RIYADH: Outside The New York Public Library’s Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, the unmistakable scent of a halal food cart mingles with the sounds of various Arabic dialects, while two marble lions stand guard over Fifth Avenue. Inside, entire worlds are waiting to be discovered — including the often-overlooked stories of New York’s Middle Eastern and North African communities.
“Niyū Yūrk: Middle Eastern and North African Lives in the City,” the first exhibition dedicated to the Library’s Middle Eastern collections, opened Oct. 4. It will remain on view in the Ispahani-Bartos Gallery until March 8.
Berenice Abbott’s photograph from the 1930s of Syrian-owned The Lebanon Restaurant and an Arabic record store next door on Washington Street in New York. (Courtesy of The New York Public Library)
Curated by Hiba Abid, the exhibition contains around 60 objects — photos, books, periodicals and audio — dating from the 1850s to 2024. It centers specifically on the library’s own holdings, rather than attempting to tell a comprehensive history of MENA life in New York, Abid tells Arab News.
Drawing from over a century of rare materials the exhibition uses tangible objects to express the intangible: memory, identity and immigrant culture.
“It’s not a love letter. It’s a realistic letter,” Abid says, adding that these communities have long navigated complex questions of belonging, language, and preservation.
Curator Hiba Abid. (Supplied)
“The communities, from the very beginning, were wondering, ‘Where should our kids go to school? If they go to the public New York schools, they would probably lose their language, but we want them to still know Arabic and be aware of our traditions and values,’” she said.
The exhibition is divided into four chronological sections, designed to help guide visitors of all ages, from young children to seasoned scholars.
The first section, “Roads to New York,” focuses on the earliest waves of immigration. One of the first featured figures is Hatchik Oscanyan — later known as Christopher Oscanyan — an Armenian man born in what is now Türkiye. He came to New York in the mid-19th century and sought to educate Americans about the complexity of the Ottoman Empire. He wrote plays and newspaper articles, as well as “The Sultan and His People,” a book that offers insight into the region’s diverse ethnic and religious makeup.
The second section, “A Life in the City,” explores how immigrant communities began to form and thrive in New York, including in what was once known as Little Syria on Manhattan’s Lower West Side — an area that still exists today. They were entrepreneurs who opened restaurants, shops, and began publishing Arabic newspapers.
Richard Kasbaum’s photograph of Moroccan impresario Hassan Ben Ali, who toured the States with a troupe of acrobats, dancers, musicians and actors. (Courtesy of The New York Public Library)
One of the most groundbreaking was Al-Hoda, founded by Naoum Antoun Mokarzel and his brother Salloum. “In the basement of Al-Hoda Press, they adapted the linotype machine from Latin characters to Arabic characters, which is very hard (because Arabic is) a cursive language,” Abid says. “By this technological innovation, he actually allowed other presses to form and to publish newspapers, periodicals, and books,” which then circulated throughout North and Latin America — and back to the Middle East.
In other words, New York was instrumental in literally building the Arabic press and exporting news to the Middle East.
Abid emphasizes how vital the library’s historical collections are to telling these stories.
“The library has been collecting these materials since the late 19th century,” she says, adding that many of them have been digitized, enabling audiences to interact with them in a new way.
The third section, “Impressions,” flips the gaze, revealing how Middle Eastern immigrants perceived New York and the US.
“Many immigrant groups embraced American values… but many (Arabs) actually didn’t like New York and didn’t like American values and left after a few years here or after a few months.” The exhibit highlights these ambivalences and the tensions of assimilation.
The final section, “In Our Own Skin,” is the most contemporary and, for Abid, the most personal. It includes raw, vulnerable stories that reflect racial identity, Islamophobia, and resistance. Among the most powerful pieces is the short documentary “In My Own Skin,” directed by Jennifer Jajeh and Nikki Byrd, which features interviews with five Arab women in New York, and was filmed just one month after the events of Sept. 11, 2001.
“The interviews are absolutely amazing. Every time I talk about it, I have goosebumps,” Abid says. “The way they talk about it — it is still very relevant today, as if nothing changed much, except that we’re probably more powerful because we are aware of this and we know how to organize and to fight back. We have the vocabulary now, and the community.”
That spirit of organization is embodied by Malikah, a grassroots collective founded by Rana Abdelhamid in 2010 as a self-defense class for Muslim women on Steinway Street in Queens. The movement has since expanded into a larger project of empowerment, healing, and solidarity — and is featured in the exhibit’s final section. The powerful sound of the athan, or call to prayer, has been important to this cultural shift.
While images of the Statue of Liberty — based on an Egyptian woman — didn’t make the cut, but Abid stresses its significance on each guided tour. On this occasion, though, she wanted to focus the visitors on lesser-known gems.
Having lived in New York for the past four years as a Tunisian immigrant who spent much of her life in France, Abid says she finds New York to be more diverse than anywhere else she has ever lived.
“I live on Atlantic Avenue in the Syrian corner. The things I witnessed here and in Middle Eastern parts of New York, like Astoria, I could never see anywhere else — even Paris,” she says. “When you go to the exhibition, you actually think, ‘Damn! We actually did a lot. And we’re here, you know—we’re here.
“It shows how New York was central to all of these struggles and how New York — thanks to its MENA community — was actually connected and aware. It puts New York on a global map, you know? I think New York is incredible terrain for this. It’s the space for it. That’s what this show is about, ultimately.”
