About Us
The Museum of Arts & Culture is the realization of a long-standing goal of the New Rochelle Fund for Educational Excellence. The Fund, working closely with the school administration, faculty and the Board of Education, created the MAC not only to provide a museum experience for New Rochelle students in their own school district, but also to provide an important cultural asset for the community as a whole. The MAC features both student-generated artwork and traveling exhibitions, all of which is blended into the curriculum.
The MAC 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 MAC 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 MAC 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.
Other major shows at the MAC have include an original exhibit, Ragtime in New Rochelle, in May 2008 which featured items on loan from the author E.L. Doctorow and included a free public lecture by the gentleman who is one of the most acclaimed American authors of the 20th century, and in fall, 2008. Feats of Clay, an exhibit of ceramic art created by Westchester County high school students, as part of All Fired Up, the county-wide celebration of clay.
In the spring of 2010 the MAC partnered with a world class dance company to create an original exhibit“Harlem? Harlem! Dance Theatre of Harlem 1969-2010.” The exhibit, organized by DTH curator Judy Tyrus with 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 of Harlem Ensemble 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.
Located in the culturally and socioeconomically diverse City of New Rochelle, the MAC incorporates diversity into all of its programming, with special outreach to the African American and Hispanic communities. For example, in addition to featuring work by the African American artists Chris Burns and the Crews Family, the MAC has celebrated Black History Month with shows featuring the work of African American artists R. Gregory Christie (2008) and Robin J. Miller (2009). In addition, the MAC created programs that complemented this theme, including an African American Authors Symposium featuring award-winning authors, an evening with African American film historian Donald Bogle and a performance of the one-woman show “Harlem on My Mind.” In fall, 2009 the MAC mounted an original exhibit “The Zocalo at Atlixco, Puebla” featuring documentary photographs by Mary Teresa Giancoli.
Each summer the MAC collaborates with the New Rochelle Public Library to present a series of classic films, Queen City Cinema, that focuses on specific themes related to MAC exhibits and offers free entertainment. In 2007 the free summer film series offered classic movies that featured New Rochelle (expanding on the summer exhibit at the MAC, Greetings from New Rochelle, featuring historic postcards from the city’s resort past); in 2008 the series spotlighted actors and directors from New Rochelle, including Elia Kazan’s On the Waterfront and Shaft starring Richard Roundtree, to complement the postcard exhibit Greetings from New Rochelle, and in 2009 the film focus was Hometown Heroines, with classic films starring actresses from New Rochelle to accompany the exhibit New Rochelle Women of the Arts: An Historical Perspective. The theme in 2010, when the MAC hosted Harlem? Harlem! Dance Theatre of Harlem 1969-2010 was dance, and this summer the films will all be water-related to coordinate with the photography exhibit Under the Sea.