The Puffin Foundation Announces Major Gift to Museum of the City of New York
June 8, 2026
he Puffin Foundation Ltd. and the Museum of the City of New York (MCNY) today announced a transformative gift, totaling $8 million—the second largest in the Museum’s history—to establish The Puffin Foundation Center for Social Activism.
We are proud to deepen our longstanding partnership with the Museum of the City of New York through the establishment of The Puffin Foundation Center for Social Activism. The Puffin Foundation has long supported the Museum’s efforts to elevate underrepresented voices and examine the social movements that have shaped our city and nation. This new Center expands that shared commitment and ensures that the study of activism remains central to understanding both our history and our future.
The new Center builds upon a partnership between the Museum and The Puffin Foundation dating back to 2009, when Perry Rosenstein, Puffin’s founder, worked with the Museum to launch the Puffin Gallery for Social Activism, an endowed curatorial position, and the inaugural exhibition, Activist New York. The Puffin Foundation Center for Social Activism will expand this key area of the Museum’s work through a larger physical footprint and a range of new initiatives. It will serve as a focal point for exhibitions, public programs, fellowships, collections, and scholarship exploring how individuals and communities have mobilized to shape the city’s social, political, and cultural life.
This extraordinary gift from The Puffin Foundation enables the Museum of the City of New York to advance more than fifteen years of collaboration while reaffirming our enduring focus on New York’s civic life. The Puffin Foundation Center for Social Activism will serve as a dynamic hub for examining how New Yorkers have shaped, and continue to shape, the civic, social, and political fabric of our city, connecting the movements of the past to the conversations of today.
Permanent and Rotating Exhibitions
Anchoring the new Center will be the reimagined permanent exhibition Activist New York, opening in Fall 2026 and focused on the tactics of activism. Building upon a longtime visitor favorite and one of the Museum’s most popular field trips for New York City public schools, the exhibition will draw from the Museum’s collections alongside new acquisitions. Through strategies such as grassroots organizing, protest, artistic expression, media campaigns, legal advocacy, and digital mobilization, Activist New York will explore how New Yorkers have driven change across generations.
The Center will also feature a series of rotating temporary exhibitions that complement both the Center’s work and Activist New York. Building on MCNY’s longstanding commitment to exploring the history of social change, these exhibitions will highlight the individuals, movements, and ideas that have shaped New York’s ongoing struggles for equity, rights, and democratic participation.
In recent years, with support from The Puffin Foundation, the Museum has presented major exhibitions on civic engagement and activism, including Changing the Face of Democracy: Shirley Chisholm at 100; City of Workers, City of Struggle: How Labor Movements Changed New York; and Beyond Suffrage: A Century of New York Women in Politics.
Robust Public Programming
Through a robust public program series including lectures, film screenings, book talks, and family engagement, the Center will present at least six public-facing events annually. These programs will foster wide-ranging conversations about activism’s history, contemporary practice, and future directions, engaging scholars, practitioners, artists, and community leaders.
New Yorkers have been at the forefront of movements for social change that have helped make the country a more just place for immigrants, workers, and all the public. Time and again, New York City’s populace has been a shining example of the power of the people to enact change. Perry’s vision for our partnership with the Museum was to put that history on vivid display and connect it to the present; with this gift we reaffirm and expand that commitment.
Annual Fellowship
Beginning in 2027, the Center will launch a 12-year annual fellowship program. In addition to supporting the Puffin Foundation Curator of Social Activism and contributing to work on the permanent and rotating exhibitions, each fellow will create and present one of the Center’s annual public programs. The fellowship will ensure that original research and creative practice remain central to the Center’s public engagement.
Research, Publications, and Advisory Leadership
Emerging from the Center’s exhibitions and research initiatives, the Center will contribute to broader scholarship on social activism through a new series of publications.
As it has since 2009, an Advisory Board of distinguished scholars and practitioners will guide the Center’s development.
The support of The Puffin Foundation ensures that this work remains deeply researched, community informed, and responsive to both history and the present moment. Through exhibitions, programs, and publications, the Center will examine not only what activists have achieved, but how activism has been practiced, offering visitors tools to better understand the strategies that have shaped change in New York and beyond.
With the inauguration of The Puffin Foundation Center for Social Activism, the Museum of the City of New York reaffirms its mission to explore the city’s past, present, and future, highlighting the essential role activism has played—and continues to play—in shaping New York’s story.