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The Grolier Club of New York

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The Grolier Club of New York

America's oldest & largest society for bibliophiles and enthusiasts in the graphic arts. (212) 838-6690, x7, [email protected].

Founded in 1884, the Grolier Club of New York is America’s oldest and largest society for bibliophiles and enthusiasts in the graphic arts. Named for Jean Grolier (1489 or 90-1565), the Renaissance collector renowned for sharing his library with friends, the Club’s objective is to foster “the study, collecting, and appreciation of books and works on paper.” The Club maintains a research library on

printing and related book arts, and its programs include public exhibitions as well as a long and distinguished series of publications. As part of its mission to promote the art and history of the book, the Grolier Club regularly hosts the lectures and gatherings of other bookish organizations, and opens many of its own events to the public. No advance notice is required to view Grolier Club exhibitions; however, RSVPs and reservations for other events should be made through Maev Brennan, tel.

06/12/2026

This week, we highlight the collections of Kinohi Nishikawa and Nicholas Mignanelli.
Kinohi’s collection explores the Black Arts Movement (BAM), a cultural movement active from 1965 to 1975 that sought to create politically engaged, accessible art for Black audiences.
Nicholas, who is currently compiling a bibliography of Chancellor Kent’s Commentaries on American Law, focuses on early American legal literature and its history.

Visit New Members Collect 2026 Monday through Saturday, from 10:00am. to 5:00pm. Admission is free.

Find out more here: https://grolierclub.omeka.net/exhibits/show/new-members-collect-2026

Photo credits: Nicole Neenan
Slide 1:
Johari Amini (Jewel C. Latimore). A Folk Fabel (For My People). Chicago: Third World Press, 1969.
LeRoi Jones. Black Art. Newark: Jihad Productions, 1966.
Carolyn Thompson. Frank. Detroit: Broadside Press, 1970.

Slide 2:
James Gould. A Treatise on the Principles of Pleading, in Civil Actions. Boston: Lilly and Wait, 1832.
Tapping Reeve. The Law of Baron and Femme; Of Parent and Child; Of Guardian and Ward; Of Master and Servant; And of the Powers of Courts of Chancery. With an Essay on the Terms, Heir, Heirs, and Heirs of the Body. New Haven: Printed by Oliver Steele, 1816.
Ephraim Kirby. Reports of Cases Adjudged in the Superior Court of the State of Connecticut. From the Year 1785, to May, 1788; With Some Determinations in the Supreme Court of Errors. Litchfield: Printed by Collier & Adams, 1789.

06/10/2026

We’re continuing our celebration of Pride Month at the Grolier Club by highlighting Monroe Wheeler (1899-1988), a member from 1933 until his death. Wheeler joined the Club around the time he moved to New York City from Paris, where he had co-founded a small press, Harrison of Paris. He published thirteen limited editions with his business partner Barbara Harrison Wescott, the sister-in-law of Wheeler’s life partner Glenway Wescott. Wheeler donated seven of their publications to the Club Library in 1977, including two works by Glenway Wescott. The Harrison of Paris imprint quietly closed after the three Americans moved to New York, but it prepared Wheeler to run MoMA’s publications department from 1940-1967 and to steer The Grolier Club Publications Committee as its longest-serving chair from 1947-1962. At the start of this new chapter in his career, Wheeler’s friend Paul Cadmus painted a group portrait of him, Glenway Wescott, and their third partner, the photographer George Platt Lynes, musing over magazines at the Wescotts’ New Jersey country house, Stone Blossom: A Conversation Piece (1939-1940, Boston MFA, 2010.753). We like to think the Harrison of Paris publications, several designed by Wheeler, offer a different kind of portrait, where his taste, bibliophilic spirit, and relationships also shine through.

06/05/2026

Join us next Thursday, June 11, for an evening discussing LGBTQ+ in Print!

How have members of the LGBTQ+ community, throughout centuries, left record on the printed or handwritten page, or glaring absences? Where do we look today for their traces, and what are best practices for interpretation? A panel of experts including Charlotte Priddle, Director of NYU Special Collections; librarian/book dealer/scholar Gwendolyn Reese; Dr. Miranda Garno Rossa, proprietor of Marginalia Rare Books in California; and Elyssa Maxx Goodman, author of Glitter and Concrete: A Cultural History of Drag in New York City (and a contributor to including The New York Times, Vogue, and Vanity Fair) will explore how they identify, place, and preserve the physical materials that foster research and publications in this realm.
The program will be moderated by Chris Hammer, Grolier Club member, historian, archivist, and scholar of 1950s-'90s q***r literature.

Register at grolierclub.org

06/04/2026

New Members Collect 2026 is now open in our Second Floor Gallery! Drawn from the collections of 17 Grolier Club members, this exhibition explores the theme of “Networks,” bringing together works that once rested on fantasy writers’ desks, traveled aboard polar exploration ships, circulated through de-extinction startup offices, or still bear traces of literal toxicity.

Each week, we’ll feature collector’s notes from each of our contributing members that offer insight into their collecting origin stories and continued motivations today.
This week, we’re featuring items from Jonah Rosenberg. Slide through to learn more about Jonah's interests.

"My book collecting is magpie-ish, a quilt of scraps rather than a finely-woven cloth. The two parallel columns — cookery and Classics — really have very little to do with one another (though their rare overlap, viz. Apicius, whose best manuscript at the New York Academy of Medicine I’d be keen to acquire if they ever sold it, is perhaps most appealing). I am a recovering Classicist and an active cook, but my collecting is split more evenly than that would indicate."

To get the full story, visit New Members Collect in person Monday-Saturday, 10am-5pm, or visit us online at our link in bio.

Photography by Nicole Neenan.

06/02/2026

The Grolier Club Library is celebrating the beginning of Pride Month by highlighting one of the very first q***r bibliographies: Pierre Gustave Brunet's 1861 "Dissertation sur l’Alcibiade, Fanciullo a Scola...accompagnée de Notes et d’une Postface." This bibliography began as Brunet’s translation of a scarce Italian pamphlet disputing the authorship of "Alcibiades the Schoolboy," a fictionalized defense of homosexuality in the style of a Socratic dialogue, first published in Venice in 1651. Brunet's translation becomes the springboard for his own thorough bibliographical research, beginning with the two known surviving editions of the "Alcibiade," the value of these copies on the market, and their recorded owners past and present. He appends what he describes as a study of “writings in the nature of the Alcibiades”, effectively his research on the history of homosexuality in print and manuscript. He closes with a bibliography of works about so**my printed between 1574 to 1841, with supplemental notes about works dealing with its persecution.

Brunet's publisher. Jules Gay, would go on to issue his own edition of the "Alcibiade" the following year. Brunet, who hid under the pseudonym "a French bibliophile" was perhaps wise to do so, as Gay's edition would be condemned by the Parisian government.

05/31/2026

Join The Grolier Club and the Irish Arts Center for a special Bloomsday, June 16th, evening of traditional Irish music, featuring Cashel Blake Day-Lewis on fiddle, Ursula Garry on flute, Matt Stapleton on guitar, and Isaac Alderson on the uilleann pipes.

This event is available for online attendance only. Register via the link in our bio to receive the livestream access. See our Eventbrite for details about all events in the Risings Festival: https://www.eventbrite.com/cc/risings-4835183

Visit “Risings” Monday-Saturday, 10am-5pm, or visit online: https://grolierclub.omeka.net/exhibits/show/risings

05/28/2026

Q: What new observations might you hope visitors come to after seeing the show?

“The Irish Literary Revival came to the fore starting in the 1880s and 1890s following a period of failed political activism. It is fair to say that it provided the cultural confidence which led to a renewed effort to achieve independence. The violence that was part of that effort could never been imagined by likes of Yeats and Lady Gregory, however. Coming to terms with that violence became part of the project of Irish literature in the latter part of our exhibit.” - Alan Klein

In this photograph, Countess Markievicz appears in an Irish Citizen Army uniform, a handgun in her holster, in conversation with rebel Cathal O’Shannon at O’Donovan Rossa’s funeral, an event that helped spark the Easter Rising. An expert marksman, she served as an active combatant in the Rising and was sentenced to death with other leaders. When the British later commuted her sentence to life imprisonment because they feared the repercussions from executing a woman, she said, “I do wish your lot had the decency to shoot me.”

Visit “Risings” Monday-Saturday, 10am-5pm, or visit online: https://grolierclub.omeka.net/exhibits/show/risings

Image Credit:
Countess Constance Markievicz. Vintage photograph, 1915. Courtesy of the Risings co-curators.

05/27/2026

Join us Tuesday, June 9, at The Grolier Club for a preview of "Barry Moser, Bookwright - Exorcising Demons," following by a Q&A with Director Ralph Hammann.

With his work held in 150 museums worldwide, Barry Moser stands among the greatest illustrators and wood engravers of our time. 'Exorcising Demons' delves into the forces of Good and Evil that have haunted and driven his life and art—from his beginnings in the South to his journey north. Packed with his remarkable engravings, the film is a feast for the eyes and mind. Equally captivating are its unfiltered, intimate visits with Moser, whom Image Journal calls “the most honest-to-God God-haunted soul we’ve seen in a long time.”

Register to attend via Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/preview-screening-barry-moser-bookwright-exorcising-demons-tickets-1988111810945?aff=oddtdtcreator&keep_tld=true

05/26/2026

Lewis H. Michaux (1885/95-1976) founded and ran the African National Memorial Bookstore in Harlem from 1939-1975. The store cultivated Black empowerment and literary community through books written by, about, and for Black people. The great collector Charles L. Blockson wrote about getting books inscribed by two of his literary heroes – Joel A. Rogers and Langston Hughs – during one visit to “the Harlem sage and paterfamilias of bookdealers.” Fifty years ago last week, The First Annual Lewis H. Michaux Book Fair extended the store’s mission after it closed. It ran for six years under the sponsorship of the Studio Museum in Harlem. In its first year, held 21-22 May 1976, Michaux himself exhibited from his collection of rare books, manuscripts, letters, and portraits of Black literary figures. The photograph of Michaux on the fair poster shows him sitting in a corner of his tightly packed store, a snapshot of the cultural center he curated in Harlem for nearly four decades.

05/21/2026

Q: What is your favorite item or anecdote on view in the exhibition?

"There are newspaper clippings documenting the executions following the Rising and the imprisonment of hundreds and hundreds of Irish nationalists, handwritten lyrics of protest songs and multiple poems about the Rising titled ‘Easter, 1916,’ clipped from newspapers or written out. Page after page have been filled by someone who was totally invested in the tragedy that had just occurred.” - Alan Klein

“Both brash and insecure, Joyce writes at age 19 to ask Lady Gregory for help leaving Ireland. The forces of Ireland are driving him away from his native land, he writes, ‘yet I know no man yet with a faith like mine.’ Lady Gregory, ever supportive, loaned him money and gave him contacts to meet.” - Sandy Neubauer

Visit "Risings" Monday - Saturday, through July 25, or visit online: https://grolierclub.omeka.net/exhibits/show/risings

[1] Scrapbook of the Easter Rising. Prepared 1916
[2] Autograph letter signed by James Joyce to Lady Gregory [November 22, 1902]
Courtesy of the Risings co-curators.

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Monday	10am - 4pm
Tuesday	10am - 4pm
Wednesday	10am - 4pm
Thursday	10am - 4pm
Friday	10am - 4pm
Saturday	10am - 5pm

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http://www.grolierclub.org/

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