Christopher Myers: Unbound

Central Library is thrilled to present new art works by celebrated artist and children’s book author Christopher Myers. Architecturally scaled, site-specific tapestries and a series of original stained-glass sculptures from his forthcoming book, Night Ride (One World Press, September 2026), will grace Central's façade, Grand Lobby, Youth Wing and Second Floor balcony. 

Myers’ new works set loose the pages of books into the space of the library. Two 40-foot tapestries feature a montage of characters and settings from often banned literary masterworks, like George Orwell’s Animal Farm and Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye. In recreating vivid stories, the tapestries both convey and counter the weight of ongoing book bans and challenges across the United States. Aligned with BPL’s mission to offer the public unlimited access to books, including through our Books Unbanned initiative, Myers’ tapestries rejoice in the expansive vision of authors whose powerful stories may be foreclosed. This is what we lose through censorship, they seem to warn. 

Unbound, featuring figures from Night Ride, depicts a group of New York City kids bicycling across Brooklyn and the boroughs. Together, they embody youthful exuberance and the freedom of collective movement under the night sky. Rendered in stained glass, jewel-like segments of color and shape form iconic cityscapes. Characters beckon us to join a nocturnal journey into their world, and into the library. 

The threat of imagination being curtailed by external and internalized censors propels Myers’ lively, roiling figurations. He invites us to deeply consider the meaning of freedom, or even the kindred concepts of liberty and liberation. What are the ideological and economic pressures on this so-called freedom? In his writings, he wonders what the Global South and international experiences can teach us about the limits of freedom of speech in the US, and points to the stakes we collectively face: 

^{"There is a ghost library of books never written, movies never filmed, artworks never started, items never posted on the internet, and articles that no one dared whisper about. This is what censorship looks like, this endless bookshelf of invisible tomes, this empty museum. It is complicated and rich; it is a thousand stories that need telling and a thousand reasons people have for not telling them. " - Christopher Myers}

This spirit of defiant curiosity, of travel and worldbuilding that imagination and the arts endow us with is the message and medium of this exhibition. And as we celebrate Christopher Myers’ multifaceted art, Unbound is his tribute to the Library, to the space it holds for creative inner lives and collective power. 

About the Artist

Christopher Myers (b. New York City in 1974) is an artist and writer whose work across disciplines is rooted in storytelling. Myers delves into the past to build narratives that speak to the slippages between history and mythology. His diverse practice spans textiles, performance, film, and sculptural objects, often created in collaboration with artisans from around the globe. He has worked with traditional shadow puppet makers in Jogjakarta, silversmiths in Khartoum, conceptual video artists in Ho Chi Minh City, young musicians in New Orleans, woodcarvers in Accra, weavers in Luxor, metal workers in Kenya, and textile printers in Copenhagen. These collaborations are driven by his interest in understanding the ways in which globalization is intimately intertwined with notions of self and community. A playwright as well as a visual artist, Myers has an enduring interest in the theatrical. Myers notes of his multidisciplinary practice, “I am interested in speaking as many languages as possible to reach as many people as possible.” 

Myers earned his B.A. in Art-Semiotics and American Civilization with a focus on race and culture from Brown University in 1995 and participated in the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Studio Program in 1996. Myers was featured in the 24th Biennale of Sydney in 2024. His work has been exhibited throughout the United States and internationally at venues including MoMA PS1, New York, NY; Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL; The Mistake Room, Guadalajara, Mexico; Akron Art Museum, Akron, OH; Blaffer Art Museum, Houston, TX; Contrast Gallery, Shanghai; Goethe-Institut, Accra, Ghana; Kigali Genocide Memorial Center, Rwanda; San Art, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, and the Studio Museum in Harlem, NY. Myers is currently working on a site-specific commission for the Brooklyn Brownsville Public Library, expected to be completed in 2027. His work is included in the permanent collections of institutions including the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Brooklyn Museum, New York, NY; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Chicago, IL; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; Lucas Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; Mead Art Museum, Amherst, MA; Nasher Museum at Duke University, Durham, NC, and the Studio Museum in Harlem, NY. Myers won a Caldecott Honor in 1998 for his illustrations in the book Harlem and a Coretta Scott King Award in 2016 for illustrating Firebird with Misty Copeland. Myers currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.