Students (18+) live and breathe New York City, the 20th century and the contemporary -- its art, architecture, poetry, cafes, and happenings.HSNY students have classes in the mornings (History of NYC: inventing the grid; NYC as muse: poetry, fiction and critical prose inspired by the city; NYC architecture: spirit of experimentation; A NYC History of American Art, abstraction and realism: Masterpieces at the Met, Museum of Modern Art, Guggenheim, Whitney and Brooklyn Museum) but the city itself --all 5 boroughs -- is our text book. From Central Park to the Panorama in the Queens Museum, from the Strand Book Store to the Flat Iron Building, the Staten Island ferry to Ground Zero (so beautiful and so moving), the Natural History Museum to Harlem Gospel, students experience this liveliest of cities first hand.HSNY has lunch at the "Y," and then we're off -- walking, or taking the subway or bus to that day's destination(s), and reading inspiring HS fact sheets about it once we are there.
Staff at HSNY includes poets and architects, art historians and museum curators; conversation is at the heart of the HSNY experience, both inside the classroom and out. During orientation, with the help of staff, students create and hand-bind their own unique, individual trip books, and in poems, prose, sketches, watercolors and collages, record their impressions of what we all see and discuss together.Slowly, this inspiring city and capital of the contemporary becomes home to students while they are at HS and a part of their lives forever.