Founded by civic leaders and literate working-men as a book club and adult learning center in 1826, the New Haven Young Men’s Institute Library is the oldest private reading-room and membership library in the United States. During its heyday in the nineteenth century the Institute Library featured speaker such as Henry Ward Beecher, Frederick Douglass, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edward Everett, Grace Greenwood, and Herman Melville.
With the founding of the New Haven Free Public Library, the Institute Library entered into a long period of decline. Revitalized and renovated in recent years, the Institute Library also hosts exhibitions featuring living artists in The Gallery Upstairs.
Curator in residence and host of the radio show Live Culture , Martha Willette Lewis, has organized an exhibition entitled Wish You Were Here: Journals, Journeys and Expeditions, which runs from June 2 to August 31, 2018.
A public reception will be held on Thursday, June 7 from 6-8pm.
Press release:
The exhibition includes six original painting-journals by James Lancel McElhinney, together with Hudson Highlands: North River Suite Volume One. Needlewatcher Editions. New York, 2018. Copies of the limited edition now reside in the following collections:
Albany Institute of History and Art
Avery Fine Art and Architecture Library, Columbia University
Boscobel House and Gardens, Garrison, New York
University of Denver Library. Special Collections. Denver. CO.
Hudson River Museum, Yonkers New York
Huntington Library, Museum, and Gardens. San Marino, CA
Newberry Library. Chicago, Illinois
West Point Museum, United States Military Academy.
Yale Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. New Haven CT
And private collections in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.
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