Museum of the City of New York to open 175th anniversary exhibit of Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery
On May 15th, the Museum of the City of New York will open A Beautiful Way to Go: New York’s Green-Wood Cemetery to mark the 175th anniversary of this National Historic Landmark located in Brooklyn. The exhibition will feature more than 200 objects, ranging from original artifacts, sculptures, architectural drawings, and paintings to historic documents and vintage and newly commissioned photographs, in an installation that lays the cemetery’s landscape plan beneath visitors’ feet.
Predating both Central Park and Prospect Park, Green-Wood was a pioneering example of the “rural cemetery movement” and one of the most important public green spaces in 19th-century America. As the exhibition will demonstrate, the story of Green-Wood Cemetery is multi-faceted, comprising equal parts architectural, art, social, and cultural histories. It has become an increasingly important center of historic, architectural and cultural preservation. Its grounds are a museum of monuments and statuary by leading architects and artists in a wide range of styles. Its bucolic landscape, which reflected changing notions of death and nature, influenced other so-called rural cemeteries and public parks.