Christopher Myers: Unbound

Brooklyn Public Library's Central Library is showing Unbound, a new site-specific installation by Christopher Myers, the artist and children's book author. The work spreads across the library's façade, Grand Lobby, Youth Wing and second-floor balcony. It is free and runs from August 1, 2026, through January 15, 2027.

The centerpiece is a pair of 40-foot tapestries. They stitch together characters and settings from books that are often banned or challenged, including George Orwell's Animal Farm and Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye. The pieces register the weight of book bans across the United States while celebrating the expansive imaginations of the authors involved. They also echo BPL's Books Unbanned initiative, which aims to keep books freely available to the public.

The second strand is a series of stained-glass sculptures drawn from Myers's forthcoming picture book, Night Ride, due from Penguin Random House in September 2026. Its figures are New York City kids cycling through Brooklyn and the other boroughs under the night sky. Jewel-toned segments of glass build up recognizable cityscapes, and the riders seem to invite visitors to follow them into the library.

Myers was born in New York in 1974 and lives and works in Brooklyn. He won a Caldecott Honor for Harlem in 1998 and a Coretta Scott King Award in 2016 for illustrating Firebird with Misty Copeland. His work is held in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum, the National Gallery of Art and the Studio Museum in Harlem, among others. Unbound is his tribute to the library as a home for creative inner lives and collective power. Central Library sits at Grand Army Plaza in Prospect Heights.