At Brooklyn's Central Library, NYC: Christopher Myers' "Unbound" Pairs Banned-Book Tapestries With Stained-Glass Night Riders

Brooklyn Public Library's Central Library is showing Unbound, new work by artist and children's book author Christopher Myers, through January 15, 2027. The pieces are spread across the building: its facade, the Grand Lobby, the Youth Wing and the second-floor balcony.

The centerpiece is a pair of 40-foot tapestries. They stitch together a montage of characters and settings from books that are frequently banned or challenged, among them George Orwell's Animal Farm and Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye. The idea is to let the pages of books loose inside the library, conveying the weight of book bans across the United States while pushing back against it. The show lines up with BPL's Books Unbanned initiative.

The second strand is a series of stained-glass sculptures drawn from Myers' picture book Night Ride, published by Penguin Random House in September 2026. They show a group of New York City kids bicycling across Brooklyn and the other boroughs under the night sky. Jewel-like pieces of colored glass form recognizable cityscapes, and the figures invite visitors to follow them into the library.

Myers was born in New York City in 1974 and lives and works in Brooklyn. His practice spans textiles, performance, film and sculpture, often made with artisans around the world. He won a Caldecott Honor in 1998 for Harlem and a Coretta Scott King Award in 2016 for illustrating Firebird with Misty Copeland. He is also at work on a site-specific commission for BPL's Brownsville library, expected in 2027.

The exhibition was organized by BPL Presents, BPL visual art curator Cora Fisher and Myers, with funding in part from the Katowitz-Radin Endowment. The Central Library sits at Grand Army Plaza, a short walk from Prospect Park and the Brooklyn Museum.