THE MUSEUM

The Museum of Arts & Culture at New Rochelle High School inspires educational excellence by providing a professional, on-site museum experience for students and serving as an important cultural asset for the entire community.

See the Current Exhibit

Enrichment

Through a combination of original and visiting exhibits and programs focused on the fine arts, history, literature, science and technology, the Museum of Arts & Culture enriches the school curriculum as it stimulates thought, excites the imagination, and energizes understanding.

The Museum of Arts & Culture also collaborates with other museums, cultural institutions, and community groups to reach beyond its walls and serve as an educational and cultural resource for the entire City of New Rochelle.

The Museum of Arts & Culture is a program of the New Rochelle Fund for Educational Excellence. You can support the work of the Museum by making a tax-deductible contribution to the Fund.

History

The Museum of Arts & Culture opened in October, 2006 with a special exhibit on loan from the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, Norman Rockwell in the 1940s: A View of the American Homefront. The exhibit was complemented by an original installation, Norman Rockwell’s New Rochelle Years, created by the MAC in collaboration with the New Rochelle Public Library.

Since then the Museum has continued to provide innovative arts programming, from Soles of the Movement, an installation created by artist Chris Burns that used historical music, photographs, film footage and memorabilia — particularly shoes — to commemorate the Montgomery Bus Boycott and tell the story of the growth of the civil rights movement in America, to The Crews Family: Donald Crews, Ann Jonas and Nina Crews, a traveling exhibit on loan from the National Center for Children’s Illustrated Literature, which celebrated the work of a family of childrens’ book illustrators. To complement this exhibit the Museum partnered with the Huguenot Children’s Library to present a Festival of Children’s Books that featured a dozen children’s book authors and illustrators as well as free family focused activities at both sites.

Donate to a specific project need, for example to “ 20 euros for a wheelbarrow ”, or else to a project generally e.g. “Building a school in Mombasa, Kenya”. You can always donate anonymously. Rather than a one-off donation, you can become a monthly donor. Also a possibility with many projects: donations in kind or donating your time as a volunteer.

Rate it if you happen to know the project manager or if you know more about the project for some other reason. Post your opinion on the project-site, ideally including photos or videos from when you visited the project on-site. You can also ask the project manager questions at any time. Others can use their answers to help them decide whether to donate.

Other major shows at the MAC have included:

· Ragtime in New Rochelle (May 2008), which featured items on loan from the author E.L. Doctorow and included a free public lecture by Doctorow, one of the most acclaimed American authors of the 20th century.
· Feats of Clay (Fall 2008), an exhibit of ceramic art created by Westchester County high school students, as part of All Fired Up, the county-wide celebration of clay.
· Harlem? Harlem! Dance Theatre of Harlem 1969-2010 (Spring 2010), organized by the Dance Theatre of Harlem Ensemble curator Judy Tyrus with then MAC Director Theresa Kump Leghorn, featured a colorful mix of spectacular costumes, posters, programs, archival photographs and video recordings that traced the history of the company, its renowned productions and cast of legendary dancers, fans and supporters. As part of this collaboration the Dance Theatre gave several performances at New Rochelle High School, and the company was in residence at NRHS for three months, giving more than 160 dance students the opportunity to study classical ballet and observe a professional dance institution in theory and practice.
· Anne Frank: A History for Today (Fall 2016), an international traveling exhibit from the Anne Frank House. The exhibit was in both English and Spanish to reflect our community and told the story of Anne Frank against the background of the Holocaust and WWII. It included photographs of Anne Frank's childhood in Frankfurt and in Amsterdam, and portrayed the rise of the Nazis, the persecution of the Jews and the way people responded.

The Museum is proud to mirror the diversity of the New Rochelle community through the exhibitions and programming it features including the work of:

· African American artists R. Gregory Christie (2008) and Robin J. Miller (2009),
· an African American Authors Symposium featuring award-winning authors,
· African American film historian Donald Bogle,
· a performance of the one-woman show “Harlem on My Mind,”
· and the original exhibit “The Zocalo at Atlixco, Puebla” (Fall 2009) featuring documentary photographs by Mary Teresa Giancoli.

HOURS

8am to 3pm (Monday-Friday); Please contact us to coordinate an evening or Saturday visit.

DIRECTIONS

To get to the New Wing of New Rochelle High School and the Museum of Arts & Culture:

Please set your GPS to the intersection of North and Braemar Avenues. This is not the main entrance to the High School. This entrance is near the tennis courts on North Avenue, across the street from the statue of the Huguenot, Jacob Leisler. The High School is easily accessible from I-95 and the Hutchinson River Parkway.