Who We Are
Visualizing NYC by the Numbers
November 22, 2019 - October 18, 2020
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New York City is a dense, chaotic mosaic of some eight and a half million people, each with their own individual stories. How can we possibly understand and describe this endlessly complex collectivity – what we share and what distinguishes us? Census data has long been a resource used to draw out unexpected and provocative patterns, connections, and insights about who New Yorkers are since our nation’s first count in 1790.
In anticipation of the 2020 census, Who We Are: Visualizing NYC by the Numbers showcases work not just by data analysts and demographers, but also by cutting-edge contemporary artists and designers who use these tools to enliven and humanize statistics and to shed new light on how we understand our urban environment and ourselves. Together, these intriguing and varied works demonstrate the power and importance of numbers in helping us understand who we are.
Explore the exhibition online.
The Census and Who We Are
How has census data been used to draw out unexpected and provocative patterns, connections, and insights about who New Yorkers are?
Why the Census Matters
Our state's future funding, city planning, and political representation all rest upon a full and accurate enumeration.
The Art of Data
Artists visualize data in novel and interactive forms to show the dimensions of urban life that usually go unnoticed.
In Depth Stories & Resources
Beyond the Numbers: The 2020 Census and the COVID-19 Pandemic
Learn how historical and contemporary events and struggles shape the census.
Teachers Explore Data and the Census
Earlier this year, educators spent a day at the Museum investigating strategies to bring data to life in the classroom.
Census Response Rates by State
How many people in your community are responding to the 2020 Census? Stay up to date with a map of self-response rates from across the United States.
[The Georgia Negro] City and Rural Population. 1890. c. 1900.
Prepared by W. E. B. Du Bois. Ink and watercolor.
Courtesy Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
This unusual bar chart shows that in 1890 a vast majority (86 percent) of black Americans in the United States lived in rural areas (represented by the red bar, coiled into a spiral to fit on the page), with smaller numbers living in small towns and cities (yellow, blue, and green bars).
Rank of the Most Populous Cities at Each Census: 1790–1890, 1898.
Prepared by United States Census Office and Henry Gannett.
Courtesy Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division.
This chart shows the relative rank of US cities from 1790 to 1890. Reading from right (1790) to left (1890), each city is represented by its own color-coded icon. Its place in the ranking can be traced by following the lines that connect across columns.
[Map No. 2 of City of New York Showing Distribution of principal Nationalities by Sanitary Districts], 1895
Frederick Erastus Pierce, made under the direction of the Tenement House Committee of 1894
Courtesy NYC Municipal Archives
In the 1890s the Tenement House Committee was formed to examine the state of overcrowding in lower Manhattan, then the most densely populated area in the world. The Committee produced a series of maps, including this one showing the distribution of nationalities by district. It is intended to represent with data what the public already knew from their experience—that New York is a patchwork of people from many different countries (at that time mostly European).
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Simulated Dendrochronology of U.S. Immigration, 1840-2017, 2019
Pedro Cruz, John Wihbey, Felipe Shibuya
Courtesy Pedro Cruz, John Wihbey, and Felipe Shibuya
The growth of cities is shaped by a host of external factors, as they register information from the environment and encode it in their structures. New York City has been molded by decades of immigrant arrivals, their movements determined by global political and economic conditions. Here, an interdisciplinary team of faculty from Northeastern University has visualized the shifting origins of immigrants as growing tree rings.
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Landscapes of Inequality, 2019
Herwig Scherabon
Courtesy Herwig Sherabon
New York City is a place of economic extremes, home to some of the wealthiest and poorest neighborhoods in the nation. Here, artist Herwig Scherabon visualizes these differences as abstracted forms. The height of the extruded cubes corresponds to median household income, with higher sections of the matrix representing higher incomes and lower areas representing lower incomes.
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Grid Series, 2019
Neil Freeman
Courtesy the artist
Here, census block groups are laid into a grid according to median household income. Freeman uses this reordering to show the distributional differences across tracts. The groups are color-coded by borough, with the colors derived from the borough flags. The size of each group corresponds to the total population of the area.
Exhibition Trailer
That's So New York: Museum of the City of NY: Who We Are
Take a walkthrough of the exhibition with Robert A. and Elizabeth Rohn Jeffe Chief Curator & Deputy Director Sarah Henry. (Video Courtesy NYC Media)
Who We Are Program Series
For this series of conversations, we invited a distinguished group of historians, journalists, census experts, city planners, and artists featured in the exhibition to discuss the significance and meaning of the 2020 Census for New York City’s future and consider the deeper implications (political, cultural, social) of determining “who we are” as New Yorkers.
The Data We Don't See with Giorgia Lupi
What does data really mean, and how can we extract real value from it in our daily lives? Information designer Giorgia Lupi discusses our new data reality and “data humanism,” her unique philosophy for understanding and working with data. After her talk, Lupi will be joined in conversation by Amanda Cox, data editor at The New York Times.
Getting Out the Census: Counting New Yorkers in 2020
What are government, community, and civic leaders doing to ensure that every single resident of New York City is properly counted in April 2020? Julie Menin, director of the Census for New York City; Melva M. Miller, executive vice president at the Association for a Better New York; Robert J. Rodriguez, New York State Assemblymember; Steven Romalewski, director of the CUNY Mapping Service; and Juan Manuel Benítez (moderator), reporter for NY1, discuss how the effort is proceeding and what setbacks remain.
"Who Are the People in Your Neighborhood?" NYC According to the Census
Every ten years the Census provides an unparalleled opportunity to observe the changes in the population living in the hundreds of neighborhoods that comprise New York City. Héctor R. Cordero-Guzmán, Professor at Baruch College and CUNY Graduate Center; Nancy Foner, Professor at Hunter College and CUNY Graduate Center; Bitta Mostofi, Commissioner of the Mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs; Joseph J. Salvo, Chief Demographer, NYC Department of City Planning; and Hansi Lo Wang (moderator), National Correspondent, NPR ask how the population churn affects New Yorkers’ common ideas and assumptions about neighborhood identity across the five boroughs, from East Harlem and St. George to Sunset Park, Morrisania, and LIC.
This series is presented in conjunction with Who We Are: Visualizing NYC by the Numbers as well as the exhibition Future City Lab, an interactive gallery that is part of the award-winning exhibition New York at Its Core.
To view videos from past events in our Future City Lab series, click here.
Supporters
Who We Are is made possible in part by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, An Anonymous Family Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York, Bloomberg Philanthropies, The New York Community Trust, Zegar Family Foundation, Charles H. Revson Foundation, and Blair and Cheryl Effron.
Public programs inspired by Who We Are are made possible by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
What’s On for Who We Are
Past Event | P Credit Course: People of New York
Examine the past, present, and future of the city through the lives of individual New Yorkers in this P Credit course for educators.
