OUR MISSION
If well built and
understood, cities will be aesthetically and spiritually pleasing;
if pleasing, their past will be appreciated; if appreciated, they
will be cared for;
and if cared for, their future will be long sustained.
Chet Orloff,
Founder
Cities today don't just happen; they take years to
grow and build. To avoid becoming chaotic and random collisions of
forces, they must be planned well. This means cultivating—with taste and
rigor—a sense of place, of nature, of history, of craft, and of limits.
Further, cities are not just places in which we live, work, play, and
shop. We learn in cities. When we understand our buildings and our
landscape, and the history behind them, we better understand ourselves.
It’s an urban century and the century’s problems
and solutions will be found in cities. It will be increasingly in
metropolitan regions that we will seek rootedness—a sense of
place—and our own sense of community.
The Museum of the City’s mission is to help us
understand cities—our own and others’—and how they came to be and where
they will go from here on.
Through
exploratory exhibits, publications, colloquia, and classes, the Museum
of the City works to broaden people's knowledge of cities. Volunteer
driven, the Museum’s “urban curators”—friends and colleagues interested
in contributing to the Museum’s work—pay particular attention to how
cities have been planned historically and how they are being planned
today.
