staff considered for inclusion in Brooklyn's History Museum, but decided not to use.

Sub-series 8.5: Brooklyn Works: 400 Years of Making a Living in Brooklyn documents the development of Brooklyn Works, from its original conceptualization in the early 1990s to its deinstallation in 2006. Materials include correspondence, meeting minutes, photographs, NEH grant records, scripts, research files, design plans, and audio-visual media containing the images and audio programs used in the exhibition. The bulk of this material comes from the files of Ann Meyerson, Curator of Exhibitions (1999-2004), Wendy Aibel-Weiss, Vice President for Exhibits and Education (ca. 2001-ca. 2005), and Deslyn Downes, Curatorial Assistant (ca. 2001-ca. 2005).

A substantial portion of this sub-series consists of periodization files. These files detail the historical background, narratives, images, objects, and archival materials used for each section of Brooklyn Works. The scope and topics highlighted change throughout the exhibit planning process, but the final periods are as follows: Period 1 – Bounty and Bondage: Kings County before 1820; Period 2 – The World Trades with Brooklyn: 1820-1880; Period 3 – Brooklyn, A Powerhouse of Production: 1880-1950; Period 4 – Industry Shifts Gears, Brooklyn Today: 1950-2000. Many of these files contain reproductions of primary and secondary sources used to develop each period. The dates attributed to these files reflect their reproduction dates rather than their original creation or publication.

Also included in this sub-series are records pertaining to Worklore: Brooklyn Workers Speak, a traveling exhibition and website version of Brooklyn Works co-sponsored by the Brooklyn Public Library. This multimedia exhibit chronicled the work lives of Brooklynites over the last 100 years through audio recollections and historic photographs.