Grolier Club Announces Declan Kiely as Executive Director

Declan Kiely will be the new Executive Director of the Grolier Club, leading America’s oldest and largest society for bibliophiles and enthusiasts in the graphic arts. He will assume the role on July 22.

“Declan is committed to honoring the Grolier Club’s monumental legacy and will help to carry forward our vision,” said Nancy K. Boehm, President of the Grolier Club. “In our global search, we were thrilled to find such a remarkable candidate, with deep scholarly knowledge and expertise, who also knows the Club on a personal level.”

Kiely was selected after a seven-month search by a committee led by Boehm and the Grolier Club’s Board of Directors.

“The Grolier Club’s far-reaching exhibitions, publications, programs, and world-class library have deeply informed my work as a library professional,” said Kiely. “I look forward to working with the Club’s highly talented and committed staff and its remarkable Council to extend public engagement. I am committed to upholding and enhancing the Club’s rich heritage as a public educational institution while looking firmly toward future possibilities and the Club’s approaching sesquicentennial in 2034.”

Prior to joining the Grolier Club, Kiely served as The New York Public Library’s Director of Special Collections and Exhibitions 2017-2024. Previously, he was the Robert H. Taylor Curator and Head of the Department of Literary and Historical Manuscripts at the Morgan Library & Museum 2007-2017, and served as a Specialist in the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature at The New York Public Library 2003-2007.
 
At The New York Public Library, Kiely launched the Library’s first-ever permanent exhibition, The Polonsky Exhibition of the New York Public Library’s Treasures, and in 2019 co-curated the exhibition J.D. Salinger with the author’s son. He also oversaw extraordinary growth of the Library’s archival collections, including the acquisition of the papers of Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne; the archives of Renate Adler, Vivian Gornick, and Lucy Sante, as well as notable acquisitions of photography, rare books, manuscripts, letters, and realia.
 
While at the Morgan Library & Museum, Kiely organized major exhibitions on Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Ernest Hemingway, Henry James, Abraham Lincoln, Edgar Allan Poe, and Mark Twain. His 2015 exhibition Ernest Hemingway: Between Two Wars traveled to the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston, and Henry James and American Art (co-curated with Irish novelist Colm Tóibín in 2017) was also shown at Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.