Museum of the City of New York opens Puffin activism center with two exhibitions

The Museum of the City of New York opened the Puffin Foundation Center for New York City Activism on September 25, 2026, at its Fifth Avenue home in East Harlem. Its two inaugural exhibitions give visitors a new way to explore the city's history of protest and organizing, alongside the living culture of the Lenape/Lunaapeew people Indigenous to the region.

The center occupies a renovated museum wing and is intended as a permanent home for exhibitions and public programs about civic engagement. Raise Your Voice: New York Activism is its permanent cornerstone exhibition; Halumii Ktapihna: Lenape Legacies and Futures is the accompanying inaugural show in the center's rotating exhibition program. The opening follows the museum's long partnership with the Puffin Foundation, which NY1 says began in 2009. NY1 reported that the foundation's latest gift was worth multiple millions of dollars and was the museum's second largest.

How Raise Your Voice reframes New York activism

Raise Your Voice replaces Activist New York, a museum exhibition that opened in 2012 and closed in July to make room for the new installation. The replacement covers more than 250 years of activism, but arranges its material by what people did: demonstrations, organizing, art and media, and direct action. Museum curator Sarah Seidman told NY1 that this approach places movements from across the political spectrum together and helps visitors see how different campaigns used similar tactics.

The demonstrations section includes a women's suffrage banner and sash, photographs from the first Pride march in 1970, and protest flyers. The organizing section turns to work that may be less visible in a march: its objects include strike pledge cards and Gloria Steinem's address book. Art and Media examines political expression through works including posters, paintings and music; Direct Action presents examples of people working outside official systems. The museum describes these objects as tools used by the people behind campaigns, rather than a single account of one movement.

How Halumii Ktapihna presents living Lunaapeew culture

Halumii Ktapihna was developed with the Éenda-Lŭnaapeewáhkiing Collective, whose members come from communities in the United States and Canada. According to the museum, the exhibition brings together work by more than 30 Lunaapeew artists with historical objects, videos and interactive elements. Its emphasis is on communities making art, speaking their languages and sustaining connections to their homelands today, as well as on their history.

Collective co-founder Brent Stonefish told NY1 that the exhibition's title means ‘we are still here forever.’ In the museum's announcement, he said Lunaapeew leadership was essential so that visitors would encounter a reflection of who community members are today and who they are becoming. NY1 described videos in which women from Lenape communities discuss their lives and objects they hold. One features language instructor Kristin Jacobs speaking about a wampum belt and speaking in Lenape.

The museum describes three parts of the exhibition: The Lunáapeew Today, Homelands and Creating the Future. Objects it identifies include a traditional canoe hand-carved for the show by Chief Vincent Mann of the Ramapough Lenape Nation, garments, maps and a table where visitors can hear Lunaapeew words. The combination places contemporary artistic work and recorded voices alongside material about land, displacement and cultural continuity.

NewsJaws previously covered the museum's Lenape exhibition. That exhibition has now opened as one of two inaugural displays in the new Puffin center, alongside the permanent Raise Your Voice installation.

Programs and visiting details

The museum says the center plans lectures, film screenings, book talks and family programs, as well as publications and a 12-year annual fellowship program. These are plans for the center beyond its opening exhibitions; the museum has not presented them as completed programs. It lists Halumii Ktapihna as running through April 17, 2027, while Raise Your Voice is the permanent installation.

The Urban Activist reported from a September 29 reception and interviewed two people whose work appears in Raise Your Voice. Artist Hae-Lin Choi said seeing earlier campaigns for change gave her hope. Peter Frishauf, whose Vietnam War-era student newspaper poster is displayed, spoke about activism as a way to leave the world better than one found it. Those are their responses at that reception, not a measure of visitor reaction overall. The publication discloses that the Puffin Foundation partially funds it.

The Museum of the City of New York is at 1220 Fifth Avenue and says it is open daily. Under its published admission policy, New Yorkers can pay what they wish, visitors under 18 enter free, and admission is free for everyone on Wednesdays. The available reporting does not establish attendance figures for the center's opening.