You Can Now Borrow Contemporary Art at the Brooklyn Public Library—For Free

You can now borrow a Kameelah Janan Rasheed print from the Brooklyn Public Library (BPL), or a box of jars that will help you cast spells. The institution has announced an experimental art lending program that coincides with its new exhibition “Letters for the Future,” created in collaboration with the artist-organized group Department of Transformation, which opened earlier this month.

The show itself features works by 35 artists, placed around the Central Library’s Grand Lobby. Films by Asad Raza and Ilana Harris-Babou play, while Be Oakley / GenderFail Press present An incessant unknowability: An Archive of protest-inspired Typography (2017–24), a series of 12 risograph prints with 10 open-source downloadable typefaces.

The artist duo Hilma’s Ghost, comprised of Sharmistha Ray and Danielle Tegeder, make a more occult contribution. Their included work, Enchantments: Bottled Devotionals of Divine Feminine Spirits (2023), features a wooden apothecary box filled with 12 glass spell jars. The object is both part of the exhibition and available for borrowers to take home. 

Installation view of “Letters for the Future” at the Brooklyn Public Library. Photo courtesy of BPL.

Such pieces are in dialogue with the ethos of libraries at large. According to the press materials, the show considers “text and image relationships, distribution, and participation in unexpected ways.” The lending component furthers these aims—while reviving a BPL initiative from the 1950s and ’60s. Twenty of the artworks are available to borrow. They range from magnets and banners to prints and original works on paper. Additional programs throughout the run of the exhibition will, according to the website, “aim to deepen BPL’s role as a site of social learning and community building.” 

Alysha Naples, Under the Milky Way Tonight. Photo courtesy of BPL.

The BPL is one of a number of educational institutions in the country with art lending programs. Pennsylvania’s Braddock Carnegie Library instituted an iteration that has since expanded, according to its website, to include objects that help the community make their own art: puppets, button making kits, and tools can all be checked out. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Oberlin, Williams College, and the University of Chicago have all offered art-lending services for their lucky co-eds.

“At a moment when the commercial market is increasingly privatizing public spaces, this program reinforces our commitment to accessible, high-quality cultural programs free of charge,” Jakab Orsos, vice president of arts and Culture at BPL, told me over emeil. “Our goal is to expand the program following this exhibition and gather feedback from participants to help shape its future.”

A longtime hub for art exhibitions, the Brooklyn Public Library has indeed been making good on its promise of accessibility. It has recently played host to the first-ever U.S. exhibition on Tove Jansson, the artist and creator of the Moomins, as well as a showcase of rare photographs of James Baldwin’s time in Turkey. Most prominently, it was the venue for 2023’s “The Book of Hov,” the major Jay-Z exhibition that also produced a set of custom library cards.