Alice Austen House Museum

“Austen’s photographs continue to matter today because they still ask us to imagine other possibilities for women, for the poetics of everyday life, for the proximity and the distance between ourselves and others, between you and me.”

Richard Meyer, Scholar “New Eyes on Alice Austen”

The Alice Austen House (AAH) keeps the bold spirit of the early American photographer Alice Austen (1866-1952) alive by presenting changing exhibitions of her pioneering historic photographs, providing education programs for students, and offering a range of cultural programs for the public. The museum is a New York City and National Landmark, on the Register of Historic Places and a member of the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s distinctive group of Historic Artists’ Homes and Studios. In 2017, they were designated a National site of LGBTQ History.

Alice Austen captured a changing New York City in more than 8000 photographs taken mostly around the turn of the twentieth century. Austen documented her life on Staten Island and boldly ventured onto the streets of Manhattan to photograph the activities of immigrants and the working class. She was versatile and forged her own path beyond the restrictive Victorian expectations for women. The accompanying response exhibition to Voices and Votes will focus on Austen’s community organizing and her creation of clubs and societies which generated safe space for engagement and paved the way for us to discuss activist organizing and support today.