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On View

Panmodern! The Mark Bloch / Postal Art Network Archive

September 17 – January 28, 2025
Bobst Library, 2nd Floor
Special Collections Center Gallery

Panmodern!, an exhibition of artifacts from the Mark Bloch/Postal Art Network Archive, explores analog networks of communication, the distribution of art through international postal systems, and mail art as a precursor to present-day social networking. Curated by the artist, the exhibition will showcase examples of original mail art sent to Mark Bloch in New York City from all over the world in the form of objects, envelopes, publications, and postcards documenting avant-garde cultural activities from 1977-2020. Learn more about Panmodern!

Rule No. 5

February 27, 2023 - Ongoing
Bobst Library, 4th and 8th Floors

“A library is a growing organism,” reads the fifth “rule” of library science as penned in 1931 by S.R. Ranganathan, widely considered to be the father of library science. In a world where “library” and “book” have taken on vast new meanings it’s the last of Ranganathan’s five guiding principles that prompts us to continuously respond to our environment and deeply interrogate the ways we curate, collect, organize, and preserve information for generations to come.

Created by Amanda Belantara & A.M. Alpin, Rule No. 5 is a collaboratively-created work that centers the voices of library workers as they reveal to listeners the magical, mysterious, complicated, and controversial world of libraries. Through six interactive sculptures, Rule No. 5 examines practices and objects that shape how we can search, who we will find, and what we remember. This interactive audio experience invites participants to open doors and drawers, plug in, and push buttons to explore and contemplate what it means to collect the world’s knowledge, preserve the past, and shape the future. Learn more about the Rule No. 5 installation.

RETU(R)NINGS

2019 - Ongoing
Bobst Library, 1st Floor
Atrium

This site-specific, sound-art installation debuted in late 2019 and has been re-launched in the Bobst Library. Composed by Elizabeth Hoffman, the installation drew upon entry data from Bobst turnstiles—anonymized records of the number of persons who entered Bobst each hour on selected dates coinciding with the four lunar quarters of each month. Learn more about the RETU(R)NINGS sound-art installation.

No Turning Back: Ten Years After Occupy

September 17, 2021 - Ongoing
Online Exhibition

This exhibition is organized around Occupy Wall Street’s Declaration of the Occupation of New York City and thirteen exhibition themes, both of which point to central issues within the movement. While the Declaration was drafted by the Call to Action Working Group and ratified by the New York City General Assembly (NYCGA) on September 29, 2011, the themes were identified, authored, and presented by the curators of this exhibit.

Recent Exhibition History

Enabling Artistries: Displays of 19th-Century Creativity, Disability, and Freedom

October 15 – December 15, 2024 Bobst Library, 1st Floor Mamdouha Bobst Gallery

Enabling Artistries: Displays of 19th Century Creativity, Disability, and Freedom showcased the extraordinary works of 19th-century visual and performance artists working primarily with silhouettes and navigating boundaries of creativity and achievement as persons with unique status and ability in U.S. culture. Focusing on artwork by Martha Ann Honeywell, Sarah Rogers, Saunders Ken Grems Nellis, and Moses Williams, Enabling Artistries highlighted how artistic practice and expression serve as gateways to personal autonomy and freedom.

Curated by Tisch School of the Arts Professor Marianne R. Petit and Laurel Daen, Assistant Professor of American Studies at University of Notre Dame, with NYU Libraries co-curators Roxane Pickens and Elizabeth Verrelli, this show was based on Mouth & Toes: The World of 19th-Century Silhouette Artists with Disabilities, a collection of moving panoramas, printed scrolls, and handheld flip books as well as an eBook and virtual exhibition, created by Petit and Daen. In addition to the nineteenth-century reproductions, Petit’s artworks, and Daen and Petit’s book, the show at Bobst Gallery featured items from the private collection of NYU Associate Vice President for Global Programs William R. Pruitt III and tactile interpretations by artist Stefanie Koseff.

Reading from Left to Left: Radical Bookstores in NYC, 1930-2000s

April 8 - July 31, 2024
Bobst Library, 2nd Floor
Fales Special Collections Gallery

Radical bookstores are counterspaces and convergence spaces that inform social movement across the city. More than just sites of political participation and exchange, radical bookstores in New York City serve as critical infrastructure within New York City’s activist landscape. Come learn about the history of radical bookstores in New York City–from Communist bookstores, to anarchist bookstores, Black bookstores, and more. Curated by Shannon O’Neill, Reading from Left to Left: Radical Bookstores in NYC, 1930-2000s was on view April 8th-July 31st, 2024, in the Fales Special Collections Gallery, Bobst Library, 2nd floor.

Memory in Cloth: Safety and Solidarity for New York City Garment Workers

October 11 - November 17, 2023
Bobst Library, 2nd Floor

The Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, NYU Special Collections, in collaboration with LaborArts, launched a new pop-up exhibit in the Special Collections Center. The exhibit, Memory in Cloth: Safety and Solidarity for New York City Garment Workers, examines the historic fight for workplace safety, underscores the imperative of union organizing and solidarity, and it honors the creativity, memory, and collectivity of garment workers in New York City. In particular, the exhibit highlights the roles of immigrant workers in the labor struggle. The show is set in relation to the unveiling of the Triangle Fire Memorial.

*This Is Not A Drill*

September 20 - December 4, 2023
Bobst Library, 8th Floor
North Reading Room

This multimedia exhibition delivers artistic perspectives on the climate emergency, technology and equity. The exhibition features 10 projects—including film, performance art, sound art, and sculpture—from a dozen faculty, student, and community fellows, who examine the climate crisis from various academic lenses and artistic practices. [Learn more about *This Is Not A Drill*](https://tisch.nyu.edu/fif/current-projects/this-is-not-a-drill){: .external}.

LifeWork: The Kathe Burkhart Papers

September 19 - December 12, 2023
Bobst Library, 2nd Floor
Fales Special Collections Gallery

LifeWork: The Kathe Burkhart Papers, an exhibition of drawings, paintings, photographs, writing, video, and two site-specific installations from the noted feminist interdisciplinary artist.

Burkhart is an interdisciplinary feminist artist who is perhaps best known for her Liz Taylor Series of paintings. Described as both a conceptual and installation artist, Burkhart works in multiple media, and often combines painting, photography, video, poetry and collage.

The solo exhibition features archival material and new work—some of which has never been shown in public—from the artist who taught at NYU from 2000 to 2015. The university acquired Burkhart’s papers in 2016 as part of its Downtown Collection documenting the city’s vibrant arts scene from the 1970s to the early 1990s. Learn more about LifeWork: The Kathe Burkhart Papers.

Crafting Sustainable Futures: Collaborative Visions

March 21 - June 30, 2023
Bobst Library, 1st Floor
Mamdouha Bobst Gallery

Crafting Sustainable Futures: Collaborative Visions, is a show that creatively envisions a world that recognizes our shared responsibility for preserving the planet we all call home. This community showcase features artwork from NYU students, faculty, staff, and alumni that explores our interconnected existence and a positive ecological future. The artworks were inspired NYU Reads selections and This Is Not A Drill artworks, put in dialogue with topics of ecological sustainability, environmental justice, and the power of hope as we navigate the climate emergency.

The exhibition also features art by This Is Not A Drill (TINAD) 2022 Fellows Irene Mercadal, Richard Move, Pato Hebert, Tega Brain, and Karen Holmberg. Additionally, it shows new works coordinated by NYU’s Office of Sustainability, including “Stories of Climate Change” films and an installation by Graduate School of Arts and Science student Emma Bautista for the NYU 2040 Now initiative.

Sylvia & Sylvia: Black Women Behind the Music

September 8, 2021 – January 11, 2023
Bobst Library, 7th Floor
Avery Fisher Center for Music & Media

The Sylvia & Sylvia exhibition in our Avery Fisher Center for Music and Media pays homage to Sylvia Robinson and Sylvia Rhone—two women whose names are far less known than those of the artists they championed. Learn more about the Sylvia & Sylvia: Black Women Behind the Music exhibition.

Portable Devices, 1574–1998: Notebooks from the NYU Special Collections

April 12 – June 21, 2022
Bobst Library, 2nd Floor
Fales Special Collections Gallery

This exhibition explores ways in which people stored and managed information prior to the computer age. From the vellum-bound recipe book of a seventeenth-century English housewife to the pink notebook of a twentieth-century American diplomat, the examples display a variety of material forms and organizational schemes. Then as now, notebooks were a powerful device for learning, planning, negotiating, managing, cooking, and remembering. Learn more about Portable Devices.