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The New York Public Library Calendar of ExhibitionsHumanities and Social Sciences LibraryJohn Milton at 400: “A Life Beyond Life” -- February 29, 2008 - June 14, 2008 Monumental France: The Photographs of Edouard Baldus -- March 7, 2008 - June 28, 2008 Sketches on Glass: Clichés-Verre from The New York Public Library -- March 7, 2008 - June 28, 2008 The Adventures of the Real Winnie-the-Pooh -- March 18, 2008 - Ongoing Eminent Domain: Contemporary Photography and the City -- May 2, 2008 - August 29, 2008 The Declaration of Independence -- June 27, 2008 - August 2, 2008 Art Deco Design: Rhythm and Verve -- September 12, 2008 - January 11, 2009 Yaddo: Making American Culture -- October 24, 2008 - February 15, 2009 Jill Kupin Rose Gallery - Ongoing -- January 1, 1998 - Ongoing Special Displays: The Gutenberg Bible -- March 25, 2004 - August 31, 2009 The New York Public Library for the Performing ArtsWriting to Character: Songwriters & the Tony Awards -- February 26, 2008 - June 14, 2008 New York Story: Jerome Robbins and His World -- March 25, 2008 - June 28, 2008 The Paper Bag Players: 50 Years of Theater Art -- May 5, 2008 - August 2, 2008 "Take Me Out to the Ballgame": 100 Years of Music, Musicians, and the National Pastime -- July 8, 2008 - October 28, 2008 Kenn Duncan -- July 30, 2008 - October 25, 2008 Curtain Calls for a Century of Outstanding Women Designers for Live Performance -- November 17, 2008 - May 4, 2009 Schomburg Center for Research in Black CultureThe Abyssinian Baptist Church Bicentennial Exhibition -- February 4, 2008 - May 31, 2008 A Saint in the City -- March 10, 2008 - May 31, 2008 Hours, Tours, The Library Shops, and InformationHumanities and Social Sciences LibraryFifth Avenue and 42nd StreetThe Gutenberg Bible  Special Display: The first substantial printed book in the West is the royal-folio two-volume Bible on display, comprising nearly 1,300 pages and printed in Mainz on the central Rhine by Johann Gutenberg (ca. 1390s–1468) in the 1450s. Probably completed between March and November 1455, when Gutenberg’s bankruptcy deprived him of his printing establishment, the Bible epitomizes Gutenberg’s triumph, arguably the greatest achievement of the second millennium. Over possibly twenty or more years, at Mainz and perhaps at Strasbourg, he succeeded in developing printing from movable type in the West. John Milton at 400: “A Life Beyond Life”  Emblazoned high above the threshold, the expression “life beyond life” taken from John Milton’s stirring defense of free speech, aptly ushers visitors into the Rose Main Reading Room of The New York Public Library. With a reputation rivaling that of the work of Chaucer and Shakespeare, the poetry of John Milton (1608–1674) was avidly collected by the Library's founding fathers, Samuel J. Tilden and James Lenox. This Wachenheim Gallery exhibition fittingly celebrates the quadricentennial of Milton’s birth by giving as much emphasis to his masterworks as to revealing the different ways his poetry has been appreciated by admirers and critics. The first part of the exhibition consists of three sections introducing visitors to Milton’s life, work, and those influences most affecting his development; the exhibition’s second part is divided into three historical sections, showing visitors how in each century, Milton’s readers brought their own concerns, values, and biases to his poetry. Monumental France: The Photographs of Edouard Baldus  Edouard Baldus came to Paris from Prussia in 1838 to pursue painting, at which he had only very modest success. By 1849 he had turned his attentions to photography, a still-experimental medium that had been introduced only a decade earlier. Baldus was one of five photographers selected by the Commission des Monuments Historiques in 1851 to make surveys of historic sites around France. These Missions Héliographiques, as they were called, were intended to help the Commission determine the preservation and restoration needs at the sites, many of which had never been seen by the Commissioners. Baldus’s itinerary took him south and east where he photographed the Palace of Fontainebleau, Roman monuments and ruins and medieval churches in Provence, Arles, and the Rhône Valley. These photographs won him additional government support, and in the following years he photographed the major monuments of Paris, returned to the southern countryside, and in 1855 documented the construction of the New Louvre. This exhibition presents rare Edouard Baldus photographs from this period. Sketches on Glass: Clichés-Verre from The New York Public Library Cliché-verre is a technique that combines aspects of printmaking and photography. Developed around 1839, this process begins with a glass plate on which an artist either paints a design or scratches a design on a prepared ground. The glass plate is then treated as a negative and placed on top of light-sensitive paper and exposed to the sun. Artists of the Barbizon school were the first, and most prolific, experimenters with this technique. These artists, who lived and worked near the forest of Fontainebleau, celebrated the natural world. They turned away from both classical and romantic treatments of landscape and chose to depict humble scenes based on their direct observations of nature. This exhibition draws from the extraordinary holdings of French 19th-century prints in the Samuel Putnam Avery Collection and features cliché-verre landscapes by Camille Corot, Théodore Rousseau, Charles-François Daubigny, and Jean François Millet. The Adventures of the Real Winnie-the-Pooh  The REAL Winnie-the-Pooh won't be found on a video, in a movie, on a T-shirt or a lunchbox. Since 1987, the REAL Pooh and four of his best friends--Eeyore, Piglet, Kanga, and Tigger--have been living at The New York Public Library. Long before Walt Disney turned Pooh and his pals into movie stars, Christopher Robin Milne, a very real little boy living in England, received a small stuffed bear on his first birthday. He named him Edward Bear (later renamed Winnie-the-Pooh). Following Edward came the rest of the stuffed animals, which Christopher loved and played with throughout his childhood. One day, Christopher's father, A.A. Milne, and an artist named Ernest H. Shepard, decided that these animals, and two other imaginary friends, Owl and Rabbit, would make fine characters in a bedtime story. From that day on, Pooh and his friends have had many fanciful adventures, from Piglet's encounter with a Heffalump to Eeyore's loss of his tail. These stories have been embraced by millions of children and adult readers for more than 70 years. Anyone can visit the real Winnie-the-Pooh and his pals. Every year thousands of children and their parents have come to see them. They have recently moved from their previous home in the Central Children's Room to grand new quarters in the History and Social Science Library at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street. Pooh and his friends are as happy as when they lived in the 100 Acre Wood. Eminent Domain: Contemporary Photography and the City  The exhibition Eminent Domain: Contemporary Photography and the City features the work of five contemporary New York–based photographers drawn primarily from new acquisitions in the Photography Collection. Thomas Holton’s The Lams of Ludlow Street is an empathetic account of one family’s daily life in Chinatown and a photographer’s personal quest to better understand his own heritage. Bettina Johae’s borough edges,nyc is a digital project exploring the edges of the city's five boroughs, which the photographer physically traversed as a way of “remapping” the supposedly well-known city. In Window, Reiner Leist used a 19th-century camera to photograph the view from his 26th-floor apartment on Eighth Avenue overlooking downtown Manhattan. At different times on almost every day during the past decade, Leist captured a slice of Manhattan that includes One Penn Plaza, Madison Square Garden, and, until September 11, 2001, the World Trade Center towers. Over the same period of time, Zoe Leonard tracked changes and disappearances occurring on the Lower East Side as a result of the city’s economic transformation; her Analogue also serves as both elegy and homage to a long-standing tradition of documentary photography. In his series Untitled/This is just to say, Ethan Levitas photographs individual train cars and their passengers along the elevated lines of the New York City subway, capturing unexpected moments of connection and contradiction in the most obvious and overlooked of public spaces. Levitas’s project, like all of the works in Eminent Domain, deals 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). Turning on the nature of photography itself (which always complicates the relationship between private and public property), the works in the exhibition intersect and resonate with current concerns about the reorganization of urban space, and its public use, in New York City. A publication accompanying the exhibition will include written meditations on these themes by the Bronx-born artist Glenn Ligon, who is known for his multi-media explorations of critical issues in contemporary culture.
The Declaration of Independence The Library is honored to safeguard a fair copy (clean, full-text version without corrections or alterations) of the Declaration of Independence in Thomas Jefferson’s hand. In the days immediately following ratification on July 4, 1776, Jefferson made several copies of the text that had been submitted to the Continental Congress, underlining the passages to which changes had been made. The Library’s copy is one of two known to survive intact. It is shown together with the first Philadelphia printing and the first New York printing of the final version issued by Congress. These versions are complemented by the earliest newspaper printings; the second official version ordered by Congress, published by a woman printer in Baltimore; and a letter from Franklin to Washington mentioning that the Declaration was being drafted. In addition to the exhibition, the 14-minute film We Hold These Truths …, a dramatic reading of the Declaration of Independence, will be shown continuously in the South Court Visitors’ Center. Admission is free. Art Deco Design: Rhythm and Verve What is the reason for the enduring appeal of Art Deco design? The answer lies in the vitality of the decorative style’s visual elements. Art Deco captured the mood of 1920s and 1930s modernism, an age of jazz and streamlined machinery, with designs that are colorful, geometric, and filled with an intense rhythm. This exhibition seeks to give viewers a more intimate exposure to the style’s incredible energy by focusing on boldly graphic plate books, portfolios, and masterworks of the pochoir stencil print technique from the Library’s Art & Architecture Collection. Art Deco’s international flavor has played particularly well in New York, with many examples of landmark architecture and interiors throughout the city. The exhibition offers a reappraisal of the style’s most notable features and its often-overlooked legacy to modern art. Starting with key Art Nouveau designs that reveal the origins of the Art Deco impulse, the exhibition presents developing traits that move through the 1920s and into the next decade. Aspects of the style’s legacy can be seen in the first volume of the significant art journal Verve(1937-60), a review of art and literature that took root from the fertile soil of mature Art Deco, and in the innovative works of Sonia Delaunay (1885-1979), an avant-garde painter and designer, whose brightly colored and geometrically-shaped creations demonstrate the union of fine art and commercial design aesthetics. Yaddo: Making American Culture This exhibition will explore the role of Yaddo, the artists‘ retreat, in fostering 20th-century American arts and letters. Founded in 1900 by financier and philanthropist Spencer Trask and his wife, Katrina Trask, Yaddo began receiving guests in 1926 and was immediately hailed by The New York Times as a “new and unique experiment, which has no exact parallel in the world of fine arts.” Since that inaugural season, Yaddo has navigated the roiled cultural and political life of 20th-century America while hosting thousands of artists and writers, including such luminaries as James Baldwin, Saul Bellow, Flannery O’Connor, Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein, Truman Capote, Jacob Lawrence, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Philip Guston and Sylvia Plath. The exhibition is drawn from the intimate letters, papers, photographs, art objects, and ephemera that constitute the Yaddo Records, now in The New York Public Library’s Manuscripts and Archives Division; from collections throughout the Library; and from Yaddo’s own holdings of rare books and artworks. The story of Yaddo and the artists that it has fostered offers a window onto some of the most significant events of 20th-century history: The economic and social turmoil of the 1930s, the destruction and displacements of World War II, the paranoia of the McCarthy era, the “race problem” from Jim Crow segregation through the Civil Rights movement, and the rise of the women’s and gay rights movements – all helped shape Yaddo, the lives of the artists who sought shelter there, and the works they produced. The exhibition will explore the multiple ways that Yaddo as an institution, and the artists it supported, were ultimately anything but sequestered from the shifting social, political, and economic crises that marked the 20th century. The exhibition will be accompanied by a collection of essays, edited by exhibition curator Micki McGee, published by Columbia University Press. Jill Kupin Rose Gallery - Ongoing  This ongoing exhibition consists of large wall panels with photographs, text, objects, and videos illustrating the history and the vast array of collections, services, and users of The New York Public Library's Branch and Research Libraries. The Jill Kupin Rose Gallery was created in 1998 by former New York Public Library Chairman Marshall Rose in memory of his late wife, Jill Kupin Rose. The New York Public Library for the Performing ArtsDorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center40 Lincoln Center Plaza Writing to Character: Songwriters & the Tony Awards  For Broadway's lyricists, composers, and orchestrators, the Tony Awards represent the highest honor that their colleagues can bestow. The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts delves into its peerless collections for this multi-media tribute to the creators of the Best Musicals, as well as winners of the occasional Best Score Tony. Working backwards from the award ceremony, the exhibition reveals the work of putting on a show -- from the opening night performance back through rehearsals, orchestrations and arrangements, demos and money raising, writing the songs, and plotting out the show to the original concept. Material is drawn from the archives of songwriters and their producer, designer, director, and performer colleagues in the Library’s four research divisions, including, among many others, Richard Rodgers, Betty Comden and Adolph Green, Frank Loesser, Harold Prince, Michael Stewart, Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick, Fred Ebb, Charles Small, Edward Kleban, and the New York Shakespeare Festival. Image: The songwriters at the first rehearsal of Wonderful Town, 1953. (left to right) Betty Comden (lyricist), Rosalind Russell (star), Adolph Green (lyricist), George Abbott (director), Lehman Engel (musical director) and Leonard Bernstein (composer). Photograph by Vandamm. Billy Rose Theatre Collection, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts New York Story: Jerome Robbins and His World  The most celebrated American choreographer of his time, Jerome Robbins belongs uniquely to New York. He was born in the city and died there, and his dances, both for Broadway and for the ballet stage, recounted its lore and the joys and travails of its ordinary folk. His dances touched a contemporary chord. They conveyed vernacular energies and communal pleasures, echoed the rhythms of jazz, and were set physically and psychologically in New York landscapes. New York Story: Jerome Robbins and His World explores Robbins's work in the context of the many, overlapping New York worlds that met in it. The exhibition draws principally on the very rich collections of Robbins material at the Library's Jerome Robbins Dance Division, as well as on material from other Library divisions, augmented by loans from the Museum of the City of New York, the Paley Center for Media, The Jerome Robbins Trust and Foundation, and private individuals. The exhibit has been curated by Lynn Garafola, professor of Dance at Barnard College. Image: Jerome Robbins. Photograph by Jesse Gerstein. Courtesy of the Jerome Robbins Foundation The Paper Bag Players: 50 Years of Theater Art  This adventurous theater for children has been, from their earliest performances at The Living Theater in the sixties through their tours of the Middle East, Asia and the British Isles, to their current performances in New York City and across the United States, profoundly influential artistically and managerially—and has performed for more then five million children! Under the artistic direction of Judith Martin, the company creates a distinctly contemporary theater. Their shows vividly reflect the everyday lives of children. Their performance style is direct, humorous and friendly. Their sets, props and costumes made of brown paper bags, cardboard boxes and household objects. Their shows are a memorable, personal experience for their young audiences. The artistic endeavors of the company have been strongly supported by a dedicated administration. Under the guidance of Managing Director, Judith Liss, The Paper Bag Players have achieved a series of “firsts.” The Paper Bag Players were the first theatre for children to receive a grant from The National Endowment for Arts, to receive an OBIE, to perform at Lincoln Center and The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. This exhibit of photos, posters, historic documents, costumes and props, many drawn from the Paper Bag Players Archives, newly acquired by the Billy rose Theatre Division, the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. It celebrates the 50th Anniversary of The Paper Bag Players. One of the longest running theaters for children in America, they are still as new, lively and imaginative as the youngest member of their audience. "Take Me Out to the Ballgame": 100 Years of Music, Musicians, and the National Pastime  An exhibition for the whole family! To celebrate the 100th anniversary of baseball theme songs, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts presents a tribute to the sport and the musicians who love it, organized around the lyrics -- beginning with a history of the song and its creators. "Take me out with the crowd" focuses on composers who were fans and wrote about the game, among them Charles Ives and William Schuman. "Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack" looks at baseball and promotion via vaudeville and the musical stage, as well as trading cards. "Root for the Home Team" features baseball musicians, among them Jane Jarvis, long-time organist for the New York Mets, and vocalists of the national anthem. The exhibition is based on New York Public Library collections, but includes unique items from the private collection of Andy Strasberg. Image: Sheet music for "Take Me Out to the Ball Game," as published in 1908. The featured performer is Nora Bayes. Music Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts Kenn Duncan This exhibition is a retrospective of the 20-year career of Kenn Duncan, who served as principal cover photographer for After Dark and Dance Magazine. He was best known for his photographs of actors, dancers, skaters, nudes, and celebrities of the late 1960s, '70s and early '80s. This retrospective will include his iconic images of Mikhail Baryshnikov, Angela Lansbury, Rudolf Nureyev, Bette Midler, and the cast of Hair, as well as selections from his nudes and his work with hundreds of celebrities. Duncan’s complete archive was acquired by the Library in 2003 and is part of the Billy Rose Theatre Division. Curtain Calls for a Century of Outstanding Women Designers for Live Performance  A collaboration with the League of Professional Theatre Women, the exhibition will feature works by 110 distinguished designers of scenery, costumes, lighting, sound, props, and projections from various performing arts disciplines from the 1890s to the present. The exhibition will feature photographs, sketches, drawings, performance videos, and interviews with designers, augmented by public programs and educational workshops in cooperation with the Fashion institute of Technology/SUNY and the Bard College Center for Decorative Art. This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. Image: Pioneering lighting designer Jean Rosenthal, photographed by her frequent collaborator, choreographer Jerome Robbins. Jerome Robbins Dance Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture515 Malcolm X BoulevardThe Abyssinian Baptist Church Bicentennial Exhibition  The exhibition traces the evolution of the church from its founding in Lower Manhattan in 1808 as the first African-American Baptist Church in the state of New York through its current work as an agent for positive social change in the Harlem community and the city of New York. Image: Abyssinian Baptist Church A Saint in the City  A Saint in the City--originally on view at Fowler Museum at UCLA--presents the visual culture of a dynamic religious movement known as the Mouride way that is inspired by a Senegalese Sufi pacifist, poet, and saint named Amadou Bamba (1853-1927). The Schomburg Center will feature selections from the original exhibition. Image: A Saint in the City Exhibition HoursHumanities and Social Sciences Library The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture Science, Industry and Business Library ToursHumanities and Social Sciences Library: Building Tours 11:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m on Mondays to Saturdays; 2:00 p.m. on Sundays 12:30 p.m. and 2:30 p.m. on Tuesdays to Saturdays; 3:30 p.m on Sundays Unauthorized tours are not permitted. Please see our tours webpage for more information. Science, Industry and Business Library: A free one hour tour is offered Tuesdays and Thursdays at 2 p.m. Meet at the Reception Desk on the Street Level. For information, call 212.592.7000. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture: Free guided exhibition tours by appointment only. For information, call 212.491.2207. More information here. 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