*excerpt from A Great and Mighty Walk
100: A Century of Collections, Community, and Creativity will explore the Schomburg Center’s history through the prism of place, people, and material culture.
www.nypl.org
The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture will kick off its 100th anniversary on
May 8th, 2025.
With a
year-long celebration that includes a major exhibition, a summer festival, book giveaways, lively new programming, and a limited edition library card.
Exactly one hundred years ago on May 8, 1925, its forerunner—the Division of Negro Literature, History, and Prints at the 135th Street Branch Library—opened its doors at the height of the
Harlem Renaissance.
The exhibition
100: A Century of Collections, Community, and Creativity is one of the largest in the Center’s history, and will include feature iconic objects from its holdings including, Aaron Douglas’s murals “Aspects of Negro Life” and Pietro Calvi’s sculpture “Ira Aldridge as Othello,” manuscript pages from Maya Angelou and Malcolm X, the visitor book from the 1925 opening (signed by Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, and artist Augusta Savage) and collection items that exemplify the Schomburg’s legacy of librarianship from Romare Bearden, James Baldwin, James Van Der Zee and more. The exhibition is curated by Director Joy Bivins and Schomburg staff, with an audio guide narrated by actor, producer, author, and literacy champion LeVar Burton and Schomburg curators.
The exhibition’s opening will be an all-day celebration with fireside chats featuring former directors Howard Dodson, Kevin Young, and Khalil Gibran Muhammad with current director Joy Bivins, prolific writer and editor of Narrative Projects at New York Times Veronica Chambers, curator of the groundbreaking exhibition
The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism Denise Murell, PhD, and Pulitzer Prize winning author of
The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke, Dr. Jeffrey Stewart and an evening reception DJ’d by Stormin Norman.
Starting on the same day, patrons can take home their own piece of Black history with a special-edition library card depicting the Center’s cosmogram
Rivers. The card will be available at all NYPL branches while supplies last. Branches will also give away copies of the children’s book
Schomburg: The Man Who Built a Library, a picture book detailing Arturo Schomburg’s vision to create the archive that would found the Schomburg collection.