Good morning. It’s Monday. Today we’ll look at an exhibition of engineering drawings of the Brooklyn Bridge that the Metropolitan Museum of Art analyzed so they could be cleaned and repaired like paintings. We’ll also get details on a proposal by Gov. Kathy Hochul to prohibit political campaigns from using images generated by artificial intelligence.
When the call came in about preserving “some drawings of the Brooklyn Bridge,” Elena Carrara, an assistant research curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, figured there would not be much to look at. It turned out that there were 11,252 drawings. One, showing the bridge from one end to the other, was 25 feet wide. Together the drawings amounted to a visual history of the bridge by the people who designed it, including John Roebling, the engineering genius who dreamed it up; his son Washington Roebling, who carried on after his father was injured at the site of the Brooklyn tower and died; and Washington Roebling’s wife, Emily, who carried on after her husband got decompression sickness while supervising construction, leaving him able to do little more than oversee it from a window in Brooklyn Heights. But after more than 125 years, the drawings had their problems. The inks had faded. The paper had deteriorated — it was discolored in places and stained or torn in others. There was damage from mold and degraded adhesives. Officials at the city’s Municipal Archives, which owns the drawings, wanted the Met to analyze them with the tools it uses when it does detective work on paintings. The officials were looking for guidance for its conservators on how to care for the bridge drawings. The Met has a scientific research partnership program to do just that. The archives, with federal and state grants totaling nearly $300,000, then scrubbed and repaired all 11,000 drawings — gently. And Carrara, captivated by their beauty, suggested an installation at the Met called “The Brooklyn Bridge Up Close.” It’s in a corridor just off the 81st Street entrance. Stored under some other bridgeThe Met says it’s the first time the seven drawings in the installation have been seen in 40 years. For decades they languished in a city-owned carpentry shop under — of all places — the Williamsburg Bridge. David McCullough had access to them while researching his 1972 best seller, “The Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge,” and so did Ken Burns, for the 1981 documentary “Brooklyn Bridge.”
The Met examined the drawings using X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy and other techniques. The team from the Met’s scientific research department identified pigments in the drawings as Prussian blue and vermilion. Lindsey Hobbs, the head of conservation and preservation at the Municipal Archives, said that knowing the specific pigments would be useful information for future exhibitions: “We can have a better idea of what light they can be exposed to and how long they can be up,” she said. The Met’s analysis also revealed that the compound smalt was used to whiten the paper. And shortwave infrared imaging brought clarity to faded annotations. Why ‘Welcome Dewey’?To hear Marco Leona, the scientist in charge of the Met’s scientific research team, tell it, an aha moment came after he noticed thinnish white lines that cut across the cables in one drawing. That drawing also showed two words at midspan: “Welcome Dewey.” Quick research revealed that the bridge was decorated in 1899 for a parade honoring Admiral George Dewey, a hero of the Spanish-American War. Electric lights were used to spell out the greeting, Leona said. And the white lines? They were an artist’s way of representing beams from spotlights aimed at the tower. There were arresting little touches in other drawings. In one showing a cross-section of one of the caissons, the giant pressurized chambers that enabled workers to build the foundations of the towers beneath the East River, Carrara pointed to tiny figures — workers in bowler hats pushing wheelbarrows and toting pickaxes. “They clearly didn’t dress up like that on the construction site,” Carrara said. Showing them in formal clothes “was a way to dignify these people,” she said, adding: “They were immigrants. To me, I’m an immigrant, and I found so much beauty and humanity in that.” WEATHER It’s going to be a sunny day. The temperature will climb to 42 before dropping to 33 tonight, with partly cloudy conditions. ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING In effect until Jan. 19 (Martin Luther King Jr. Day). QUOTATION OF THE DAY “Equity is not an abstract idea,” Kamar Samuels, the city’s new schools chancellor, said about school desegregation. “It is a set of choices we make.” The latest New York news
We hope you’ve enjoyed this newsletter, which is made possible through subscriber support. Subscribe to The New York Times. Hochul seeks to outlaw A.I. images of candidates
Last month, Gov. Kathy Hochul signed legislation covering models that artificial-intelligence companies use in building their technologies. Now she wants to prohibit political campaigns from using A.I.-generated images of people, including rival candidates, in the 90 days before an election — unless they consent. Hochul, a Democrat, also wants to outlaw the deliberate dissemination of false information about elections, including details about when voters can cast their ballots. Computer-generated images that cast candidates in a bad light have bombarded voters across the country in recent years. In the race for mayor last year, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s campaign released an A.I. video depicting Zohran Mamdani alongside his supporters, who were portrayed as criminals who beat their wives and sold drugs. Cuomo’s campaign spokesman said at the time that the video had been “posted in error.” Hochul’s proposal, if passed by the State Legislature, would allow lawsuits by people who encounter images or information that runs afoul of the new rules. METROPOLITAN DIARY His song
Dear Diary: I’ve been obsessed with the Dirty Projectors’ song “Remade Horizon” since it came out in 2009. It’s one of the few songs I keep permanently downloaded on my phone, so I don’t need Wi-Fi when I want to hear it. When the mood strikes — and it often does — I press play, and there it is: a strange, beautiful bit of art pop with a wild passage at the end where two women’s voices trade off notes so quickly it sounds like one instrument. Some years after first hearing the song, I moved from Dallas to the Lower East Side. Not long after that, I was at my favorite neighborhood bar, talking with my favorite bartender, Kayla, when her two roommates walked in. They joined us, and I ended up chatting with one of them, Haley, who took the stool next to mine. I asked the usual New York question: “So, what brought you here?” “Oh,” she said, “I moved to Brooklyn to sing with a band.” “Would I have heard of them?” I asked. “Maybe,” she said. “They’re called Dirty Projectors.” I didn’t say anything, just pulled out my phone, opened my music library and turned the screen toward her so she could see the title: “Remade Horizon.” “Are you on this track?” I asked. “Yeah,” she said, as if it were nothing. It turned out that the voice I had been hearing for more than a decade leaping through that final passage belonged to the woman now sitting next to me. We became friends, and I still have “Remade Horizons” on my phone. Now, when it comes on during a crowded subway ride, New York feels exactly like the place I wanted it to be when I moved here. — Steve Crozier Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Tell us your New York story here and read more Metropolitan Diary here. Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B. P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here. Davaughnia Wilson and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox.
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