In-Person Tour: Hardly Harmless Drudgery & Black American Dictionaries

Join The Grolier Club as co-curator (with Bryan A. Garner) Jack Lynch leads a tour of our public exhibition "Hardly Harmless Drudgery," with a focus on themes of Black American and African American dictionaries in honor of Juneteenth. The exhibit is on view in our ground-floor Exhibition Hall through July 27, 2024.

"Hardly Harmless Drudgery" displays English-language dictionaries from the dawn of printing to the present day.

Dictionaries are repositories of erudition, monuments to linguistic authority, and battlefields in cultural and political struggles. They are works of almost superhuman endurance, produced by people who devote themselves for years or even decades to wearisome labor. Dictionaries can become commodities in a fiercely competitive publishing business, and they can keep a business afloat for generations or sink it swiftly. They are also often beautiful objects: typographically innovative, designed to project learning and authority. The painstaking work of corralling, recording, and defining the vocabulary of a language has inspired best-selling books, both fiction and nonfiction, and even two major motion pictures. And yet its future is uncertain. The internet has taught more than one industry that it's hard to compete with free, and the reign of the printed dictionary may be coming to an end. It leaves many to wonder: are professionally edited dictionaries necessary anymore?--and if they're necessary, are they possible?

Registration

If you are a Grolier Club member, please register yourself and your guests via the Club website. Do not register via Eventbrite.

Support

We appreciate your interest in the Grolier Club’s programming on the art and history of the book. For more than 130 years we have offered our exhibitions and lectures to the public, free of charge. If you have enjoyed these offerings, and would like to support the continuance of that tradition, please consider making a tax-deductible donation to the Grolier Club.

Accessibility

An ADA-compliant lift from street level to the lobby is available to anyone with mobility issues. All desk staff should be ready and able to assist you in operating the lift, with or without advance notice.

A “T-Coil” assisted listening system is available to anyone attending a lecture in the Exhibition Hall. Visitors with hearing aids should turn their devices to the “T” setting in order to access the system; visitors without hearing aids may request a “loop receiver” with earphones.

Environment

The temperature and humidity in the exhibition hall are tightly controlled for the sake of the valuable items on display, and this may cause the room to feel chilly, particularly in warmer weather, to those coming in from outside. Members and visitors are advised to bring a light wrap when visiting an exhibition, or attending an event in the hall.

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