I’ve been meaning to visit NYPL ever since I read about the
Polonsky Exhibition a while back.
https://www.nypl.org/spotlight/treasures
It’s an incredibly eclectic collection ranging from a Gutenberg Bible – one of 21 surviving copies – (the Morgan Library actually has three – making it the only institution in the world with multiple copies.)
- to a page from Jerome Robbins’s trip diaries.
A fan favorite is the Winnie-the-Poo collection that once
belonged to Christopher Robin Milne.
Last April, Queen Camilla gifted the library with a bespoke replica of “Roo,”
which had been lost since 1930. It’s the
really small one on the bottom left - easily lost because of its size I would
imagine.
The supersized “Birds of America” from 1827, features
Audubon’s illustrations of 435 birds, 25 of which were previously undocumented,
and six that are now extinct.
Not surprisingly this extremely large woodcut by Albrecht
Durer is one of the largest prints ever made. It was commissioned by Emperor
Maximilian in 1517 to be pasted on the walls of city halls or palaces of
princes. This copy is from the third
edition printed in 1799.
Charles Dicken’s desk and chair (1859/70) from his office,
and later moved to his home, may have been where he wrote some chapters of
“Great Expectations.”
But what finally drew me to the library was a special display
of a Jefferson copy of the Declaration of Independence. It’s not the original manuscript with the
edits made by the Continental Congress’s – that one is in the Library of
Congress.
This hand written copy is one of the five to seven fair copies (only two exist today) that Jefferson made in which he included and underlined the passages that had been removed – a director’s cut! You've got to love that.
Finally, it’s worth
mentioning that on the first 100 degree day that NYC has had in 14 years (the last one was July
18, 2012) the library was blissfully cool. And definitely worth a visit.
Here are some other NYC museum exhibits – the Jerome Robbins
one includes more of his diary pages 😊
https://pj-studio.blogspot.com/2019/04/jerome-robbins.html
https://pj-studio.blogspot.com/2019/06/mucha-at-poster-house.html
https://pj-studio.blogspot.com/2019/07/mucha.html
Cheers!
PJ
© 2026 PJ Lehrer
