New York​,​ New York The Elie and Sarah Hirschfeld Collection

Elie and Sarah Hirschfeld, New York philanthropists and art collectors, built a collection devoted entirely to depictions of their hometown, spanning the mid-19th century to the present. In 2020 they announced a promised gift of more than 130 works to New-York Historical, drawing from movements closely tied to the city — the Ashcan School, Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art — alongside international artists who painted New York from the outside looking in. The collection includes artists such as Theresa Bernstein, Keith Haring, Reginald Marsh, LeRoy Neiman, Norman Rockwell, and Mark Rothko, plus Marc Chagall, David Hockney, Edward Hopper, Jacob Lawrence, Louise Nevelson, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Andy Warhol. The gift debuted publicly in the 2021–22 exhibition Scenes of New York City, then found a permanent home when the museum opened a dedicated Hirschfeld Gallery and Hall. The current iteration, New York, New York: The Elie and Sarah Hirschfeld Collection, expands on that debut with recent additions to the Hirschfelds' private collection, showing more than 50 works that honor the city from its harbors and Harlem diners to Village speakeasies and gritty streetscapes, with pieces by Thomas Hart Benton, Fritz Scholder, Keith Haring, Yvonne Jacquette, Charles Sheeler, and Saul Steinberg. It's curated by Wendy Nālani E. Ikemoto, the museum's curator of American art, with research support from curator emerita Roberta J.M. Olson, and continues the collection's throughline of tracing New York's "layered past" and the daily rhythms of the metropolis across two centuries of American art.