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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
Entertainment
David Smith in New York

‘It’s kind of crazy there wasn’t one’: inside the new Museum of Broadway

Broadway Stephen Sondheim Arthur Miller Liza Minnelli Meryl Streep New York Tony Kushner Times Square
The Museum of Broadway exterior sign
‘Broadway has such a long history and the fact that there wasn’t a place that celebrates Broadway and the people who make it in Times Square is mind-blowing’ … The Museum of Broadway exterior sign. Photograph: Monique Carboni

It is a patchwork of colour and craft, its 8in squares celebrating productions from the 1980s – Annie, Cats, Chess, Carousel, Les Misérables, Macbeth, Me and My Girl, Oh! Calcutta!, Starlight Express. One square, for the musical The Rink, is signed by stars Liza Minnelli and Chita Rivera.

But the Aids quilt, among more than a thousand objects and photographs displayed at the Museum of Broadway in New York, is also a mourning shroud. It was handcrafted by wardrobe teams of various productions to express grief and support for a generation of artists devastated by the HIV epidemic.

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