This article has been updated

He's fresh," went John Lindsay’s mayoral campaign slogan from 1965,"everyone else is tired."

Now, 45 years after the dashing silk-stocking Republican first hit the hustings, a cadre of former Lindsay aides and family members are launching a media blitz in an attempt to keep the former mayor’s image fresh in the minds of New Yorkers.

On May 4, the Museum of the City of New York will open an exhibit entitled “America’s Mayor: John V. Lindsay and the Reinvention of New York.” The exhibit will be accompanied by a book edited by New York Times reporter Sam Roberts and co-published by the museum and Columbia University Press. And airing May 6 on Channel 13 will be Fun City Revisited: The Lindsay Years, a one-hour documentary showcasing the mayor’s term in office, which lasted from 1966 to 1973.

All of which begs the question: Why Lindsay? And why now?

A tight-knit circle of former aides and associates that are unsatisfied with the current historical record of their boss’s administration provided some of the funding for the efforts said Roberts, a veteran reporter who got his start during the end of the Lindsay era. Roberts made clear, however, that his book and the exhibit were put together independently, growing out of a confluence of interest in rethinking the two-term mayor.

“There’s a feeling, for better or for worse, that Lindsay really hadn’t been considered in the context of his time,” Roberts added. “You could argue that New Yorkers had better and worse mayors than Lindsay, but very few of them had to govern in more trying times.”...