Photos: Visiting The DSNY's Museum Of Trash, A Tribute To New York & Nostalgia

They say one man’s trash is another man’s treasure, and retired NYC Sanitation employee Nelson Molina is the living embodiment of that cliche. For over 30 years, he has journeyed through piles of garbage to create a large, curated collection that currently occupies the entire second floor of a DSNY garage in the Upper East Side. This is known as the Museum of Trash (or more recently, as the Treasures in the Trash Collection), and it’s Molina’s legacy.

This week, the Foundation for New York’s Strongest, the official nonprofit of the Department of Sanitation (DSNY), Hi-ARTS and the Hunter East Harlem Gallery are unveiling an exhibition inspired by some of these discarded items, called What is Here is Open: Selections from the Treasures in the Trash Collection. This is the first show of its kind, and aims to celebrate not just Molina, but "the practice of salvage and reuse—which is critical to the agency’s mission of zero waste to landfills."

“This is a collection of the past, but it represents the present and the future at the same time," said Hi-ARTS Executive Director Raymond Codrington. “The collection evolves, it hasn’t stayed static.” Codrington is a cultural anthropologist who has been working with co-curators Alicia Grullón and Molina on the exhibit, which opens this Wednesday, June 26th. The exhibit will feature a series of art installations by several NYC based artists that gained inspiration from Molina’s collection. Molina and Grullón will be adding items from the Treasures in the Trash Collection to each installation; we dropped by there last week as they were pulling some final pieces.

They didn’t really know what the exhibit’s theme would be until recently, but Grullón says, “We are almost creating a home… Seeing who is here and who has been here.” She points to how real estate has played a serious role in New York’s shifting demographics, shaping entire neighborhoods, and how that is visible through discarded items.

"We’re not seeing each other as people with homes, with things that are dear to us, with memories, with experiences that shape a community, that shape a neighborhood, shape a block," said Grullon. "That humanity has been stripped because we start seeing apartments as these dollar signs that can be traded in and you can’t trade in people’s experiences, and stories, and lives."

Nelson Molina amidst his collection. (Nate Igor Smith / Gothamist)

Molina’s collection may appear haphazard, but the old action figures and dolls from Christmases past, silent films flickering on a projector screen, furniture and appliances create a tapestry of nostalgia. And while you could essentially walk through the homes of a hundred New Yorkers across the decades with just a few steps, that’s all it takes to miss hidden gems in plain sight. One of Molina’s most cherished items is a Star of David sculpted from the metal found at Ground Zero, made in memory of a 9/11 victim.

"Since I was a kid, my mother always taught us not to throw anything out. If she couldn’t fix it nobody could fix it," Molina told Gothamist. "That’s how I learned to pick up and save all these things people can use."

His hobby began in 1981 within the small confines of a men’s locker room, in this same DSNY parking garage, where he sectioned off an area, featuring a single seat in the center, to display his collection. The guys in the facility dubbed this area the "thrift shop," but it was the beginning of this much larger collection that became known as the DSNY’s Museum of Trash that formed in 2009. The "thrift shop" still exists at the same location to this day.

"Everything is found. The wood, the aisles, nuts and bolts, the tools, screws, everything," said Molina. Each and every item in the museum, even what he uses to repair them are from the trash. Molina has "recovered and mended some 40,000 items" over the decades, all unearthed from his assigned collection route back in the day (a district bordered by 96th Street and 110th Street between First and Fifth Avenue).

(Nate "Igor" Smith / Gothamist)

He isn’t collecting as much since his retirement in 2015, but every now and again he’ll get an itch to grab a few things and accept donations from friends. When he sees a bag of trash and he gets a feeling, he says he’ll take a look — "Something good's in there, I just know it."

Right now, the collection has some logistical problems ahead of it, DSNY records management officer Maggie Lee told Gothamist. They will be moving from their current location in five years and need to find a new home for Molina’s accumulated treasures.

"I am not sure what the New York City Department of Sanitation is going to do with the collection in the future," Codrington told us. "The collection is an important part of New York City history and culture that will hopefully be preserved in some way."

(Nate "Igor" Smith / Gothamist)

"Sometimes I come down here and look at everything I’ve done. It makes me feel good,” Molina told us this week. “I just want it to go into a museum or something with the city. I don’t want this to go to waste."

What is Here is Open: Selections from the Treasures in the Trash Collection will be on view from June 26th to September 14th at the Hunter East Harlem Gallery, with a public reception on Wednesday, June 26th, from 6-8 p.m. HEHG is located at 2180 Third Avenue at 119th Street. The gallery is open Thursday-Saturday, noon to 5 p.m. Admission is free. For more information, call (212) 396-7819 or click here.

To visit the Museum of Trash collection, you'll need to go through the NY Adventures Club. The next tour is in July.