Holiday Displays at the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building

This holiday season, The New York Public Library invites visitors to experience two special displays from our collections: From Hand to Hand: Holiday Greeting Cards from NYPL's Picture Collection and A Dickens Christmas. Both displays are on view in the McGraw Rotunda on the Third Floor of the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building from December 5, 2024, to January 5, 2025.

Plus! Don't miss the traditional holiday decorations in Astor Hall, including a 22-foot, magnificently decorated Christmas tree, a beautiful illuminated copy of the Qur’an believed to have been produced in Safavid Iran in the 10th century AH (16th century CE), and a shining 18th-century brass Hanukkah lamp from Poland, on loan from the Bernard Museum of Judaica, Temple Emanu-El.

There are more than 3,500 holiday greeting cards in The New York Public Library's Picture Collection. The selection here represents some of the most delightful and personal. They date from the 1920s to the 1950s and were created both by well-known artists and anonymous senders. The shine of personality is the common thread: families drawn in caricature, pets immortalized in stately portraits, fingerprints cheekily inked onto paper. 

As the end of the year approaches, many of us feel an impulse to connect, to reach out across the darkness and send a festive hello to loved ones. In our digital age, handwriting and intentional community feel more precious than ever. The seasonal ritual of sending cards renews our bonds and shows that we are remembered, considered, and held dear.

This display is organized by The New York Public Library and curated by Molly Cox, an artist, florist, and recipient of the 2024–25 NYPL Picture Collection Artist Fellowship.

Send Us a Card! 

In the spirit of the season, we invite you to send a holiday card to the Library for possible inclusion in the Picture Collection. Please include a return address and direct envelopes to:

Picture Collection
c/o The New York Public Library
476 Fifth Avenue, Room 119
New York, NY 10018

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Collecting postcards was a natural extension of the Picture Collection's mission to provide its users with visual material in a variety of formats. Postcards were circulated from at least the early 1920s and were likely housed with subject clippings files until later segregated into a separate collection. Acquisition has been mainly through donations from hobbyists and travelers, but the department has historically sought ways to harvest ephemeral material of this kind; librarians on foreign or domestic travels, for instance, are encouraged to buy and add postcards to the collection. Access hundreds of digitized holiday cards from the Picture Collection on Digital Collections.

Charles Dickens, long an avid theatergoer and performer in amateur theatricals, gave his first public reading of A Christmas Carol in 1853. The charismatic author is said to have employed a different voice, a different style, for each of his characters, and he regularly appeared before audiences for the next 16 years, charming audiences and critics alike. In 1867–68, Dickens brought his reading tour to the United States. This holiday season, The New York Public Library is celebrating with a special installation featuring Dickens’s heavily annotated prompt copies, which he used in his performances of A Christmas Carol and other holiday books, including The Chimes and The Cricket on the Hearth, together with original photographs, first editions, and ephemera.

This display is organized by The New York Public Library and curated by Carolyn Vega, Curator of the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature.

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Explore the Charles Dickens Collection of Papers in our Digital Collections and flip through Charles Dickens's personal copy of A Christmas Carol, annotated with his own performance and reading notes.

Access the exhibition's large print labels.

A Dickens Christmas

Large-type labels are also available at the information desk in the McGraw Rotunda on the third floor of the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building.

Discover some of the most extraordinary items from the 56 million in our collections at the Library's permanent exhibition, the Polonsky Exhibition of The New York Public Library's Treasures (Gottesman Hall, First Floor).

Becoming Bohemia: Greenwich Village, 1912–1923 (Ispahani-Bartos Gallery and Wachenheim Gallery, First Floor) surveys key individuals, places, events, and works that defined America’s first large-scale countercultural enclave, while also noting factors that led to the decline of this vibrant, storied setting.

Explore a sensational selection of colorful prints and textiles from NYPL's collections in Line & Thread: Prints and Textiles from the 1600s to the Present (Rayner Special Collections Wing, Third Floor), which casts new light on artistic practices that have historically been dismissed or overlooked because of their association with women and other marginalized groups.

Through letters, manuscripts, books, paintings, prints, and even wine bills, discover or rediscover the most charismatic poet of his time in Byron: A Life in Motion (Print Gallery, Third Floor), which explores the extraordinary life of the poet George Gordon Byron, Lord Byron (1788–1824).

Discover the Library's Visitor Center, including digital and tactile displays featuring interactive exhibits about the Library's legacy, collection items, maps, and more. Plus: find a coat check and join in-person tours at the Visitor Center.

Visit the Library Shop & Café and take advantage of extended opening hours for the holidays!

Plan your visit to the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building now! Find out information about building accessibility, book a tour, and learn more.