Photos: Folger’s Press Preview of Re-opening on Friday, June 21 – 1pm

Photos: Folger’s Press Preview of Re-opening on Friday, June 21 – 1pm

By Larry Janezich

Posted June 20, 2024

The Folger Library reopens on Friday after a four-year $80.5 million renovation.  Here’s what members of the press who attended a preview of the re-opening saw. 

Folger Director Michael Witmore and Communications and Marketing Director Melanie Bender Martin welcomed members of the press to the light-filled Great Hall, now featuring tables and seating for customers of the Quill and Crumb Café.  Prior to the renovation, the windows were covered with thick light-blocking drapery to protect rare books and manuscripts on display.

The press was treated to samples of the elegant offerings of the Quill and Crumb Café.  The café will be managed by Constellation Culinary group and will offer coffee, lunch, grab-and-go options, and a full-service bar and light bites in the evening.  The menu includes English Tea Service for a minimum of two guests with a choice of savory and sweet sandwiches and pastries.  Here’s a link to a no-prices teaser menu:  https://qr.ourmenu.io/FSLquillandcrumb

After introductory remarks by Director Witmore, some 40 journalists broke up into four groups for a non-linear tour and to hear presentations by library officials.  Artistic Director Karen Ann Daniels hosted a group in the theater to discuss upgrades to the theater’s infrastructure.  The backdrop to her remarks was the stage set for the current production of “Metamorphoses.”  The 270 seat theater’s design was based on an amalgamation of Elizabethan Theater designs and was the first Elizabethan Theater constructed in North America.  Here’s a link to the Folger’s next season which starts with “Romeo and Juliet” and ends with “Twelfth Night.”  https://bit.ly/4cmTOvb   

The Reading Room of one of the world’s greatest research library is reserved for serious scholarship but visible through the glass of a doorway off the Great Hall. 

The richest experience of the Exhibition Halls comes by descending the ramp from the corner of 2nd and East Capitol to the West Lobby which affords visitors the opportunity to engage one of the three pieces of art commissioned for the renovation.  A new a three-part installation featuring one of artist Fred Wilson’s Black Mirrors greets visitors just inside the Shakespeare Exhibition Hall.  The piece is entitled “God me such uses send, Not to pick bad from bad, but by bad mend.”  It’s a line from and reflects upon the play “Othello.”  Looking closely even from this angle visitors, can see the Black Mirror is positioned to reflect a painting of Elizabeth I, personifying the Elizabethan age.  Adjacent to the mirror is a manuscript letter from the Folger collection by Ira Aldrige, the first Black man to play Othello.  The piece sets the themes which the curators want visitors to carry with them as they engage the exhibits: diversity, gender, and power.

Witmore:  “As you experience the reveal and are rotated around by the reflections, you’re immersed in past and present, power and players – and I think (Wilson) wants us to think about masks and unmasking as part of the history of Shakespeare and how we encounter his plays.” 

Witmore says of the Black Mirror, “This is the opening gambit in the Shakespeare Exhibition Hall and we would love for visitors to come and take those terms and come out into the Exhibition Hall’s main area and see all of these pages on the wall representing the diversity of our collection – Shakespeare is just a fraction of the collection.”  This Gallery asks visitors what Shakespeare means to them.  The walls are adorned with hundreds of reproductions of pages from the Folger’s collection and creates the context which allows visitors to explore how and what Shakespeare has come to represent over the centuries.   

The case containing the collection’s 82 First Folios lies in the second gallery – the first time these have been seen by the public.  Witmore is credited with wanting visitors to encounter the collection of one of the most collectible books in the world instead of keeping them in a vault beyond public view. 

The first of the First Folio’s (photo from a previous press preview) is the sole source of 18 of Shakespeare’s plays including Julius Caesar and Macbeth. The 900 page volume – printed in 1623, seven years after Shakespeare’s death – is often referred to as the “First Folio.”

Next to the case of First Folios, Folger staff provided a demonstration of the printing press, constructed from a 17th Century printing manual.  Each of the folios is unique – printers corrected pages in the print shop.  They did not discard previous pages but just kept printing corrected ones.  The folios ended up being a random collection of corrected, semi-corrected and uncorrected pages.  The Folger website provides an interactive version of the First Folio through which readers can page.  Here’s a link:  https://bit.ly/3VQj0nZ

This Gallery  is devoted to The Plays – Early, Middle, and Late.  Again, visitors find hundreds of images from the Folger Collection on the walls.  The exhibit endeavors to show the number of ways people look at the plays.  One is a fantastical map created by artist Mya Gosling depicting characters of all of the plays organized and localized in a map of Shakespeare Land. 

This gallery is kid-friendly, with a “decoder trail” for young Shakespearians aged 5 to 8 who use a decoder to answer riddles to get clues to win a prize at the end.  There’s an image-matching feature for younger kids.  Staff emphasize that families are welcome.

Across the hallway running the length of the Shakespeare Exhibition Hall lie the three Galleries of the Stuart and Mimi Rose Rare Book and Manuscript Exhibition Hall: “Out of the Vault” featuring early published works such as The Caxton Canterbury Tales from 1477.  Stuart Rose:  “It’s actually a much rarer book than the First Folio, and it’s the first book printed in England, which helped spark the spread of the printing press off the continent.”

“Into the Vault” (above) features early works printed by groups that formed to finance and print Shakespeare’s First Folios. 

The third gallery includes Rose Collection items including the first book printed in English and J.R.R. Tolkien’s hand-written revisions of a proof copy of Lord of the Rings. 

Exit through the Gift Shop.  An expanded gift shop offers mementos and merchandise inspired by the Folger and its collections. 

View from the sunken terrace of the west entry at 2nd and East Capitol.  The garden above features plants which refer to Shakespeare plays and a water feature.  The third piece of art commissioned for the renovation is a poem by former US Poet Laurate Rita Dove carved into the granite surrounding the garden.  Here’s a link to Dove reading her poem:  https://bit.ly/4cdWmf2

Mayor Bowser will officiate at a ribbon cutting ceremony at 10am on Friday.    You can watch it live, here:  https://bit.ly/3xhzHPIZYiA  The Folger will re-open to the public at 1:00pm. Here’s a link to the re-opening guide:  https://bit.ly/4epBXoN