Greenpoint Library Wins Top Prize!
UPDATED on 04.04.23 to announce Greenpoint Library won the top prize Citywide display honor!
UPDATED on 03.30.23 to reflect contest’s public vote deadline had passed.
On March 7, almost a hundred public library branches around NYC unveiled their creative vision in display form working off the theme “The Creative City”. The public gets to narrow down the contestants by voting for their top five choices in each library system: Brooklyn Public Library, New York Public Library, and Queens Public Library. The vote was open online here: https://www.culturepass.nyc/book-display-contest/bpl until March 26 at 5 p.m., but displays can be viewed after the public vote.
In North Brooklyn we have two contenders: the Greenpoint Library and the Williamsburgh Library. Because we are unbiased, GREENLINE hopes you to voted for both of them and showed your love for our local libraries!
Greenpoint Library’s display features an artist sewing a quilt while sitting in front of a window that features the city’s skyline. The artist is a full-size papier-mâché sewist created by Greenpoint Library’s staff using old issues of “our local paper that keeps our community connected, GREENLINE,” the library stated in a post on their Facebook page. This paper is humbled but mostly honored by this inclusion.
The concept for their display is based around communal creativity, highlighting the neighborhood, and this library’s focus on environmentalism. The Greenpoint Library has held several upcycling art classes, and they have a sewing circle, a mending program, and a knitting club. They also lend out sewing machines. Their dedication to the fabric arts guided their choice of creating a quilt made from recycled fabric and materials provided by locals, staff, and Materials for the Arts. Each patch of the quilt represents a Culture Pass organization. The border patches were created by local kids who were asked what a creative city means to them. They answered with pompoms, polka dots, glitter, feathers, beads, and paint.
Books are another component of the display. Greenpoint Library’s choices featured books by or on Greenpoint, Brooklyn, or NYC artists, and the books are in a range of reading levels.
Williamsburgh Library also inspired the local community to contribute to their entry in the Culture Pass contest. Their display encourages its visitors to: Inspire, Create, Shine! They exhibit recreated famous artworks, such as Vincent van Gogh’s “The Starry Night” to promote the places Culture Pass can take you. “The Starry Night” is on view at the Museum of Modern Art, MoMA. Next to each creative piece is museum label that informs of the artwork’s inspiration, its title, and the artists who created it. For instance, there are two streamers of prayer flags with messages like: “Be Kind”, “Peace”, “Give Hugs”, and “Swim Free”; its museum label credited the Rubin Museum and the Museum of Natural History as the inspiration.
The winning libraries from the first round will then go to a jury of artists, creatives, and cultural leaders who will select a first-place winner and first runner-up from each of the three library systems. Then they will pick one of the three first-place winners and award the best book display citywide. The final winners will receive cash prizes to use as they see fit at their branch.
The judging panel includes Pat Kiernan, morning anchor, Spectrum News NY1; N.K. Jemisin, New York Times bestselling and Hugo Award-winning author, and a recipient of a 2020 MacArthur Fellowship; Katie Yamasaki, muralist and children’s book artist; Dylan Thuras, co-founder, Atlas Obscura; and Martha King, senior program officer, The Charles H. Revson Foundation.
Deadline to vote was March 26 at 5 p.m. Five libraries could be picked in each of the three systems. here: https://www.culturepass.nyc/book-display-contest/bpl
The Greenline 