For seven weeks, the Astor Gallery will serve as a public space dedicated to the practice of listening. Listening at the Library is an immersive experience featuring recordings from The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts’ Rodgers & Hammerstein Archives of Recorded Sound, among the largest and most diverse sound archives in the world. Playlists curated by staff draw from more than 700,000 recordings of spoken word, radio broadcasts, field recordings, live performance, and music found in the Archives.
Listening at the Library argues for the reinvigoration of a communal listening experience, one which encourages the safe and free exchange of ideas through sounds, and embraces the simultaneity of diverse worldviews brought to the room by any given listener at any given time.