Politics
‘The Year of Flaco’ Will Celebrate a Beloved Owl
New York Historical is opening an exhibit of memorabilia of the eagle-owl, who died in February.
Good morning. It’s Tuesday. Today we’ll find out about an exhibition about Flaco, the Eurasian eagle-owl that captivated the city until his death last year. We’ll also get details on traffic in Manhattan during the first week of congestion pricing.
Credit…Jeenah Moon for The New York Times
In life, Flaco got the celebrity treatment. In death, he is getting the museum treatment.
The New York Historical (as the New-York Historical Society has called itself since last fall) will open an exhibition titled “The Year of Flaco” on Feb. 7. It will celebrate the beloved Eurasian eagle-owl that winged it in Manhattan, hunting and holing up in a favorite tree. His fans worried about the dangers of the city, including a diet that was apparently heavy on tainted prey. When he died after crashing into an apartment building last year, he had enough rat poison and pigeon virus in his system to kill him.
Rebecca Klassen, the curator of material culture at New York Historical, said it was unusual to assemble an exhibition so soon after the central subject had died. And New York Historical does not have Flaco’s remains, only memorabilia. His wings and tissue samples went to the American Museum of Natural History.
The idea for New York Historical’s exhibit came up after Valerie Hartman, a runner who had kept tabs on Flaco, filled out an online form for the museum’s “History Responds” initiative. That program was started after the Sept. 11 attacks to collect material related to major events. Klassen read the form and offered to go to Hartman’s apartment to inspect Flaco memorabilia that she and another Flaco fan had collected after a memorial gathering in Central Park last year.
Without telling Klassen, Hartman invited three other Flaco fans.
“They were basically pitching me on the idea of doing an exhibition timed to the anniversary of his escape and his death,” Klassen said.