Antique Shopping with the Tenement Museum’s Curator of Furnishings

Tours at the Tenement Museum, on Orchard Street, are usually benign educational affairs, celebrating the city’s immigrant past. But, since the election, conversations have grown contentious. One tour member, who could appreciate Ellis Island but would extend her sympathies only so far, said, “Immigrants back then were different,” starting an argument. Tour guides have been receiving special training to cope with what one docent called “the current political climate.” Still, the show must go on. A new exhibit, on postwar life on the Lower East Side, opens next year, and preparations are under way.