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New York Today

New York Today: The Art School Inside a Work of Art

The Art Students League, designed by Henry Hardenbergh, the architect of the Plaza and the Dakota.Credit...Ian Douglas for The New York Times

Good morning on this magnificent Monday.

Across from the neon lights of the Brooklyn Diner on 57th Street in Midtown Manhattan, a stone’s throw from Carnegie Hall, is scaffolding for the construction of the tallest residential building in the Western Hemisphere, Central Park Tower.

Peer through that metal skeleton, though, and you can make out the words “painting,” “architecture” and “sculpture” etched into the stone beneath it.

The building, a French Renaissance-style landmark built 125 years ago, is home to the Art Students League. The school, designed by Henry Hardenbergh, the architect of the Plaza and the Dakota, became a major hub for New York artists at a time when Paris was considered the epicenter of the art world.

“When the Art Students League was created, the most famous and appreciated and respected galleries were the Georges Petit galleries in Paris,” said the league’s executive director, Michael Rips. (New York, meanwhile, was becoming an important place for the creation of art, Mr. Rips said, particularly for Americans who went to Europe and came back wanting to produce their own.)

With a nod to the fabled Petit galleries, George W. Vanderbilt wrote a check funding the creation of exhibition spaces for the school. And now, Mr. Rips added, more than a century later, “New York is the center of the exhibition world, the gallery world and the auction world for art.”

Georgia O’Keeffe, Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock and others would study at the league in the decades that followed.

The painter Sharon Sprung, who has taught at the league for more than two decades, started studying there in the 1960s with Robert Beverly Hale, an artist known for his anatomy lectures. “It was a little wilder and freer,” she said of the time. “Jimi Hendrix was hanging out in the hallway, picking up women.”

The printmaker Michael Pellettieri, a former league student who has been teaching there since the 1970s, said that in an art world that is ever-changing, the school offers something that will never go out of style.

“People are interested in video, and those kinds of things are what turn up at the Whitney Biennial, but the league has stayed focused on art that’s made by hand,” he said. “And people seem to come for that. Even people who are earning their living as graphic designers crave to work with their hands.”

Students of the league today study in an architectural treasure, “an undisclosed bit of brilliance,” Mr. Rips said, “completed in the late 1800s and essentially untouched since then.”

The league opens its doors to the public this weekend for STartUP, two days of exhibitions, auctions, experiential events and more, celebrating the building’s 125th anniversary.

And keep an eye on that scaffolding — the nicest scaffolding we ever did see, decorated with reprints of egg tempera, oil on canvas, painted wood and quotes from talents who learned on the school’s easels.

As one Louise Bourgeois poster reads: “An artist can show things that other people are terrified of expressing.”

Here’s what else is happening:

The underwhelming weekend weather stays around for the start of the week — mostly cloudy, with a chance of morning showers, and a high around 68. But the clouds should break this afternoon.

(Here’s your allergy forecast.)

Start singing: We’re expecting more sunshine over the next few days.

A former New York prison, closed since 2014 due to declining incarceration rates, is being sold by the state at auction. [New York Times]

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Chateaugay Correctional Facility in 2008. The former prison, which was built in 1990 and is near the Canadian border, is being sold at auction by New York State.Credit...Christinne Muschi for The New York Times

Sylvia Bloom, a legal secretary from Brooklyn, worked for the same law firm for 67 years while quietly amassing a fortune. In her will, she left more than $8 million for college scholarships. [New York Times]

The president of a leading Jewish seminary died after the small plane he was piloting crashed about 70 miles northwest of Manhattan, according to the institution. [New York Times]

Brigantine, N.J., residents are angry at state officials for using snare traps to control the local fox population. [New York Times]

As the Upper West Side’s District 3 struggles to bring “academic diversity” and desegregation to the area, the Center School stands out as an island of privilege. [New York Post]

A traveler from Europe may have exposed people to measles in four upstate New York counties, the Department of Health warned. [The Democrat & Chronicle]

The Queens Library is hosting Drag Queen Story Hour throughout the month of May for children ages 3 to 8. [AM New York]

Today’s Metropolitan Diary: “Help Hailing a Cab

For a global look at what’s happening, see Your Morning Briefing.

The New York Times and Parks Department present “Scenes Unseen,” an exhibit of long-forgotten photographs from 1978, at the Arsenal in Central Park. 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. [Free]

Archival Futurisms: Memory and the Ruins of Imperialism,” a talk by the artist Michelle Dizon about globalization, social movements and human rights, at Cooper Union in the East Village. 7 p.m. [Free]

Monday Night Magic (and mind reading) at the Players Theater in Greenwich Village. 8 p.m. [$42.50]

Oratorio Society of New York performs the works “Sanctuary Road,” based on the Underground Railroad, and “We Are One,” about peace, at Carnegie Hall on the Upper West Side. 8 p.m. [Tickets start at $25]

Dear Diary,” a dramatic reading of comedians’ awkward childhood journals, at Q.E.D. in Astoria, Queens. 8:30 p.m. [$8]

Mets at Reds, 7:10 p.m. (SNY).

Alternate-side parking remains in effect until Thursday.

For more events, see The New York Times’s Arts & Entertainment guide.

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Our first president was sworn in in New York.Credit...Library of Congress

George Washington took the first presidential oath at Federal Hall in Manhattan in 1789, when New York was the nation’s temporary capital.

A week later, on May 7, 1789, the first inaugural ball was held in New York City. On the guest list were members of Congress and Vice President John Adams.

Twenty years later, with James Madison’s gala in 1809, the inaugural ball was cemented as a presidential custom in Washington.

But for those eager to relive its earliest iteration in New York City, you can attend a recreation of George Washington’s inaugural ball on Friday at Federal Hall on Wall Street, complete with 18th-century food, drink, dancing and entertainment. Black tie or 18th century attire encouraged; tickets here.

New York Today is a morning roundup that is published weekdays at 6 a.m. If you don’t get it in your inbox already, you can sign up to receive it by email here.

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Follow the New York Today columnists, Alexandra Levine and Jonathan Wolfe, on Twitter.

You can find the latest New York Today at nytoday.com.

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