Museum of the City of New York

First thing that I notice about the Museum of the City of New York is its red brick and white marble trim facade. The museum was founded in 1923 and houses many works dating from the 19th and early 20th century.

One of the exhibition during the trip was the Everything Is Design: The Work of Paul Rand. The exhibition featured some of Rand’s works in advertisement, logos, books, and posters.

Paul Rand was born in Brooklyn in 1914. At a very young age, Rand painted signs for his father’s grocery store.

His birth name is Peretz Rosenbaum. He decided to change his name because he wanted to camouflage the Jewish identity the name carries.

Rand’s clients included IBM, ABC network, UPS, and etc.

My favorite works in the exhibit are the UPS logo, the Ford’s advertisement poster, and the visualized poem about children.

The exhibition also showcased Rand’s book cover designs, packaging designs, and posters.

Another exhibition that was featured in the museum during our trip was the Hip-Hop Revolution. Unfortunately, I’m not very well acquainted with hip hop. So most of the exhibit didn’t catch my interest… Except for a photo.

Taken from http://www.mcny.org/hiphop (Salt-N-Pepa on the right)

It was a photo of Salt-N-Pepa. The group did a commercial with Geico Insurance. The commercial popped up time to time on Youtube videos, but I haven’t seen it in a while. I hate Youtube commercials with a fiery passion. But thankfully, some of the longer commercials can be skipped after 5 seconds. This commercial, however, is one that I always watch till the end. I don’t precisely know why I like it, but it makes me happy.

It was nice to see familiar faces in a strange place.

Thank you, Salt-N-Pepa, for making this foreign exhibit a little bit more relatable to me.