City Lore Transfers 40 Years of Archival Materials to the Library of Congress

On December 18, 2024, City Lore co-director Steve Zeitlin and archivist Seth Schonberg drove the organization’s iconic POEMobile, which is normally used to project poems onto walls and buildings in tandem with live readings in New York City’s poetry communities, to Washington, DC to deliver over 40 years of their archival audio and visual materials to be shared with the Library of Congress.

Watch a video of the experience on City Lore’s Instagram page!

The City Lore Archive documents—and thereby preserves—the work of folk and community-based arts and artists to maintain a record for posterity of the quotidian of the times. Materials held in the City Lore Archive are those internally generated by City Lore Inc or those donated to the organization. The materials consist of over 58,000 photograph slides, negatives and prints, 2,000 tapes of various formats, as well as artifacts and digital media. Major collections include the Katrina Thomas Ethnic USA Collection (1971–1983), Photographs of the Brooklyn Rediscovery Folklife Study Project (1981–1983), and so on.

Founded in 1985, City Lore’s mission is to foster New York City—and America’s—living cultural heritage through education and public programs in service of cultural equity and social justice. City Lore is now an Affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution and 2025 marks its 40th anniversary. A series of celebrations will be announced later in the year.