
A lock of Walt Whitman’s hair, Jack Kerouac’s boots, and Virginia Woolf’s cane are just a few of the strange literary paraphernalia available for view at the New York Public Library’s Berg Collection.
The library has been on top of it’s game lately with interesting and helpful social initiatives like their partnership with culture pass and their new clothing rental system for New Yorkers with job interviews.
In a recent article and video posted in The New Yorker, they go into depth about a relatively unknown exhibition of artifacts that the library proudly owns and displays on the third floor Berg Reading Room. The Berg Collection consists of nearly two thousand linear feet of manuscripts and archival materials that were donated to the library in 1940.
The objects displayed range from normal everyday objects like typewriters, pens, manuscripts and glasses, to more obscure and macabre pieces like “death masks” of famous authors like E. E. Cummings.
At the moment, you must make an appointment for a guided tour of the space due to strict library regulations and because the collection is geared toward researchers. However according to the article, “the library does intend to have an exhibition to present these and other treasures in the Gottesman Hall by 2020.”
Featured image: newyorker.com