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Since 1996, the Library has created websites inspired by some of the physical exhibitions presented at its research centers, as well as a number of web-only presentations based on its collections.

  • The African Diaspora in the Indian Ocean World Image

    The African Diaspora in the Indian Ocean World

    Over the course of nearly 20 centuries, millions of East Africans crossed the Indian Ocean and its several seas and adjoining bodies of water in their journey to distant lands, from Arabia and Iraq to India and Sri Lanka. They Africanized the Indian Ocean world and helped shape the societies they entered and made their own. The African Diaspora in the Indian Ocean World traces their truly unique and fascinating story of struggles and achievements across a variety of societies, cultures, religions, languages and times.

  • Celebrating 100 Years Image

    Celebrating 100 Years

    One hundred years ago, The New York Public Library opened its landmark building,now known as the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, dedicated to preserving its varied collections and making them accessible to the public. Over time, the Library has radically expanded its holdings, but its founding goals are as central today as they were in 1911. Library curators past and present have been guided by the philosophy that all knowledge is worth preserving. This major exhibition of more than 250 thought-provoking items from NYPL’s vast collections celebrates how the Library has encouraged millions of individuals to gain access to a universe of information during the past 100 years.

  • African & African Diasporan Transformations in the 20th Century Image

    Africana Age: African & African Diasporan Transformations in the 20th Century

    By the end of the 19th century, Africans and peoples of African descent—except the Ethiopians, the Haitians and the Liberians—were living under some form of European colonial domination. The history of Africa and its Diaspora was dismissed as insignificant at best, inexistent at worse. Black cultures were ridiculed, stereotyped, and scorned. But over the course of the last 100 years black peoples the world over launched epic struggles for freedom, civil rights, and independence. Africana Age retraces this turbulent history of challenges, tragedies, and triumphs.

  • Radioactive Image

    Radioactive

    A companion website to the exhibition Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie, A Tale of Love and Fallout, which tells the story of Lauren Redniss, an artist, writer and former Cullman Center fellow, who drew on the vast collections of The New York Public Library to create a new work of art. The Library collaborated with a talented group of students at Parsons the New School for Design who, with Redniss as their guide, created an innovative website showcasing a dazzling array of new works inspired by the visual and narrative universe of Radioactive. 

  • Judaism, Christianity, Islam Image

    Three Faiths: Judaism, Christianity, Islam

    Over the millennia, Jews, Christians, and Muslims have each created a rich body of founding texts and interpretive underpinnings for their respective faiths, each of which derives from the teachings of Abraham. This exhibition treats these three great Abrahamic religions, setting forth in splendid and historic detail the complementarities and differences among them, explaining their development, and exploring their lived experience through public and private prayer.

  • Thirty Years of Photography at The New York Public Library Image

    Recollection: Thirty Years of Photography at The New York Public Library

    Henri Cartier-Bresson compared portraits to a visual reverberation, in which “the people come back to you like a silent echo. A photograph is a vestige of a face, a face in transit.” His definition of portraiture (appealing to themes of recall, repetition, and return) also applies more generally to photography itself, describing a medium that has been repeatedly renegotiated over its short history, whether in terms of mechanical reproduction, documentary evidence, or as an independent art. This online multimedia presentation celebrates thirty years of photogaphy at The New York Public Library.

  • Scandal and Success Image

    Candide at 250: Scandal and Success

    On the Road with Candide uses The New York Public Library’s on-site exhibition Candide at 250: Scandal and Success as a jumping-off point for a unique online journey … inviting the involvement of students, scholars, artists, and more.

  • Immigrant City Image

    Immigrant City

    In 1609 the people of the Lenapes and other Native American groups in our area would have seen the sails of Henry Hudson's ship as it made its way up the river that today bears his name. Little could they know that less than half a century later visitors would be commenting on the variety of languages spoken in the settlement that would become New York City. Since then our city has continued to welcome people from all over the world and they continue to shape it into a vibrant, exciting place to live.

  • Mapping New York\'s Shoreline, 1609-2009 Image

    Mapping New York's Shoreline, 1609-2009

    September 2009 marks 400 years since Henry Hudson sailed into New York Harbor and up the Hudson River, almost to what is now Albany, performing detailed reconnaissance of the Hudson Valley region. Other explorers passed by the outwardly hidden harbor, but did not linger long enough to fully realize the commercial, nautical, strategic, or colonial value of the region. Once the explorers returned to Europe, their strategic information was passed on to authorities. Some data was kept secret, but much was handed over to map makers, engraved on copper, printed on handmade paper, distributed to individuals and coffee-houses (the news centers of the day), and pored over by dreamers, investors, and potential settlers in the “new land.”

  • The Year of Gay Liberation Image

    1969: The Year of Gay Liberation

    The year 1969 marked a major turning point in the politics of sexuality in America. Same-sex relationships were discreetly tolerated in 19th-century America in the form of romantic friendships, but the 20th century brought increasing legal and medical regulation of homosexuality, which was considered a dangerous illness. This change in attitude was accompanied by pockets of resistance, spaces that gays and lesbians carved out for their erotic self-expression.

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