The New Yorker opens its Archive for the Public to Showcase its History with Culture.
As The New Yorker marks its 100th anniversary in 2025, the magazine is a renowned publication amongst its readers, who range from teenagers to office-going adults to creative individuals. The publication not just celebrates its milestone with special issues and retrospectives—it is using the power of exhibitions to narrate its remarkable history. Through displays that are carefully curated, the magazine is exhibiting a century of art, journalism, and satire, offering the ones who visit an immersive look into the vast archive and the creative legacy of the magazine.
A Century on Display for The New Yorker
The New York Public Library itself is hosting “A Century of The New Yorker,” an exhibition running from January 8 to May 3, 2025, to celebrate the centenary. This display animates the magazine’s evolution, showcasing original manuscripts, drafts, correspondence, and artwork. Visitors can have a firsthand experience with the editorial debates and artistic processes that have shaped The New Yorker’s infamous signature voice within the publishing world.
Image Courtesy- Society Illustrators
Similarly, at the Society of Illustrators, “Drawn from The New Yorker: A Centennial Celebration“ showcases over 130 cartoons, giving us a glazing glimpse of the social critique embedded in The New Yorker’s DNA. Curated by longtime cartoonist for the New Yorker, Liza Donnelly, the exhibition brings together works of legends like Charles Addams and Roz Chast, as evidence of the illustrations playing a major role in the New Yorkers’ success.
Iconic New Yorker Covers, History as a Time Capsule
The magazine’s covers have since forever been a symbolic illustration of its artistic and cultural sensibility. At L’Alliance New York, “Covering The New Yorker” curated by art editor Françoise Mouly, explores how the publication’s sought-after covers have been a reflection of the political and social scenario around the world. Running from February 21 to March 6, 2025, this exhibition highlights the steady growth of The New Yorker’s cover art, from Rea Irvin’s original 1925 Eustace Tilley illustration to interpretations by contemporary artists such as Anita Kunz and Kerry James Marshall.
Image Courtesy- Condenas Store
Making it From the Page to a Big Screen
More than just print and illustrations, The New Yorker magazine, cultural impact of its coverage, also has a footing in cinema. The “Tales from The New Yorker” Film Festival at Film Forum, beginning February 28, 2025, brings to the screen, films that were inspired by New Yorker stories. From literary adaptations like Brokeback Mountain to investigative journalism shaping narratives in Citizen Kane, the New Yorker has embedded itself within the cinemascape in a bid to collaborate with the medium.
Image Courtesy- Film Forum
Keeping it alive with an Archive
These ongoing exhibitions with the New Yorker are not just a retrospective; they are an invitation to engage ourselves with the magazine’s living and thriving archive. Alongside the physical exhibitions, a digital platform put together by the print publication provides online access to important historical pieces, masterclasses and workshops on magazine-making, and a visual history of most of its iconic artwork.
Image Courtesy- Washington Post
By turning its century-long history into an interactive, artistic exhibition, The New Yorker demands the attention of the present, contemporary lovers to also focus on its past excellence, for a thriving dialogue between journalism, art, and culture. These exhibitions allow the archives to resurface as a living and breathing narrative—one that continues to influence culture.
Feature Image Courtesy- New Yorker
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