While you may know the Brooklyn Museum for its wildly popular cutting-edge exhibitions, the borough's premier art institution can actually trace its origins back to a more rustic era -- and to the birth of the city of Brooklyn itself.

On July 4, 1825, the growing village laid a cornerstone for its new Brooklyn Apprentices Library, an educational institution to support its young "clerks, journeymen and apprentices." This was a momentous occasion in the history of Brooklyn, a ceremony overseen by the Marquis de Lafayette and observed by a young boy named Walt Whitman.

The library was part of a movement -- started a century before by Benjamin Franklin-- to make knowledge readily available within the young country.

The Brooklyn Museum's celebratory new exhibition Breaking the Mold: Brooklyn Museum at 200 looks back at its storied origins and eventual growth, encompassing most of the young city's cultural institutions and soon expanding into a monumental new home next to the new Prospect Park, designed by McKim, Mead and White.

Abigail Dansiger, the Director of Libraries and Archives, and Meghan Bill, the Coordinator of Provenance, join Greg on this week's show to explain the unusual origins of the Brooklyn Museum and the unique philosophies which inform its exhibitions.

PLUS: A couple genuine mysteries lurk within the new exhibition, including a bottle-shaped niche within the cornerstone and an Egyptologist's unencrypted notebook.

This episode was edited by Kieran Gannon

 

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