The Library After Hours: Pride

Join us at The New York Public Library's Stephen A. Schwarzman Building for the city's most cerebral happy hour.

Celebrate World Pride at the Library! Get special, after hours access to the Rose Main Reading Room and other gorgeous Library spaces. Enjoy artist and curator talks, readings from the archives by special guests, a literary drag show with Drag Queen Story Hour, and more.  

The Library After Hours Pride edition will include:

• Explore the history of LGBTQ civil rights following the 1969 Stonewall Riots through the Library’s exhibition Love & Resistance: Stonewall 50 featuring photographs, documents, ephemera, and more that illustrate the themes of nightlife, love, activism, and the queer press.


• Curator talk with Jason Baumann, the Library’s assistant director of Collection Development and curator of Love & Resistance


• Artist talk with photographer Naima Green, creator of the project “Pursuit”, a deck of playing cards featuring queer womxn, trans, non-binary, and gender nonconforming people


• A literary drag show featuring Harmonica Sunbeam, Miz Jade, Witti Repartee, Lee VaLone, Ash Blight, and Cétait BonTemps 


• Morgan Bassichis, Vichet Chum, Dillon Heape, Donja R. Love and others read aloud from the Library’s vast LGBTQ archives, sharing love letters and unpublished materials by Virginia Woolf, James Baldwin, Truman Capote and more!


• NYC Trans Oral History Project listening stations


• Crafts and coloring inspired by NYPL collections 


• Music by DJ Robi D Light


• Walt Whitman: America's Poet exhibition  


• Live drawing inspired by the fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall uprising by LGBTQ visual artist Lisa Marie Thalhammer, creator of the limited-edition Stonewall Stoli bottle


• Enjoy our refreshing specialty cocktail, featuring Stoli Ohranj


• ​Food & drinks available for purchase

21+ | ID required | #NYPLafterhours

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Tickets

A limited number of Priority Advanced Tickets are available.  Priority ticketing grants you entry beginning at 7 PM, giving you more time to maximize your experience exploring the Library. When you purchase a Priority Advanced Ticket, it benefits the Library and helps make this event—and others like it—possible. It also grants you 10% off at the bar and Library Shop during the event.

Pay What You Wish entry will begin at 8 PM, with a suggested admission price of $15. Cash only.

Lines start forming at 5th Ave in advance of the event. Accessible entrance available at 42nd Street. 

No refunds.

Major support of the Love & Resistance: Stonewall 50 exhibition and related programming is provided by The New York Community Trust, Hermes Mallea and Carey Maloney, and the TD Charitable Foundation and TD Bank. Additional support is provided by Time Warner and the Magnus Hirschfeld Endowment Fund.

Support for The New York Public Library’s Exhibitions Program has been provided by Celeste Bartos, Sue and Edgar Wachenheim III, Mahnaz Ispahani Bartos and Adam Bartos Exhibitions Fund, Jonathan Altman, and Miriam and Ira D. Wallach.

The Library After Hours is made possible with the generous support of Mahnaz Ispahani Bartos and Adam Bartos.

The New York Public Library's Pride celebration is supported in part by the Ford Foundation.

Additional support for The Library After Hours: Pride provided by Stoli.