Summer at the Library: For Adults

Join us for free events at The New York Public Library’s premier cultural series. Enjoy free events, conversations, and performances featuring the best writers, artists, and thinkers—as well as our rooftop happy hours! 

One day, five boroughs—join us for Dance Party NYC, a joyous citywide festival of music and movement! Part of Summer at the Library, Dance Party NYC will take place on August 5, 2023, at more than 20 venues across the city, including events at many library branches and at the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building.

This summer, NYPL has teamed up with The Public Theater to distribute tickets to free Shakespeare in the Park performances of Hamlet. Ticket vouchers distributed at library branches are redeemable only for same-day performances. Find out when and where you can get yours!

Image: James Earl Jones in Hamlet (1972), Photo by Friedman-Abeles © Billy Rose Theatre Division

Join the Library for artistic workshops with teaching artists from Roundabout Theatre Company designed to spark your creative process! Through theater games, improv, writing, and more, participants will dive into ensemble building and create their own original piece of theater.

Celebrate the natural world in NYC with the Library's free Creative Green programs. From landscape painting to birdwatching, cyanotype prints to book discussions, and seed libraries to plant swaps, there are countless ways to get thinking about the environment.

Through Aug 5 | Stephen A. Schwarzman Building

Featuring correspondence, maps, and objects from the famed naturalist’s world, this exhibition offers an intimate view of Charles Darwin, whose ideas and indefatigable research launched a scientific revolution. Presented in partnership with Cambridge University Library.

Through Aug 19 | Library for the Performing Arts

Join The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts in celebrating the long and colorful career of costume designer Willa Kim in her first-ever major retrospective exhibition, featuring an assortment of designs and costumes from her long and prolific career.

Through Dec 4 | Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture

Documenting the work of more than 30 artists, including people in prisons, formerly incarcerated artists, and work by nonincarcerated artists concerned with state repression, erasure, and imprisonment, this traveling exhibition is now on view throughout the Schomburg Center.

Stephen A. Schwarzman Building

Explore a wide array of highlights from NYPL’s collections in this free, permanent exhibition, which showcases some of the most extraordinary items from the 56 million in our collections.

Opening June 8 | Library for the Performing Arts

The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center celebrates the fundamental contributions of immigrant and BIPOC dancers to the canon of modern art in a new large-scale exhibition.

The Library offers free major exhibitions and special displays at the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, the Library for the Performing Arts, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, plus community showcases at many branch locations throughout the Bronx, Manhattan, and Staten Island.

Download SimplyE, the Library's free e-reader app, which makes it easy to borrow e-books and audiobooks from a catalog of more than 300,000 titles.

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