At Brooklyn Public Library's Central Library in Prospect Heights, Christopher Myers Sets Banned Books Loose in Giant Tapestries

Christopher Myers: Unbound is on view at Brooklyn Public Library's Central Library, at Grand Army Plaza in Prospect Heights, through January 15, 2027. Admission is free. Myers, an artist and children's book author, has placed work across the building's facade, Grand Lobby, Youth Wing and second-floor balcony, so the show reads as part of the library itself rather than a display inside it.

The centerpiece is a pair of 40-foot, site-specific tapestries. Each combines characters and settings from literary works that are often challenged or banned, among them George Orwell's Animal Farm and Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye. The library frames them against ongoing book bans across the United States and ties them to its own mission of unlimited public access to books, including its Books Unbanned initiative. The tapestries celebrate the wide vision of authors whose stories can be shut out, and they point to what censorship costs.

The second part of the show is a series of original stained-glass sculptures with figures from Myers' forthcoming picture book Night Ride, due from Penguin Random House in September 2026. A group of New York City kids bike across Brooklyn and the other boroughs under the night sky, and jewel-toned segments of glass build up recognizable cityscapes. Time Out noted that, instead of saints or biblical scenes, the glass shows kids on bicycles after dark.

Myers was born in New York in 1974 and lives and works in Brooklyn. He won a Caldecott Honor in 1998 for illustrating Harlem and a Coretta Scott King Award in 2016 for illustrating Firebird with Misty Copeland. His work is in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum, the Studio Museum in Harlem and the National Gallery of Art, among others, and he took part in the 2024 Biennale of Sydney. His practice spans textiles, performance, film and sculpture, often made with artisans abroad, from shadow puppet makers in Jogjakarta to weavers in Luxor. A site-specific commission for the Brownsville Library is expected in 2027.

The exhibition was organized by BPL Presents, BPL visual art curator Cora Fisher and Myers, and is funded in part by the Katowitz-Radin Endowment. The Central Library is at 10 Grand Army Plaza.