New York has reinvented itself throughout its history, adapting to meet the diverse needs of its inhabitants. It is fitting that the city’s oldest museum, the New-York Historical Society, is also full of surprises, many of which can be found in its new catalog of works on paper, entitled “Drawn by New York: Six Centuries of Watercolors and Drawings at the New-York Historical Society.”

The release of the catalog coincides with an exhibit at the Society, which opens today. Both are the fruits of labor by the museum’s first curator of drawings, Roberta Olson. Ms. Olson began her cataloging efforts in 2001 and wrote the book’s introductory essay as well as the technical entries for each of the catalog’s 230 selections from the Society’s holdings. The entries explain each work’s historical, contextual, and cultural significance, as well as short biographies of their creators.

Under Ms. Olson’s direction, the vast drawings collection — consisting of 8,500 sheets and 75 sketchbooks — has been cataloged in its entirety for the first time in the institution’s history. When she first shouldered the undertaking, as a guest curator, many of the drawings — which include works by artists such as Thomas Cole, Asher Durand, and Albert Bierstadt — were stored in dusty piles.

Shuffling through them led Ms. Olson to what she described as “that eureka moment that every curator dreams about.” Hidden away, unattributed and forgotten, was a heap of early drawings that provide a missing link in the history of early ornithological and botanical documentation. The works, which have since been attributed to a French artist who went by several names (Pierre Vase or Cruche or Eskrich), appear to directly prefigure drawings by ornithologist John James Audubon, who has long been considered the first to extensively depict birds with correct taxonomy. “It’s beginning to blow the study of early ornithological documentation apart,” Ms. Olson said.

Fittingly, the Society also owns all but one of Audubon’s original watercolors that he created for his celebrated collection of aquatints, “Birds of America” (1827-38). Like Audubon, Vase depicted birds as close to their natural scale as possible, even if scientific accuracy meant awkwardly squeezing his subjects onto the page, as is the case in his rendering “Male Ring-necked Pheasant (Phasianus colchicus)” (1554-65). He adhered to natural posturing as well, often drawing birds with their beaks open, sometimes even with their tongues sticking out.

Vase was ahead of — if not on par with — several of the ornithological artists of his time. Pierre Belon, a contemporary of Vase’s whose 1555 treatise contained 144 images of birds, uniformly drew each ornithological image in identical dimensions, ignoring size differences. New research following Ms. Olson’s discovery of the drawings indicate that Vase had shared drawings and information with Swiss physician Konrad Gesner, who rendered his zoological drawings from specimens. “They were all part of the same circle,” Ms. Olson said of the scientific artists. “They were all trying to get the taxonomy right.”

Ms. Olson’s cataloging efforts have reshaped the identity of the museum’s drawing collection within the broader context of its holdings, clarifying their importance as an essential form of early American documentation. “Drawings were seen as the second cousins, or third cousins, to the rest of the collection,” Ms. Olson said. They had been amassed over the years and considered an afterthought — just another part of the Society’s general mission to assemble artifacts, documents, and artworks representative of the development of New York and America.

The new catalog shows drawings from many different historical perspectives. “It’s a mixture of fine artists and those who were trained in the more documentary, topographical, and journalistic aspects of drawing,” Ms. Olson said, citing the museum’s rich collection of 18th- and 19th-century drawings depicting Hudson River Valley from an explorer’s standpoint.

Many of these explorers were high-level military officers who drew their surroundings as a matter of strategic course. British soldier Thomas Davies drew “Niagara Falls from Above; verso: sketch of Niagara Falls Area” (1766) when he was posted in America during the Seven Years War, and British naval officer Joshua Watson created panoramic images of Boston Harbor and Lake George in 1816.

“Drawing was part of an educated person’s vocabulary,” Ms. Olson said of the 16th through the 19th centuries. “It was a way of conceptualizing things, a way of taming knowledge visually. People of aristocratic class usually had some kind of training.”

The catalog shows highlights from the Society’s collection, coincidently reflecting “the development not only of New York but also of the nation,” Ms. Olson said. Scottish watercolorist George Heriot depicted the reconstruction of the White House, which he called “The President’s Palace,” in 1815, while Italian artist Nicolino Calyo recorded the Great Fire of 1835, a disaster that caused bankruptcies as well as great reforms in fire codes and insurance.

“A theme of this catalog is the resiliency of New York,” Ms. Olson said. “It renews itself and changes its social structure in the wake of devastation.” With the upcoming elections and the nation’s economic turmoil, the timing of such a message couldn’t be more fitting. “It’s a reflective time, as well as a time to move forward, and this collection really does chart where this nation has come from,” she said.

Until January 7, New-York Historical Society, 170 Central Park West, between 76th and 77th streets, 212-873-3400.