Rare Book Week New York Preview Part II

This is the second of our two-part, shorter-than-usual Rare Book Week preview; part I covered book fairs, part II covers auctions and exhibitions.

Because the NYIABF was moved to April this year to work around lingering pandemic logistics, the related auction schedule is leaner, with one notable exception: On April 26, Sotheby’s in New York will sell books and manuscripts from the collection of Jay I. Kislak. Sold to Benefit the Kislak Family Foundation, the selection will include a magnificent set of the Great and Small Voyages collected and published by the De Bry family; an octavo set of Audubon and Bachman’s Quadrupeds in the original parts; the 1566 second edition of Copernicus’s De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium, annotated by two early Copernican scholars; the Frank Streeter copy of J. F. W. De Barres’s Atlantic Neptune; William Bourne’s A Regiment for the Sea; Richard Eden’s The Arte of Navigation; and Daniel Giraud Elliot’s Monograph of the Felidae or Family of Cats. Preview open from April 20-25, sale commences at 10 a.m. on April 26.

Christie’s is holding an online auction, April 11-25, with Selections from Maurice Sendak's Personal Collection sold to Benefit the Rosenbach. Details here.

There are, however, several exhibitions to take in if you’re in town, including:

• The New York Public Library’s new ‘Treasures’ exhibit. You can read a little about it here, and more about it in our spring quarterly.
• The New York Society Library’s Black Literature Matters. We covered it briefly here, but our spring issue contains an in-depth piece by the curator, Columbia University professor Farah Jasmine Griffin.
• The Morgan Library & Museum has several shows on view, as usual. Of particular interest to bibliophiles is Gwendolyn Brooks: A Poet’s Work in Community.  
• At the Grolier Club on the second floor, check out Photographs at the Edge: Vittorio Sella and Wilfred Thesiger from the Collection of Dr. Roger Härtl.
• There’s much to see at the New-York Historical Society, perhaps especially the newly opened Picture the Dream: The Story of the Civil Rights Movement Through Children’s Books. (When this exhibition debuted in Atlanta, a special reviewer gave us her take.)
• The Center for Book Arts debuts four new shows on April 21, including Beyond Codex: Living Archives, which envisions archiving as a method to reimagine the potential of publishing.