Upcoming Exhibitions at The Research LibrariesCurrent | Upcoming | Past | Online | Exhibition Hours | Calendar Search Be sure to check exhibition hours and library hours and holidays for important information. View Upcoming Exhibitions at:
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. "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. 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. 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 |