Exhibitions
Plan Your Visit
- NYU community members and affiliates may visit exhibitions at Bobst Library during regular operating hours with a valid NYU Card or approved registration.
- Access to the Special Collections Gallery is by appointment.
- All other visits may be arranged by emailing the Library Engagement team at libraryengagement@nyu.edu.
As a part of NYU’s commitment to global inclusion, our exhibitions are open to individuals of all backgrounds and identities.
Upcoming Exhibitions
The River that Flows Both Ways
Permanent exhibition opening October 14, 2025
Bobst Library
10th Floor, North Reading RoomThe River That Flows Both Ways showcases a series of compelling and contemplative ceramic works by visual artist and NYU professor Jacqueline Bishop in her pursuit of commemorating the buried, interlinked histories of the Lenape lands on which most of NYU’s New York campus is located. Featuring archival collage digitally printed on six porcelain plates, The River That Flows Both Ways illuminates the early encounters of African enslaved laborers brought into Indigenous communities by European settlers during the 1600s. These complex interactions and intricate trade routes are juxtaposed with architectural landmarks alongside the flora and fauna native to New York.
Jacqueline Bishop is a Jamaican-born writer, visual artist, scholar, and Clinical Full Professor of Liberal Studies at NYU. Her art renders marginalized voices visible across the African diaspora, and spans mediums including porcelain, collage, painting, and textiles.
The Public’s Domain: Transforming Iconic Works of Fiction and Sound
October 22 - December 20, 2025
Bobst Library
1st Floor, Bobst GalleryGood artists copy, great artists wait for works to enter the public domain.
Every year, creative works that were previously protected by copyright law in the United States enter into the public domain, which allows artists to build upon, copy, and share the work for free. Curated by Giana Ricci, Librarian for the Fine Arts and Head of the Arts, Performance, and Humanistic Inquiry department at NYU Libraries, The Public’s Domain: Transforming Iconic Works of Fiction and Sound features artistic pieces that remix, reuse, adapt, and transform works of creative expression that entered the public domain in 2025.
Participating Artists: M’Kiyah Baird, Andrea Chen, Sophia Collender, Mae Hutchinson, Tess Rowan Jannery-Barney, Stephen Kaldon, Max Avi Kaplan, Michael Kelberman, Lindsay Liang, Seeha Park, Marie Mardorf, Uma Mawrie, Kylie Rah, Linda Smith, Amanda Levendowski Tepski, and Deena Zammam.
Bill Dixon Centennial Exhibition
Opening Fall 2025
Bobst Library
2nd Floor, Special Collections GalleryMarking the centennial of his birth, Working On & Out Things: Selections from the Bill Dixon Papers examines the archives of musician, visual artist, educator, and organizer Bill Dixon.
Dixon’s papers are a part of the Downtown Collection in NYU Special Collections, which aims to document the interdisciplinary, experimental and underground arts scenes of mid-to-late twentieth century New York City. The exhibition includes manuscripts, photographs, drawings, ephemera, audiovisual material, and more.
Selections from Bhumika Saraswati Popup Exhibition
Opening Fall 2025
Bobst Library
5th Floor, Engagement Area and Digital Display
Current Exhibitions
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.
Learn more about No Turning Back: Ten Years After Occupy.
Past Exhibitions
Bringing the Daily Worker to the World: Images from the Daily Worker and the Daily World Negatives Collection
July 29-September 12, 2025
Bobst Library
2nd Floor, Special Collections Gallery
Bringing the Daily Worker to the World highlights newly digitized images from the Daily Worker and the Daily World Negatives Collection. The Daily Worker and People’s World covered nearly every major story of the 20th century, speaking broadly to all aspects of the American Left. Worker and World photographers captured stories of labor, immigration, race, class, and political culture in the United States, including historic and watershed events. With support from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC), nearly 185,000 images from the Daily Worker and the Daily World Negatives Collection are now available digitally and publicly for the first time. Digitization of the images was largely performed by students working in the Digital Library Technology Services Lab. The exhibition features images chosen by the student employees themselves, alongside original creative works inspired by their labor on the project.
NYU Tandon’s Wunsch Building: Telling A Lost Story
January 27 - July 31, 2025
Bern Dibner Library
3rd Floor
Dibner’s Spring 2025 exhibit was curated by Tandon undergraduate Pranaya Raparla (’25). Pranaya’s exhibit explores the NYU Wunsch Building’s history from its origins as the AME Bridge Street Church and part of the Brooklyn abolitionist movement, to its renaming under Brooklyn Polytechnic and its integration into MetroTech Center. This research began as part of the Tandon Advanced Seminar, “Our Archives, Ourselves: Project-Based Research in the Poly Archives.” Pranaya transformed her final project for the course, an online exhibit, into a physical exhibit in the Dibner Library exhibit space.
Learn more about the Building: Telling A Lost Story online exhibit.
(Be)Forewords: Letterforms & Typography
April 1 - June 13, 2025
Bobst Library
2nd Floor, Special Collections Gallery
(Be)Forewords: Letterforms & Typography draws on materials from NYU Special Collections and focuses on the development of letterforms and typographic design over the centuries, encouraging a new awareness of the ways in which we see the written environments around us. This exhibition has been curated by Charlotte Priddle, Director of NYU Special Collections.
Cataloging Creativity
February 12 - May 30, 2025
Bobst Library
1st Floor, Bobst Gallery
Cataloging Creativity featured artists whose works engage with the unique design of Elmer Holmes Bobst Library and the Bobst Gallery specifically. The library, with its communities, collections, and spaces, serves as both a foundation for personal growth and a community hub for learning and connection. Curated by Silvia Abisaab, Undergraduate Administrator for the Department of Art and Art Professions at Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, the show featured selected work from students in the Steinhardt departments of Studio Art (BFA & MFA), Art Therapy (MA), and Tisch department of Digital Art & Design (BA Minor). Through drawing, painting, print, sculpture, and photography, this exhibition highlighted the library’s diverse and inclusive spaces and resources, demonstrating how the library fosters both individual and professional development while catalyzing creativity and intellectual exploration.
Visit the exhibition catalog for Cataloging Creativity.
Panmodern! The Mark Bloch / Postal Art Network Archive
September 17 – January 28, 2025
Bobst Library
2nd Floor, Special Collections 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.
Enabling Artistries: Displays of 19th-Century Creativity, Disability, and Freedom
October 15 – December 15, 2024
Bobst Library
1st Floor, 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.
We All Return To The Place That It Started
July 14 - August 9, 2023
Bobst Library
1st Floor, Bobst Gallery
We All Return To The Place That It Started featured the work of major and minor students in the Studio Art program in the Department of Art and Art Professions, Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, New York University. This group exhibition explored themes of memory, identity, personal narratives, and cultural histories. It featured a selection of works that include drawing, painting, photography, sculpture, installation, and a range of visual languages and approaches that offer a diverse and thought-provoking connection to representation and experience.
Explore the exhibition catalog for We All Return To The Place That It Started.
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, and explore the exhibition catalog for This Is Not A Drill.
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, 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.