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The New York Public Library Calendar of ExhibitionsStephen A. Schwarzman BuildingWinnie the Pooh and Friends: The Original Toys -- April 15, 2009 - April 15, 2010 Mapping New York's Shoreline, 1609-2009 -- September 25, 2009 - June 26, 2010 Candide at 250: Scandal and Success -- October 23, 2009 - April 25, 2010 A Literary Christmas Miscellany from the Berg Collection -- December 4, 2009 - January 3, 2010 Jill Kupin Rose Gallery - Ongoing -- January 1, 1998 - Ongoing Special Displays: The Gutenberg Bible -- March 25, 2004 - January 1, 2011 The New York Public Library for the Performing ArtsLincoln Center: Celebrating 50 Years -- October 15, 2009 - January 6, 2010 Revolutionary Voices: Performing Arts in Central & Eastern Europe in the 1980s -- November 18, 2009 - March 20, 2010 Schomburg Center for Research in Black CultureAfrican Americans and American Politics -- August 27, 2008 - December 31, 2009 Courage: The Black New York Struggle for Quality Education -- October 2, 2009 - December 31, 2009 Courage: The Vision to End Segregation, the Guts to fight for It -- October 2, 2009 - December 21, 2009 Hours, Tours, The Library Shops, and InformationStephen A. Schwarzman BuildingFifth 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. Winnie the Pooh and Friends: The Original Toys  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 Stephen A. Schwarzman Building at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street. Pooh and his friends are as happy as when they lived in the 100 Acre Wood. 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.” Image: John Bachmann. New York & Environs. New York, 1859. NYPL, The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, Print Collection, Eno Collection. Digital ID ps_prn_647. Candide at 250: Scandal and Success  Voltaire’s tale of the youth Candide’s trials, travels, and misadventures as he searches for his beloved Cunegonde was a publishing sensation in Europe in 1759. The satirical treatments of religion, sexuality, and authority made Candide both a target of censorship by the Vatican as well as a hugely popular underground success. Over the centuries, the tale has been imitated, augmented with further adventures, illustrated more than a hundred times by artists both anonymous and famous, adapted into various other art forms, and canonized as an outstanding contribution to both French and world literature. The history of Candide is a history of widespread public reading, reflecting the ways in which a public consumes a book and transforms it. Authors, artists, playwrights, and other readers have been inspired by Voltaire’s cunning commentary on 18th-century French society and have reinterpreted the story in the context of the Napoleonic Wars, both World Wars, colonial expansion and independence, the sexual revolution, and even the current Iraq war. This dynamic exhibition commemorates Candide’s 250th anniversary through a wide variety of materials from The New York Public Library’s holdings, including The Martin J. Gross Collection of Voltaire and His Contemporaries Rousseau and Diderot. This world-class collection, part of the Rare Book Division, includes all 17 of the known 1759 editions of Candide. The exhibition also features literary works influenced or inspired by Candide; illustrated editions of the book from the 18th to the 21st centuries; materials relating to the original 1956 Broadway production of Candide, with music by Leonard Bernstein, and subsequent revivals; and contemporary translations and adaptations of the book into other art forms, among them modern dance, film, and graphic novel. Materials on loan from other institutional and private collections include the original manuscript of Candide, from the collection of the Bibliothèque nationale de France. A digital presentation compares various artists’ interpretations of two famous episodes from the book: Candide’s shooting of amorous monkeys and his questioning of his mentor’s philosophy of optimism. In a brief video, the Library’s President, Paul LeClerc, himself a Voltaire scholar, reflects on the transformative power of this single work on his own career, his personal collection of illustrated editions of Candide, and his work to bring the Martin J. Gross Collection to the Library. The gallery experience is enhanced by audio excerpts from the original Broadway cast recording of Candide. Support for this exhibition has been provided by Martin J. Gross, an anonymous donor, and Air France. Additionally, special support for The Martin J. Gross Collection of Voltaire has been provided by Martin J. Gross, Barbara L. Goldsmith, and Robert W. Wilson. Support for The New York Public Library’s Exhibitions Program has been provided by Celeste Bartos, Mahnaz Ispahani and Adam Bartos, Jonathan Altman, and Sue and Edgar Wachenheim III. Image: Portrait of Voltaire. Color etching and engraving by Pierre-Michel Alix, after Jean-François Garneray, 1792. The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, Print Collection. A Literary Christmas Miscellany from the Berg Collection  Special Display: This holiday display features Charles Dickens's prompt copy of A Christmas Carol, from which he gave his public readings; a book with a Christmas theme by T.S. Eliot; Christmas greetings by James Joyce, Sean O'Casey, E.E. Cummings, and Maurice Sendak; and a Christmas letter from Jack Kerouac to his future wife, Stella Sampas. About the photograph: Harry Burnett, the son of Charles Dickens’s eldest sister, Fanny Burnett, is said to have been the model for both Tiny Tim in A Christmas Carol and Paul Dombey in Dombey and Son. He died in January 1849, only a few months after his mother. “Harry was a singular child,” Fanny’s pastor recalled, “meditative and quaint in a remarkable degree.” This photograph once belonged to Elizabeth Dickens, Charles Dickens’s mother. Image: Photograph of the original Tiny Tim, ca. 1848. NYPL, Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature. 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 Lincoln Center: Celebrating 50 Years  Lincoln Center: Celebrating 50 Years, the first exhibition to focus exclusively on the evolution and influence of America’s first performing arts center, will feature an extensive collection of historic and contemporary objects including photographs, ephemera, correspondence, costumes, set pieces, props and video recordings. Curated by Thomas Mellins, co-author of the book New York 1960, the free exhibition will be presented at the Donald and Mary Oenslager Gallery of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center in collaboration with Lincoln Center, October 15, 2009-January 16, 2010. Mr. Mellins will discuss key exhibition themes in a free lecture on opening day, October 15 at 6:00pm in the Library’s Bruno Walter Auditorium. From its inception in the mid 1950s, Lincoln Center has been a powerful symbol of New York’s core substance and style. Its scale, its architecture and urbanism, its concentration of talent culled from the realms of government, philanthropy, academia, architecture, art, and a broad spectrum of the performing arts, all powerfully embody main currents that run throughout New York City’s history and collective character. Lincoln Center: Celebrating 50 Years will show the complex and symbiotic relationship between Lincoln Center and New York City over the course of a half century and the key role Lincoln Center has played in New York’s development as an international cultural capital. Image: Beverly Sills in the title role of The Merry Widow. New York City Opera, 1978. Photo: Jack Mitchell Revolutionary Voices: Performing Arts in Central & Eastern Europe in the 1980s A performing arts festival marking the 20th anniversary of the fall of communism in Central and Eastern Europe, presented by The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts in partnership with key New York City cultural organizations and academic institutions, November 2009-March 2010. www.performingrevolution.org To commemorate the 20th anniversary of the fall of Communism in the countries of the Czech Republic, Former GDR, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Slovenia, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts will collaborate with creative artists and scholars from those nations on a major exhibition and performing arts festival. The exhibition will focus on theatre performances and other art events, which through their form and/or content contested the prevailing totalitarian regime and anticipated the forthcoming political/social changes. The exhibition will argue that as the revolution in most countries of the Soviet bloc did not take place in form of a violent overthrowing of power, art was one the main arenas where “the revolutionary” started to happen. The exhibition will illustrate the different ways in which performances attempted to break the boundaries set by the Communist state’s culture politicians, aesthetes and censors: Audience and Stage, Barriers: Censorship and other power-games, Theatre outside the theatre, Western aesthetic tradition of absurd, punk, etc… permeates into the aesthetic of official communist art, social realism, and Breaking Taboos. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture515 Malcolm X BoulevardAfrican Americans and American Politics Before Barack Obama, there was Crispus Attucks, Frederick Douglass, the Massachusetts 54th Regiment, Mary McLeod Bethune, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. and a host of other heroes and sheroes of the African-American struggle for freedom and human dignity, fighting to make America and American Democracy real for all of its citizens. Like Attucks, people of African descent were there at the founding of the nation. And since Attucks, millions have fought, bled and died to help define, defend and protect the ideals of freedom, justice and equality embodied in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. African Americans and American Politics is a brief survey of that quest over the last 200+ years. Courage: The Black New York Struggle for Quality Education  This exhibition explores the visions and aspirations of courageous leaders and parents who have been seeking to educate black children. It looks at the obstacles black children have faced and the comparative nature of the learning environments and belated examples of educational success that have been established in New York City’s public school system. It also asks the enduring question of what kinds of educational policies, environments, and instructional programs black New Yorkers need in order to reach their fullest potential. Image: Rev. Milton Galamison, president of the Brooklyn NAACP, leads anti-school segregation rally in Brooklyn, ca. 1959. Photographer: Charles L. Gill. Photographs and Prints Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library. Courage: The Vision to End Segregation, the Guts to fight for It  Few Americans realize that the landmark Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education started in South Carolina, when a country preacher named Rev. J. A. De Laine and his neighbors in Clarendon County filed a lawsuit demanding the end of separate, unequal schools for their children. The Supreme Court’s declaration in 1954 that racially segregated public schools were unconstitutional initiated massive change in race relations across the country. This traveling exhibition, organized in 2004 by the Levine Museum of the New South to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, tells the story of that community—people outside the traditional power structure, without wealth and often with little classroom education—and how they worked together to begin the process that ended legal segregation of the races.
Image: Bar graph using books to show the inequity of dollars spent in white schools as opposed to black schools. Exhibition HoursStephen A. Schwarzman Building The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture Science, Industry and Business Library ToursStephen A. Schwarzman Building: 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. The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts: There are no tours offered at The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at the present time. The Library ShopsThe Library Shop at Schwarzman Building The Schomburg Shop InformationPublic Relations Office: 212.592.7700, fax:
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