An Odd Couple, Indeed: The Grateful Dead and a New York Institution

OK, Deadheads, this one’s for you: The New York Historical Society is presenting “Grateful Dead: Now Playing at the New York Historical Society.”
The New York Historical Society? You read it right.
The material has been taken in large part from the Grateful Dead Archive at the University of California Santa Cruz; it’s the first large-scale exhibition featuring materials from that source.
The exhibition includes posters, album art, marionettes, fan mail, stage props, and banners. It looks at the band’s beginnings in northern California in the 1960s, and follows their surprisingly strong business savvy as well as their influences from the cultures of the 1960s.
The exhibition highlights the main parts of the band’s identity and their success: Their huge connection with their fans, and their emphasis on live performance. The band often performed in New York (ah, now we know why the exhibition is at the Historical Society...), with performances at venues ranging from Village coffeehouses to Central Park to the 46th Street Rock Palace in Brooklyn in the 1970s, culminating in gigantic stadiums like Giants Stadium and Madison Square Garden.
The exhibit will also look at the group’s incredible longevity, as well as their foray into the, um, drug years.
The New York Historical Society is at 170 Central Park West, between 76th and 77th Streets. For more information, call (212) 873-3400.
By the way, you can file this under the since-you’re-already-there category: For a complete change of pace, it’s also your last chance to catch the exhibition “Lincoln and New York” which closes tomorrow.

Past, Present, Future: The South Street Seaport Looks Back...And Ahead

New York’s South Street Seaport is offering a glimpse of the city’s history in “Seaport Past & Future," a free public exhibit that is running through next summer. It shows the changes that the Seaport has gone through over the centuries, and how they’ve affected both the city and the surrounding region. Multi-media demonstrations and scale models show the area through the years, culminating in an architectural model of the plans for a new, revitalized South Street Seaport.
One of the neatest features of the exhibit: Archival materials that show visitors the same views over time, so members of the public can see what’s changed and what’s remained the same.
The vision for the new Seaport, sponsored by General Growth Properties, includes hotels, shops, restaurants, residential housing and increased pedestrian use, as well as the conversion of the former fish stalls of the Fulton Fish Market into a specialty market. The plan will also rehabilitate the infrastructure of the pier and platform, as well as open site lines to New York Harbor and The Brooklyn Bridge.
Tying into the city’s East River Esplanade Project, part of a plan to "green” (the new buzzword, and you must use it as a verb to be truly hip) the city’s waterfront, setting aside five acres of space along a promenade has been proposed.
The exhibit is located at 191 Front Street, near John Street; check out southstreetseaport.com for more information.