[View this email in your browser]() Longtime Brooklyn resident and City Reliquary fan Liz Beeby has created a marvelous souvenir for us as part of our [Museum Relief Fund Drive](https://museumfund.cityreliquary.org/): the [City Reliquary in a Nutshell](https://museumfund.cityreliquary.org/product/nutshell/237?cs=true)! She recently spoke with us about that project, the DIY theater space she co-runs, [Cloud City](http://www.cloudcity.nyc/), collecting, and looking to the future in an uncertain world.

You can read [the complete interview](http://www.cityreliquary.org/interview-with-liz-beeby/) on our website, and check out some highlights below! **You’re also one of the co-founders of Cloud City. Can you tell me what that is?**

**It’s an arts and performance space, that’s the short answer. We just had our 7 year anniversary. [...] ** **When people walk by it can be confusing because on the outside it doesn’t look like anything, and so people wonder, “What is this space?” But then when they come in I feel people are often like, “Oh, this is cool!” And I get such a thrill out of it, every time. [..I]t's exciting seeing all the crazy things people do and how creative people are, and I feel honored to be in the periphery of that, even though I’m not a performer. I feel like it’s the thing I’m proudest of, that we started this and it still exists.**

**Where does the name Cloud City come from?**

**From Star Wars** ... **Lando Calrissian has a city in the clouds called Cloud City. And when the people come to visit him and ask, “Aren’t you worried about the Empire finding you?” he says, “It looms like a shadow over everything we’ve built here.” That’s his quote. And when we were starting this space, that’s what one of us used to say every time someone would ask, “Aren’t you worried about this, or that?” He would say, “It looms like a shadow over everything we’ve built here.”**

**And now you’re making the City Reliquary in a Nutshell. How did you first find out about the museum? **

**I think back when it was just a window at Havemeyer and Grand, just from walking past, it was such a cool thing to see in the neighborhood. And I have a lot of collections myself, I’ve inherited that from my dad. So I thought it was cool that someone used their ground floor window to show collections. **

 

**And how does the City Reliquary in a Nutshell fit in to this?**

**When I was looking online for 1939 World’s Fair things, they have this World’s Fair in a nutshell, and there’s also one that’s New York City in a nutshell. And they have foldout pictures inside. [...] ** **And I thought that the City Reliquary has so many cool things, those could be in a nutshell too, that could be a good souvenir. And now I’m up to my ears in walnuts. I don’t even like walnuts!**

**On the tags, you can see on the backs that they were for mailing. You could just put it in the mail and the nutshell would send, for 2 cents. So people had such a great time at the [1939 New York World's] fair, and wanted to send not just a postcard to their friends but a weird nutshell, to share the world they’d just seen.**

**[W]hen you go to the City Reliquary and you’re trying to tell people how cool this museum is. They have an old shovel in there, they have geology core samples, they have water from the river – there are so many weird things that you wouldn’t think to see in a museum necessarily, but that you should see!** **[...]**

  **So it’s a way of remembering what you saw and what the museum holds. Especially because some of it is from the rotating exhibits that aren’t there anymore. I tried to make it a sampling of all the historic and weird and small bits of life that are preserved there. It’s how one could remember a lovely day at the Reliquary. Thank you so much, Liz! Check out the rest of her interview on our website!**