“A Century of The New Yorker”: The NYPL’s Love Letter to the Magazine

When you walk inside the New York Public Library’s (NYPL) flagship building at 476 Fifth Avenue, you’ll be greeted with soaring ceilings and the elaborate, Beaux-Arts plasterwork that gives the library its distinctively old-world feel. When you reach the second floor, however, you’ll step into an entirely different world. On both sides of the library’s famed Rose Reading Room, the Rayner Special Collections Wing and Print Gallery have been transformed into elegant, stylish hallways, in the style of The New Yorker, in honor of the magazine’s 100th anniversary. “A Century of The New Yorker” opened on February 22, 2025, and will run until February 21, 2026. Through letters, illustrations, drafts, and articles from the magazine’s archives, the NYPL has designed the perfect homage to The New Yorker that transports viewers through a century’s worth of history in a fresh, stylized fashion, similar to that of the magazine itself.

The exhibit was curated by Julie Golia, associate director of the Rayner Wing and senior curator of manuscripts, and Julie Carlsen, assistant curator of the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection, along with the help of current New Yorker editor David Remnick. “A Century of The New Yorker” is split chronologically into six sections: “Beginnings,” “Anatomy of a Magazine,” “The New Yorker Makes Its Mark,” “The Story of the Century,” “A New Era,” and “The 21st Century New Yorker.” Each gallery tells the story of a different era of The New Yorker and takes the viewer through the trials and tribulations of that period.

As the title suggests, in “Beginnings,” the curators lay out the original concept of The New Yorker. As the brainchild of journalists Harold Ross and Jane Grant, the magazine was meant to be more than just a publication; it was a modern, urban weekly that catered to witty and cultured New Yorkers. The couple started developing the magazine in 1924 and first published it on February 21, 1925. Displayed in this gallery is a mission statement for the New Yorker from 1924: “The New Yorker will be a reflection in word and picture of metropolitan life,” Harold Ross writes. “It will be human.” 

 The frenzied, ambitious feel of the early The New Yorker is perfectly captured in “Beginnings.” Included in this section is a sketch of the Algonquin Round Table, a group of famous writers, critics, and other artists who were involved with the magazine. A list of possible writers is also available to view; names have been crossed out and scribbled in all over the page. As a more whimsical touch, the exhibit also includes quizzes from some of the earliest issues: a draft for “Are You a New Yorker?,” a quiz for the March 12, 1926 issue, is featured with extensive markings from the editors covering half the page. The effort that went into deciding what kind of publication The New Yorker was going to be is palpable in this selection of artifacts.

“Anatomy of a Magazine” provides insight into the editing and publishing process of the magazine and presents the early stages of The New Yorker’s most easily recognizable trademarks. Drafts of illustrations and articles at different stages line the walls, showing how edits were implemented into each issue. Notably, Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood is showcased here; the four-part serial, which shot Capote to fame, ran in The New Yorker in the fall of 1965. Revisions from editors adorn the draft, with entire paragraphs crossed out and seemingly random numbers and acronyms scattered across the pages. The work of the magazine’s fact-checking department is also shown here: a banner that paraphrases Cicero, reading, “Non omnis error stultana est dicendus” (“Not every error is folly”), is pinned to a wall. “Anatomy of a Magazine” lets viewers examine the everyday workings of the magazine, and the iconic typeface and clever illustrations present capture the zeitgeist that The New Yorker was becoming a part of in the mid-twentieth century. 

“The New Yorker Makes Its Mark” explores how The New Yorker approached politics and other challenges during the Second World War. The magazine was one of the first to defame Hitler’s policies and the resulting rise of anti-semitism across Europe. 1942’s Halloween publication cover, a depiction of Hitler as the Wicked Witch of the West drawn by Rea Irvin, an indispensable artist for The New Yorker, is displayed in this gallery. John Hersey’s 1946 essay “Hiroshima,” a narrative and investigative piece on the United States bombing of Hiroshima and a contemplation of the Atomic Age as a whole, is also viewable in this section. Important cultural phenomena were also intertwined with The New Yorker, and many are displayed in “The New Yorker Makes Its Mark.” Drafted sketches of Charles Addams’s The Addams Family, dating back to 1938, are featured here, as well as drafts of many of Vladimir Nabokov’s short stories. “The New Yorker Makes Its Mark” plainly shows the lasting cultural effect the magazine maintains to this day and successfully presents its early political relevance.

“The Story of the Century” gallery serves to show viewers the transition of The New Yorker as a publication from leadership under Ross, who died in 1951, to Shawn. Nonfiction articles line the walls here; Shawn focused more on societal issues such as war, racism, and pollution than his predecessor. Silent Spring, a book by marine biologist Rachel Carson about the environmental effects of the pesticide DDT, was serialized in The New Yorker in 1962 and is available to view in this gallery. Hannah Arendt’s 1961 draft of “Eichmann in Jerusalem,” which condemned the actions of Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi officer responsible for organizing trains that brought Jews to death camps, is also presented in this gallery, alongside the planned dates for its serialized run in the magazine.

Despite this, racism was still a relatively unexplored topic for the magazine until the late 1950s. When Ann Petry’s 1958 short story “Has Anybody Seen Miss Dora Dean?” was printed in The New Yorker, she was one of the first Black authors to be published by the magazine. The short story, which explored class and identity, is exhibited in this gallery alongside James Baldwin’s “Letter from a Region in My Mind,” which was published in the magazine in 1962 and shocked the magazine’s primarily white readership. Following these publications, it still took years before The New Yorker’s staffing was less homogeneous. However, Baldwin’s letter served as a turning point for the magazine. The overall effect of “The Story of the Century” is that of change; it shows the viewer how the magazine combated injustice and introduced its readership to new ideas.

 “A New Era,” which mainly focuses on The New Yorker of the 1970s through the 1990s, displays artifacts that tell the story of the change in leadership throughout these two decades. Under Shawn, the magazine had become an institution, but it was stagnant; it needed new blood. Under Tina Brown’s leadership, the magazine was both modernized and revolutionized. Many of Brown’s letters and memos are on display here, as well as her Rolodex, which includes the numbers of notable contacts such as The Beastie Boys. This exhibit also reflects the golden age of poetry at The New Yorker. Howard Moss, the poetry editor for the magazine for over 40 years, had many portraits of poets he admired in his office, which are framed on the walls of this gallery. “A New Era” exemplifies how The New Yorker stretched the boundaries of what it could do as a publication and became an even more versatile magazine.

The exhibit shifts into modern day in “The 21st Century New Yorker,” showcasing the effects of the internet on the magazine. The most recent drafts are no longer covered in pencil marks; the viewer can assume that changes have been made through a computerized process. The New Yorker’s contribution to current-day events is also spotlighted here. Ronan Farrow’s investigative piece on Harvey Weinstein’s history of sexual misconduct, which was published on The New Yorker website on October 10, 2017—only five days after The New York Times journalists first reported it—is on display. Many of Jhumpa Lahiri’s short stories are also exhibited in this gallery, including the recent “P’s Parties,” which was translated from Italian to English for 2023’s special fiction edition of The New Yorker. An advertisement for The New Yorker Festival in 2001 boasts the same attention to detail and flair as the magazine’s covers and is hung on a wall in this gallery. The New Yorker Festival was, and continues to be, a celebration of the magazine’s rich history and an extension of that of New York as a whole. 

When you walk out of “A Century of The New Yorker,” you’ll leave feeling like you’ve been inducted into the secret workings of the magazine. The exhibition’s focus on the editorial processes of The New Yorker and the inclusion of cultural artifacts that viewers will immediately recognize creates a sense of awe as well as pride. A magazine for New Yorkers, The New Yorker’s history is undoubtedly intertwined with that of the city, something that is abundantly clear in the exhibit. “A Century of The New Yorker” is an elegant, interesting compilation of objects which tell the story of the magazine as one of endurance and expression: although The New Yorker has evolved over the century, the exhibit reminds the viewer that the magazine’s original goal to be an influential and unique publication has never strayed from its pages.