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It Happened Here: The Invention of Santa Claus - New-York Historical Society
Hours: 10am-6pm Tuesday-Saturday; 11am-5pm Sunday Ages: All Price: Museum admission: $15; $12 teachers and seniors; $10 students; $5 children 7-13; free children younger than 7 Address: 170 Central Park West - 212-873-3400 Upper West Side, NY 10024 www.nyhistory.org Description: To celebrate the winter season, this installation traces the modern image of Santa Claus, the red-suited, pot-bellied descendant of the medieval bishop St. Nicholas of Myra, which emerged only decades after the first Congress met in 1788 in Federal Hall in New York. The exhibition features Robert Weir's 1837 painting of a rather sly St. Nicholas and Thomas Nast's Harper's Weekly cartoons of Santa. The desk of New Yorker Clement Clarke Moore, who originally penned the "Twas the night before Christmas" poem, is on display in the Henry Luce III Center for the Study of American Culture. |