The Jay Estate in Rye was home to one of our nation's greatest peacemakers, John Jay...

...and today, it is YOUR park

Our nonprofit, the Jay Heritage Center (JHC) is dedicated to transforming the 23-acre Jay Estate into a vibrant educational campus, hosting innovative and inclusive programs about American History, Historic Preservation, Social Justice, and Environmental Stewardship.

More about who we are and what we do

Revelations in the Gardens

Alvin Ailey’s iconic masterwork, Revelations, first inspired Kristine Mays to create the 29 life-sized wire figures now on view at the Jay Estate Gardens. But the sculptures have never before been incorporated into a piece choreographed by Ailey School alumni. Professional dancers Amina Konate and Rayan Lecurieux-Durival pictured here next to Celestial Prayer Meeting did just that this past Sunday, much to the delight of an awestruck audience of adults and young students of dance. Thank you to Rabab Abdalla for helping to bring this dream to fruition! Little did we anticipate that our first modern dance program would be a small but meaningful way to honor and remember the genius of the late Judith Jamison.
We look forward to offering more art and more dance performances in the gardens and at the revitalized Wachenheim Center in 2025.
Top photo by Kim Crichlow. Bottom photo by Christoph Buettner

 

November 17 at 3pm

40 Years of Climate Change - A Conversation with Andrew Revkin

Meet Andrew Revkin, one of America’s most honored, experienced and innovative journalists. He will will talk about how we can get beyond amorphous labels like sustainability and climate emergency by asking questions, starting with, “Sustain what?” The talk and reception are FREE but registration is required. REGISTER HERE
He has written on global environmental change and risk for more than 40 years, reporting from the North Pole to the White House, the Amazon rain forest to the Vatican – mostly for The New York Times. Revkin was a staff reporter at The Times from 1995 through 2009, covering issues ranging from threats to New York City’s water supply to the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami and, of course, climate science and policy. In the mid 2000s, he exclusively exposed political suppression of climate findings at NASA and editing of federal climate reports by political appointees with ties to the petroleum industry. He made three Arctic reporting trips and was the first Times reporter to file stories, video and photos from the sea ice around the North Pole.
He has long been credited with pushing media frontiers, particularly in pursuit of constructive engagement amid polarized and oversimplified online news flows and discourse. His New York Times blog, Dot Earth, which he launched as a news reporter and continued as an Opinion column, was lauded by the Columbia Journalism Review as “incredibly successful at encouraging copious, high-quality commenting and debate.” Revkin has won the top awards in science journalism multiple times, along with a Guggenheim Fellowship and Investigative Reporters & Editors Award. He has written books on the dawn of the Anthropocene, the history of humanity’s relationship with weather, the changing Arctic, global warming and the assault on the Amazon rain forest, as well as three book chapters on science communication.

 

LAST DAY TO SEE EXHIBIT 10am-3pm

Rich Soil by Kristine Mays Closes November 17

Thank you to NY State Parks for their spotlight on Rich Soil by fine art sculptor Kristine Mays on view now in the Jay Estate Gardens. READ BLOG HERE. Mays breathes life into wire as she creates human forms that dance, grieve, hope and pray. Her figures help us resurrect the narratives of the women and men whose strength, resilience and measurable contributions to our landscape have often been forgotten. As a member site of New York State’s Path Through History for Civil Rights and Westchester County’s African American Heritage Trail, the Jay Estate is a compelling venue for contemplating our shared American heritage while viewing these ethereal silhouettes. Cosponsored by the American Women of African Heritage and the Friends of the African American Cemetery. See more photos by Kim Crichlow here in NY Social Diary – scroll down.

 

 

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Land Acknowledgement

It is with gratitude and humility that we acknowledge that we are learning, speaking and gathering on the land of the Wiechquaesgeck (WE-QUEES-GECK), a subdivision of the Munsee people. The Munsee can be identified as speakers of Munsee, a dialect of the Lenape language. Today, the Munsee language is considered critically endangered, only spoken by a handful of elders on the Moraviantown Reserve in Ontario, Canada, each speaker over the age of 70. Lenape, or Leni Lenape was a name prescribed to them by colonists, rather than a label of initial self identification.
The Wiechquaesgeck were the historic owners of Rye, Harrison, and large parts of Westchester County, as they lived between the Hudson and Long Island Sound. Modern nations like the Stockbridge-Munsee, the Delaware Tribe of Indians, and the Delaware Nation trace their ancestry to the Munsee tribes, and continue to keep their history alive. We pay honor and respect to their ancestors past and present as we commit to building a more inclusive and equitable space for all. In the coming years, we plan to reintroduce species of fauna and flora indigenous to the Wiechquaesgeck into our gardens as a way to promote greater respect and understanding of their culture.

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