Envisioning Metropolis: The Future of New York City’s Past Today
A little under a century ago, the expressionist silent film Metropolis made its world premiere in Berlin. Written by Thea von Harbou and directed by Fritz Lang, the film takes place in what was then the distant year of 2026. Set against the backdrop of a futuristic, dystopian cityscape of endless skyscrapers, the film imagines a society riven with class conflict and inequality. Our current year 2026 marks the 400th anniversary of the founding of New Amsterdam and the Semiquincentennial of the establishment of the United States. This synchronicity allows us to explore concepts of commemoration and chronology—what are we celebrating when we mark these anniversaries: our past or our future?
When it premiered in 1927, Metropolis faced widespread criticism, and studio executives demanded the film go through rigorous rounds of editing. Much of the film’s original cut was lost—until 2008, when the original version was discovered by Paula Felix-Didier in the archives of the Museo del Cine, in Buenos Aires, Argentina. This is an illustrative example of archivists as mediators in the process of remembrance and rediscovery. In this symposium, we will consider questions of legacy and memorialization, and how these abstract concepts come to bear on our work as archival stewards in concrete, material ways.
As an expressionist work of science-fiction, Metropolis aimed to offer its audience a vision of a far-off future. But, the film speaks as much to the future as it does to the anxieties and concerns of its contemporary audience. As archivists, our task is to preserve and catalog works of enduring value. We seek to provide for our successors a record of our predecessors’ time as well as our own. In this spirit, where is the intersection between story, history and prediction, and how do we unravel these interrelated concepts? Let us examine how our ancestors envisioned the future and interrogate how we look back on history today, in order to better understand the role we collectively play in the ongoing dialogue between past, present, and future.
Utilizing Metropolis as a conceptual framework, and taking into consideration the pivotal anniversaries the nation will mark this year, we invite reflections on how archives can prepare for the future and what we might envision that future to be. Recognizing the current realities of the socio-political landscape, both nationally and locally, what can these commemorative milestones reveal? Is it possible to learn from history in order to glimpse a utopia of liberty and justice for all?
We welcome proposals that engage with the following themes, particularly those that explore the intersection of archival practice and broader questions of legacy, remembrance, and commemoration. Applicants are encouraged to respond directly to a prompt below or to use a prompt as a creative entry point for their submission.
Physical vulnerability of memory in a changing world.
Disaster preparedness, recovery planning, and navigating the immediate impacts of environmental crises on physical repositories.
Implementing green and climate-conscious archival practices to ensure long-term preservation.
Case studies in locating, reconstructing, and conserving fragmented, censored, or "lost" historical media.
Institutional boundaries and socio-political inequalities that become inherent power dynamics when working to build the historical record.
Balancing the utopian ideal of radical open access with the dystopian risks of exposing sensitive or private materials.
Navigating intellectual property, copyright challenges, and restrictive access policies in corporate and public spheres.
Managing redaction, restriction, and responsible access to historically or politically charged records.
Making archives relevant to non-specialists through exhibits, public programs, and the curation of memory.
Reaching and engaging digital audiences through innovative online methods and social media storytelling.
Building, sustaining, and funding community-led archives that exist outside traditional institutional walls.
Archiving activism, social movements, and class conflicts as they occur.
Correcting historical omissions through inclusive metadata, reparative description, and collaborative collecting practices.
Using exhibitions and public programming to navigate the intersections of objective history, speculative storytelling, and collective memory.
Addressing burnout, labor conditions, and advocacy for archival workers facing precarious systemic realities.
Navigating limited budget resources and creating sustainable financial infrastructures within institutional policy frameworks.
Accessioning and managing ever-expanding collections of born-digital material for an unknowable future.
New and speculative digital strategies, tools, and standards to prevent data loss.
AI usage, benefits, parameters, and ethical guardrails in archival processing and description.
The deadline for proposals is the end of the day on August 15, 2026. The date for this year's symposium has not been finalized. New York Archives Week and the New York Archives Week Symposium usually take place in October.
Please submit your proposals using this Google Form: https://forms.gle/df68549SETgdheQRA
We eagerly await your proposals and look forward to a dynamic and thought-provoking symposium!
If you have any questions or concerns, please contact education@nycarchivists.org.
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