Today, we launch a campaign—Our City, Our Seaport—to engage our friends and neighbors to save the South Street Seaport Museum.
The Seaport Museum can illuminate a city that was born of the sea and that today is threatened by that same sea. It can look to the future as well as to the past, envisioning a resilient and thriving New York, a New York that will rebound because it is in its DNA to do so.
It can provide a window for all New Yorkers to see themselves through, by whatever means they or their ancestors arrived here. It can celebrate the meteoric rise of this magnificent city while shining a harsh spotlight on the slave markets of Wall Street, stolen labor, and the many injustices that exist in the very building blocks of the city.
Ours is a sacred charge, but we must act quickly. At present stripped-down levels of funding, the Museum will not survive 2021. In a time when the city and state are strapped for financial resources and philanthropic dollars are stretched thin, we must look outside of traditional funding models to steward the Seaport Museum into the future.
I ask all those who love New York to step forward. Join the die-hards who have kept the Museum alive through myriad challenges. Work with us to build anew, so that future generations will return to New York’s birthplace, walk the cobblestone streets, step aboard the ships, explore the harbor, and connect with their identities as New Yorkers and as Americans.
The time is now. The threat is real. Together we must, we will, save the South Street Seaport Museum.
