In the mid-1800s, when famed architectural duo Olmsted and Vaux began designing what would become Central Park, the project’s Board of Governors understood that achieving their vision would take decades and require immense financial support. Board member Andrew Greene, who at the time headed New York City’s Board of Education, saw and understood the juxtaposition between the financial enormity of the enterprise and the emerging need for a bolstered education system. He began to envision Central Park as a park education campus – free, entertaining and a source of popular instruction.
The city’s growing cohort of industrialists, meanwhile, wanted to bolster New York’s prominence as a cultural capital on the world stage — and prepare the influx of immigrants to the city for citizenry and work.
In 1931, Olmsted, Vaux and Greene’s plan was published through the Municipal Arts Society, laying out what Greene understood as the quid pro quo needed to ensure success: a public-private partnership. The city’s wealthiest families would provide their private collections of art and artifacts for public viewing, housing them in city-owned buildings situated on public parkland, where they would be better protected from the risk of fires. The institutions would tenant park-situated, city-owned buildings rent free in return for New Yorkers having free access to them.
This partnership resulted in a “Park Education Campus” and over 100 years later, encompasses 17 museums, performing arts and science centers, botanical gardens, zoos and aquariums across the city — which transformed New York’s reputation and set it on the path to becoming the social, cultural and educational beacon it is today.
Fearing the corruption that plagued Tammany Hall at the time, philanthropists sought to codify Greene’s public-private partnership through state-level legislative action. While they succeeded in doing so, their fears were nevertheless realized in the time since. Beginning with The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s pay-what-you-wish policy in 1970 and its authorization by the City’s Park Commissioner rather than amending state legislation, admission fee approval was stripped from State legislators, and realized the institutional founders’ fears.
Now, many years later and under this questionable authority, the 17 public-private institutions operate rent-free while New Yorkers are denied the legislated reciprocity of free admission.
With New York again facing challenges similar to those presented at the time of the Park Education Campus’s founding, it’s time we make sure that the state makes good on the letter and spirit of the public-private partnership.
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