Shifting views of public and private space through the cameras of five contemporary photographers reveal the constantly changing and often unfamiliar urban landscapes of New York City in Eminent Domain: Contemporary Photography and the City, an exhibition of more than 200 photographs at The New York Public Library.

Eminent Domain features the recent photographic projects of five New York-based artists that deal with the life of the city in terms of passage (of seasons and time, people and place) and exchange (between individual and collective, interior and exterior). The works, by Thomas Holton, Bettina Johae, Reiner Leist, Zoe Leonard, and Ethan Levitas, will be on view at The New York Public Library’s Humanities and Social Sciences Library at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street from May 2 to August 29, 2008. Admission is free.

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Harry and the Potters, whose clever lit-rock is inspired by J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter novels, bring their wizardry to the marble halls of The New York Public Library’s 42nd Street landmark building on Saturday, May 10. The free concert, for ages 12 and up, begins at 7:00 p.m. in the Celeste Bartos Forum at the Humanities and Social Sciences Library located on Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street.

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April 30, 2008 – At a ceremony Monday evening, Ron Currie, Jr. was presented with The New York Public Library’s 2008 Young Lions Fiction Award by Library President Paul LeClerc. The ceremony was held in the Celeste Bartos Forum of the landmark Humanities and Social Sciences Library. Ethan Hawke, one of the founders of the award, was joined onstage by actors Brian F. O’Byrne, Amanda Peet, and Michael Shannon to read excerpts from each of the finalists’ works. The four other finalists for the award were Ellen Litman for The Last Chicken in America; Peter Nathaniel Malae for Teach the Free Man; Dinaw Megestu for the The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears; and Emily Mitchell for The Last Summer of the World.

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New York Public Library President Paul LeClerc and Chief Operating Officer David G. Offensend have announced the appointment of Todd M. Corbin as the Library’s Chief Investment Officer. As such, he is the senior executive responsible for working with the Board of Trustees’s Investment Committee to manage the Library’s endowment fund, currently valued at $740 million.

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Brooklyn-based author David Ezra Stein will receive the 2008 New Writer Award for Leaves (G.P. Putnam's Sons), a charming tale that shows the changing seasons through the eyes of a bear. The 2008 New Illustrator Award will be granted to Jonathan Bean, who illustrated The Apple Pie that Papa Baked (Simon & Schuster), by Lauren Thompson, which tells a whimsical story about apples, a pie, and the papa who baked it.

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New York, NY—The Council of Literary Magazines and Presses [clmp] and The New York Public Library present Periodically Speaking, a reading series providing a major venue for emerging writers to present their work while emphasizing the diversity of America’s literary magazines and the magazine collections of The New York Public Library. Each event presents writers from three influential literary magazines—one poet, one fiction writer, one nonfiction writer—introduced by their editors.

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The monumental marble facade of The New York Public Library stretches 390 feet along Fifth Avenue in a grand statement of presence and purpose. Yet in the 96 years since the building opened, the Library's exterior, which also faces Bryant Park, 42nd Street and 40th Street, has been subject to forces of weather and urban pollution that have taken their toll, wearing away at the beauty and form of the intricate stone structure. Today the Library announced that it is undertaking a three-year restoration of the facade of the historic building now formally known as the Humanities and Social Sciences Library. The project will include a complete cleaning of the building's Vermont marble, repair of almost 3,000 cracks, protection and preservation of the many sculptural elements, and repair of the building's roof, stairs, and plazas. The restoration will be completed in time for the building's centennial, in 2011.

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(New York, NY) April 4, 2008 – A new donor support group, LGBT @ NYPL, will help to expand, build, and make accessible The New York Public Library’s extensive Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) collections, one of the few such efforts by a non-LGBT organization.

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A Re-envisioned Library System to Meet the Needs of a Growing, Changing New York

• Fifth Avenue Building Dramatically Renovated to Become Flagship Lending and Research Library, A Model for the Urban Library of the Future
• Large Hub Libraries Established in the Bronx, Manhattan, and Staten Island as Anchors to Neighborhood Branches
• Expanded Digital Resources Increase Access to Library Collections
• $100 Million Gift From Stephen A. Schwarzman is the Largest Outright, Unrestricted Donation to a New York City Cultural Institution

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The New York Public Library’s Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers announces the selection of its tenth class of Fellows: fifteen exceptional creative writers, independent scholars, and academics, coming to the Library from as near as Brooklyn and as far away as Warsaw. The Fellows, whose appointments were announced today by Library President Dr. Paul LeClerc and Jean Strouse, the Sue Ann and John Weinberg Director of the Center, will use the research collections and online resources of The New York Public Library’s landmark Humanities and Social Sciences Library at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street to pursue a variety of book projects. They will be in residence at the Center from September 2008 through May 2009.

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Among the most celebrated choreographers of his time, Jerome Robbins belonged to New York. His work showcased the grit and the glory of the city through populist masterpieces such as West Side Story and On the Town, and moved fluidly between ballet and Broadway with technical artistry and vernacular energy. The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts presents the first major retrospective of the man and the city he loved: New York Story: Jerome Robbins and His World, which explores Robbins' work and the many overlapping New York worlds that met in it. The exhibition draws from the library’s collections of Robbins’ personal archives, and the vast majority of the materials on display have never been seen by the public.

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The grand Astor Hall of the Beaux-Arts landmark Humanities and Social Sciences Library will be alive with the sound of video games during a free and open gaming session on Friday, March 21, starting at 4 p.m. The event celebrates Game On @ The Library!, a New York Public Library initiative bringing video games to public libraries. Wii, Xbox 360, and Playstation 3 will be available , and gamers of all experience levels are invited. Library staff will be on hand to help those unfamiliar with the systems and games who want to learn. The Humanities and Social Sciences Library is located at Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street.

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Two new exhibitions at The New York Public Library show French artists turning to the new photographic processes to record the countryside and the cityscape in the second-half of the 19th century. Sketches on Glass: Clichés-Verre from The New York Public Library presents the work of four artists from the Barbizon school who turned to cliché-verre, a hybrid technique that combined aspects of printmaking and photography, to sketch the French countryside and idyllic landscapes. A complementary exhibition, Monumental France: Photographs of Édouard Baldus, displays 38 rare, early photographs by Baldus, who was hired by the French government in the 1850s to document the country’s great architectural monuments.

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The New York Public Library presents the first major New York City exhibition in decades celebrating the 17th century poet John Milton, featuring beautifully engraved early editions of Paradise Lost, portraits, prints, and other rare materials never before seen by the public. John Milton at 400: A Life Beyond Life marks the poet’s quadricentenniel anniversary, and will be on view at The New York Public Library’s Humanities and Social Sciences Library at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street from February 29, 2008 to June 14, 2008.

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To celebrate the recent donation and opening for public viewing of the Katharine Hepburn Papers at The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, the Library is presenting a new series of free public programs, Remembering Kate. The programs will include readings from the legendary actress’ personal papers for the first time and reminiscences by family, friends, and colleagues. including actors Zoe Caldwell, Katharine Houghton (Hepburn’s niece), Charlotte Moore, Marian Seldes, and Sam Waterston; talk show host Dick Cavett; and director Anthony Harvey.

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