Grolier Club Announces 2026-2027 Exhibition Schedule

Papermaking, the Quantum Revolution, and the story of Black people in America are among the highlights of the Grolier Club's upcoming exhibitions for the rest of this year and into 2027.

Opening September 8 and running through November 28, Pioneers in Hand Papermaking: 50 Years of Innovation at Dieu Donné will look at contemporary American hand papermaking and the 50th anniversary of the Dieu Donné Papermill in New York. It will feature more than 110 works from the collections of Susan Gosin and the Dieu Donné Archive & Collection, alongside papermaking tools and materials. Pioneers represents the 1,000th exhibition presented at The Grolier Club.

An exhibition of approximately 90 books and printed works that tell the story of Black people in America, Black Brilliance: An American Chronicle (December 3 - February 20, 2027) will include numerous first editions and inscribed copies from early writings by free Black people through the Black Arts Movement and beyond. Those on view will explore personal narratives of enslavement, the struggle for freedom, poetry, and history. 

Highlights include the Memoir of Phillis Wheatley (1834), Frederick Douglass’s three 19th century autobiographies, The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. DuBois (1903), Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison (1952), Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, (1959), and The Autobiography of Malcolm X as told to Alex Haley (1965).

Uncertainty and the Quantum Revolution (December 16 – March 13, 2027) celebrates the 100th anniversary of quantum mechanics, with 137 items from the collection of Grolier Club member Derek Kaufman. This exhibition will draw on landmark books, autograph manuscripts, and inscribed offprints exchanged among collaborators and rivals. Highlights include the first printed edition of Euclid (1482), a presentation copy of Isaac Newton’s Opticks (1704), Albert Einstein’s autographed equation E=mc² (1921), the 1927 publication by Werner Heisenberg announcing his “uncertainty principle”, and a letter in which young Manhattan Project scientist Richard Feynman describes watching the first successful atomic bomb test.

Other exhibitions include:

• Henry Wessel - Photographs and Books (September 8 - November 14) curated by Grolier Club member Jack Gray from his collection, including more than 65 photographs including Wessel’s full Incidents and Traffic portfolios
• Crossing Boundaries: Women Traveling, Writing, and Collecting in South and Southeast Asia, 1715–1945 (March 4, 2027 – May 15, 2027) curated by Grolier Club member Nancy K. Boehm featuring Fanny Parks’ lavishly illustrated memoir Wanderings of a Pilgrim, in Search of the Picturesque (1850), unpublished journals by French salon artist Marguerite Geraud who accompanied her husband to Cochinchina and Polynesia, and the original typescript of Emily Metcalfe Bayley’s memoir
• Rivers of Free Thought: 2,000 Years of Wonder from the Embassy of the Free Mind (March 31, 2027 – July 3, 2027) from the collection of former Grolier Club member J R Ritman (1941-2026) detailing philosophical milestones such as the first translation of Egyptian sage Hermes Trismegistus into Latin and the works of Giordano Bruno