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June 2006    |   Join the Museum Today’s East Village was once considered part of the larger Lower East Side. Few agree on the origins of the term “East Village” or its boundaries. However, most acknowledge that between 1960 and 1980 the area loosely bounded by 14th Street, the East River, Houston Street and the Bowery, was marketed as the East Village to capitalize on its growing popularity as a center for alternative art and culture and to distance it from perceptions of the Lower East Side as a low-income immigrant enclave. During the 1950s, the neighborhood became home to a small contingent of avant-garde artists, writers, and musicians like Allen Ginsberg (left). Collectively known as the Beats, these iconoclastic artists fled eastward from Greenwich Village in search of cheaper rents. A decade later, the area was redefined as the East Coast locus of the countercultural movement, and the name “East Village” replaced Lower East Side in media mentions of the neighborhood. The 1970s witnessed the rise of a downtown scene amid the East Village’s landscape of decaying tenements and trash-strewn streets featuring punk music and edgy underground art. As the 1980s dawned, real estate developers used the East Village’s now mainstream reputation as an underground cultural scene to market its location to young professionals. The New York Book Club is for readers whose favorite subject is New York. On the second Wednesday of each month the Visitors Center & Museum Shop hosts discussions of books about New York. Free and open to the public, these events will explore the city in history and its role in popular culture, the arts, and the world. To participate, e-mail asilberman@tenement.org. On June 28th, Katharine Weber will be at 108 Orchard Street to lead a discussion about her book,Triangle. A riveting historical fiction, Triangle explores both the notorious 1911 Triangle Factory fire and how memory can shape history. New York is in a constant state of change; witness the separation of the East Village from the Lower East Side. The Historical Atlas of New York City uses insightful text, historic documents and rich graphics to chart the city's evolution over the past 400 years. A great introduction to New York history, the Historical Atlas is now 10% off at the Museum's Online Shop. 33% According to the 2000 Census, over one-third of New York City residents were born in another country. 47% of the city's residents speak a language other than English at home. The Museum uses the storefront windows of its historic tenement building to explore the experiences of New York's sizeable immigrant population. Beginning June 27, the four windows will feature Above Ground, a new art exhibit created by students from the Museum's English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) program in collaboration with artists from Visible Collective. Over the past six weeks, the ESOL students have met regularly with Visible Collective to reflect on their lives. They talked about feeling invisible in their new country and voiced concerns about the current debate over immigration. The students also ventured beyond the classroom, using digital cameras to capture images that evoked their lives as immigrants in the U.S. Above Ground incorporates the students' words and pictures into a rich multimedia installation. The result is an exhibit that gives voice to people who have personal, insightful things to say about immigration. "We come over here to search the best opportunity for our families and also to give an education for our children and for a better life. I don't think that the immigrants arrive to seize somebody's work because the immigrants take the majority jobs that others don't do." --Ana Peralta, Shared Journeys student during the Above Ground workshops. "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for a fix, angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night." --Allen Ginsberg describing the East Village in Howl