Podcast: City of Complaint:
Two Centuries of New Yorkers’ Grievances
November 25th, 2009
Editor Matthew Bakkom talks to MAS: 
Artist and editor of the new book The New York City Museum of Complaint Matthew Bakkom and Tamara Coombs of MAS take us on a nostalgic, yet grumpy, journey through New York City’s archives looking at letters of complaint to the Mayor from 1751 to 1969.
Ranging in subject from the removal of dead animals to lost baseballs to accusations of corruption, the book’s 132 letters not only chronicle issues affecting New Yorkers through the ages but also the development of their voice as citizens.
Join us on Tuesday, December 1, at 7:00 p.m. when Bakkom will be joined by director of the NYC Municipal Archives Kenneth Cobb and celebrated writer, poet and native New Yorker Philip Lopate who will read from selected letters from the book. Reservations and prepayment are recommended. Purchase tickets online or call 212-935-2075. A reception will follow the program during which signed copies of the book will be available from the MAS bookstore, Urban Center Books. Continue Reading>>
Re-Imagining Cities: Urban Design After the Age of Oil an exhibition co-sponsored by PennDesign opens at The Municipal Art Society of New York with a reception on Thursday, October 1, at 6:30 p.m. It stretches thinking about both sustainability and livability even further by boldly considering strategies from around the world. We New Yorkers can be provincial at times — this exhibition gives us an opportunity to glimpse what the rest of the world is doing in response to climate change and the complex movement toward increased urbanization. 
MAS was delighted to host Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan on Wednesday night for the premiere presentation of the city’s first truly comprehensive set of guidelines for street design, 
Travel back in time on Tuesday night to 1609 when Manhattan was home to thousands of species, over fifty-five ecosystems, and the Lenape, who called the island “Mannahatta,” meaning “island of many hills.” Coinciding with this year’s quadricentennial of Henry Hudson’s arrival on the shores of Manhattan, the new book Mannahatta: A Natural History of New York City, reconstructs, in words and images, the wild island as it existed 400 years ago.
The Urbanists — the MAS membership group of young New Yorkers in their 20s and 30s — joined advocacy staff on Wednesday night for an informal, insider’s presentation of the advocacy campaigns MAS is championing this year.
MAS is pleased to announce the opening of the exhibition, By Way of Broadway: New York Photographs by Cervin Robinson, next Thursday, March 26. One of the most widely-published architectural photographers working today, Cervin Robinson began taking photographs at the encouragement of his father, an architect, when he was twelve, and this collection explores New York’s visual landscape comprising thirty views of the 17-mile length of Manhattan’s main street taken over the course of three decades.
PIDGIN, a magazine publication of the graduate students of the Princeton School of Architecture (SOA), features the work of students, faculty, staff, & friends providing a “snapshot” of what is going on in the minds and hard-drives at SOA. It is an incubator for emerging ideas and includes papers, photographs, film stills, projects, tips, provocations, critiques, drawings and almost anything that communicates architectural ideas and transports them into the larger world.