Collections : [Rare Book & Manuscript Library]

Arthur Mitchell (1934-2018) was an American ballet dancer, choreographer, and founder and director of the Dance Theatre of Harlem. This collection contains materials related to his career as a dancer with the New York City Ballet, and his later professional work with the Dance Theatre of Harlem and others. The collection includes administrative records, appointment books, correspondence, invitations, notes, notebooks, photographs, posters, programs, and audio and video recordings.

Serge Prokofiev (1891–1953) was a Russian and Soviet composer, pianist and conductor, and seminal figure in the history of twentieth-century music. The Serge Prokofiev Archive (SPA) contains 58 original music manuscripts and over 10,000 letters and documents primarily from 1918-1936, the years Prokofiev spent in the West. The SPA also includes an expansive collection of music manuscript copies, published scores, concert programs, scholarly books and articles, photographs, and audio and video material, making it the premier research collection for studying Prokofiev's life, work and legacy.

Lillie Rovno was deployed by the United States military in Germany, Japan, Alaska, and Hawaii, and continued to travel the world in later years. A scholar of Russian culture interested in performance arts, Rovno collected materials on a broad array of art forms: Kabuki and Japanese visual arts, ballet, Jewish music, and Italian music. The collection includes numerous photos, some autographed, of prominent ballet performers from the former Soviet Union, Cuba, and the U.S., with many of the photos documenting visits of Soviet ballet companies to the U.S. in the 1980s and early 1990s. The collection also contains musical scores from Italy, the U.S., and Israel, including Israeli songbooks from the early 1950s.

Two-time Tony-award winner Desmond Heeley (1931-2016) was a British-American costume and set designer who worked primarily in theater, ballet, and opera. His productions have graced the stages of major theaters in the United Kingdom, Canada, the United States, Australia, and Europe, including the Royal Opera House, the Metropolitan Opera, Houston Ballet, the National Ballet of Canada, Australian Ballet, and the Stratford Festival in Ontario. This collection contains Heeley's sketches and designs, along with production documents, photographs, correspondence, audio recordings, and other memorabilia relating to his life and work.

A collection of original artwork, published books, printed ephemera, and branded merchandise by the writer and artist Edward Gorey (1925-2000), assembled by Andrew Alpern.