“A Century of The New Yorker” exhibition will open at The New York Public Library on February 22, 2025, City Life Org reported. The exhibition “showcases the historic transformations” of one of America’s iconic and most distinguished magazines.

Displays will include founding documents, rare manuscripts, photos, cover and cartoon art, and artifacts on loan from other institutions–all intended to take visitors “behind the scenes of the making of one of the United States’s most important magazines,” according to City Life Org.

The New Yorker transferred its extensive archive and records to The New York Public Library in 1991. That archive—2,500 boxes (1058 linear feet)—is one of the Library’s largest collections.

Highlights from the exhibition include:

• The prospectus for The New Yorker (1924)
• Original artwork for the first issue of The New Yorker by Rea Irvin (1925)
• W.H. Auden’s handwritten draft of “Refugee Blues” (1939)
• John Updike’s handwritten assignments for Talk of the Town (1940s)
• Original signed art by Helen Hokinson (1941)
• The New Yorker type identification and style guide (1981)
• Correspondence between William Shawn and John Hersey related to “Hiroshima” (1946)
• The typescript draft of “In Cold Blood” by Truman Capote, with revisions and deletions by William Shawn (1965)
• Hannah Arendt’s original typescript manuscript of “Eichmann in Jerusalem” (1963)
• Cynthia Ozick, “The Fallibility Rag,” poem dedicated to New Yorker grammarian Eleanor Gould (1987)
• A mock-up of the first New Yorker website and other 21st-century artifacts
• Original film featuring current and recent writers, editors, and staff exploring the history, legacy, and future of The New Yorker.

Members of the John Updike and Philip Roth societies who attend the joint conference in New York City in October 19-22, 2025 will have time to head to Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street to explore the library and the exhibition.