Photo Flash: NYPL's 'Stars and Treasures' Exhibit

By: Nov. 21, 2006
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The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts is celebrating the 75th anniversary of the founding of its Billy Rose Theatre Division with "Stars and Treasures: 75 Years of Collecting Theatre," a major exhibition showcasing rare and unique artifacts from the more than 9 million items in its collections.

Among the items on view, some of them being exhibited for the first time, are a bejeweled belt worn by Sarah Bernhardt as Cleopatra, letters from Harry Houdini, and several drafts of Edward Albee's Whose Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. The exhibition includes both drama and musical theatre, as well as such popular entertainments as circus, magic, wild west shows, and vaudeville. Examples from both historical and contemporary theatre are represented, beginning with a number of 18th and 19th century items, including letters from Sarah Siddons, Edmund Kean, and Edwin Booth.

Personal treasures loaned for the exhibition by such actors as Jane Alexander, Harvey Fierstein, Patti LuPone, Donna Murphy, Audra McDonald, Roger Rees, and Ben Vereen are also featured. Actress Julie Harris has loaned a charming little box given to her on the opening night of I Am a Camera with notes from both John Van Druten and Christopher Isherwood. Angela Lansbury has loaned a Halston kimono embroidered with sentiments from the entire cast of her much esteemed revival production of Gypsy.

"Stars and Treasures: 75 Years of Collecting Theatre" will be on view in the Donald and Mary Oenslager Gallery at The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center, 40 Lincoln Center Plaza, from Tuesday, November 21, 2006 through Saturday, May 5, 2007. Admission is free.

Visit www.nypl.org for more information.


 David Ferriero, Andrew W. Mellon Director and Chief Executive Officer of the Research Libraries at The New York Public Library;  Jacqueline Z. Davis, the Barbara G. and Lawrence A. Fleischman Executive Director of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts; Robert Taylor, Exhibit Curator; Academy and Tony Award-winner Joel Grey


Joel Grey


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