Opening Reception for “The Normal”: Images from the Haunted Files of Eugenics

6-6:30PM: Tour of “The Normal” at the NYU Kimmel Windows Gallery. Please meet at the corner of LaGuardia Place and West 3rd Street.

6:30-7:30PM: Reception at the A/P/A Institute at NYU (8 Washington Mews).

From private biases to public policies, how far have we come from eugenics-era America? “The Normal”: Images from the Haunted Files of Eugenics re-presents images from the US eugenics movement to ask this question and place contemporary discourse around racism, immigration, reproductive rights, and disability in historical context. Once exhibited at museums and state fairs nationwide, the propaganda on display in this installation helped to drive popular support for eugenics-motivated legislation such as immigration restriction, mass institutionalization, and the forced eugenic sterilization of the “unfit.”

This opening begins with a tour at the NYU Kimmel Windows Gallery (a street-level gallery, visible only from the sidewalk) at 6PM. Co-curators Jack (John Kuo Wei) Tchen and Noah Fuller and Associate Curator Mark Tseng Putterman will walk you through the installation and then lead you to a reception at the A/P/A Institute at NYU, where a complementary installation, Haunted Files: The Eugenics Record Office, is on display.

RSVP below by Tuesday, October 28.

Image courtesy of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Archives.