NEW YORK, NY.- The New-York Historical Society announced that Russell Shorto has been appointed executive director of the Diamonstein-Spielvogel Institute for New York City History, Politics, and Community Activism. In this role, Shorto will also lead an advisory board chaired by Dr. Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel, whose members include Joy Bivins, Carroll Bogert, Douglas Brinkley, Pamela Rubin Carter, Thomas Dyja, Adam Gopnik, Adam Hochschild, Agnes Hsu-Tang, Michael Keogh, Tarky Lombardi, Kica Matos, Robert Odawi Porter, Luc Santé, Stacy Schiff, and Brent Staples.
The Institute, initiated and funded by the Diamonstein-Spielvogel Foundation, aims to create a new historical archive, collecting relevant materials that relate to 20th and 21st-century local history, including the civil rights movement, women’s rights, climate concerns, the drive for LBGTQ+ rights, and the historic preservation movement. It will also offer scholarly programs, a resident fellowship, and short-term fellowships.
“Russell Shorto’s insights into New Amsterdam and how New York has evolved over time are excellent groundwork for the mission of the Diamonstein-Spielvogel Institute,” said Dr. Louise Mirrer, New-York Historical’s president and CEO. “We look forward to working with Russell, and we are extremely grateful for the visionary leadership of Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel, whose decades of experience on the federal, state, and local level have informed the rapid direction and growth of the Institute and already made this significant enterprise a reality.”
“The Diamonstein-Spielvogel Foundation is pleased to continue our long-term commitment to the communal good and public realm with the founding of the Diamonstein-Spielvogel Institute for History, Politics, and Community Activism, which began its work of presenting focused programming and gathering collective memory and experiences for archival research this past summer,” said Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel. “As one of New York City’s premiere and most historic cultural resources, the New-York Historical Society is an ideal forum for Russell Shorto’s imaginative scholarship and distinctive focus on the history of our city. His noteworthy appointment as executive director enables us to expand our efforts to support our commitment to inclusiveness, diversity, social equity, community service, and accessibility, so that present and future historians can place the city’s multiple histories within an accurate and meaningful context. We look forward to working closely with Russell to help achieve the stated mission of the Diamonstein-Spielvogel Institute and help shape its rich, useful future.”
“I’m very excited about this opportunity,” said Russell Shorto. “New York has always led the way in advancing civil rights and social justice in America. For nearly 20 years I’ve argued that that tradition has its roots in New York’s Dutch founding. The Diamonstein-Spielvogel Institute gives me a chance to bring that history to bear on the present. I’m grateful to Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel and Louise Mirrer for deputizing me to take on such a worthy task.”
Russell Shorto is the author, most recently, of Smalltime: A Story of My Family and the Mob, and of six earlier books, including Amsterdam: A History of the World’s Most Liberal City and the national bestseller The Island at the Center of the World. He is a contributing writer at the New York Times Magazine and senior scholar at the New Netherland Institute in Albany, New York. From 2007 to 2013 he was director of the John Adams Institute in Amsterdam. In 2009 he was awarded a knighthood from the Dutch government for his work in increasing historical understanding between the Netherlands and the United States. In 2018 he was inducted into the New York State Writers Hall of Fame.
