Ladies and gentlemen, we are gonna open these doors in 30 seconds.

Felicia Curry, voice-over: The Folger Shakespeare Library on Capitol Hill is home to a massive collection of Shakespeare-related books and manuscripts...

The Folger's open.

Curry, voice-over: and it just got a makeover... [Jazz band playing] ♪ 11 years in the making.

♪ Man, voice-over: The collection that's here at the Folger dwarfs any other collection connected to Shakespeare, who saw the world in all of its complexity and invited people to re-imagine it or to even learn more, and the Folger is a wonderful place to do that.

The collection that's here is rare and precious, and the living presence of this writer needs to be celebrated.

That led to our master plan and the creation of this project to put the pieces together, to engage people with different experiences in a modern context.

The marriage of contemporary with classical is so important because it's a metaphor for Shakespeare, too.

♪ The original mission of the Folger was defined by the founder Henry Folger, who was a great collector of Shakespeare books and manuscripts, and he thought of it as a temple or a retreat for people who wanted to commune with knowledge and with this writer.

What we've become is the research library at our core, but we knew that this place had so much potential as a landing point for arts, humanities, culture, poetry, music.

This building sings with all of this beautiful architecture, the interior, and reminds you of the world that Shakespeare came up in and produced theater in.

♪ The problem, though, was the building looked like a bank, and it was not physically accessible, and the treasures that we have, the rare books and manuscripts, could be more accessible.

The fact that the Folger was placed in the District of Columbia, the crossroads for so many different cultural influences to engage with, that is the possibility that's opened up when you can actually get into this building and show the things that we have.

The renovation is really a reimagining of a classical building that honors it and its beauty but that also creates a modern context.

♪ It took us some time, I think, before we found that solution of slipping the addition underneath the terraces and making these new open facades that open out onto the new entry gardens, all within the boundaries of that historic building and terrace.

Witmore, voice-over: The landscape invites you down and says, "I'm gonna bring you "into this beautiful, modern entry floor "that has canopied galleries where you can see rare books and manuscripts and you can have experiences."

Woman: Have any of you ever wanted to pull a 300-year-old book and look at it in a room like this?

Because now you can.

Wow.

Man, voice-over: It's terrific in Washington to have a place of pilgrimage for Shakespeare buffs.

I think many British people would be surprised, would be amazed that Washington, DC, is also a major Shakespeare hub.

♪ Curry, voice-over: Although it looks similar to nearby public buildings, like the Library of Congress and the Supreme Court, the Folger is owned by Amherst College, Henry Folger's alma mater.

Henry Clay Folger comes to Amherst College in the 1870s, and Shakespeare at that time is part of the culture there.

His wife Emily Folger attributes a special significance to a moment when Ralph Waldo Emerson comes and lectures at Amherst College.

Emerson said that Shakespeare captures the true sense of humanity.

That ignited Folger's imagination.

He started acquiring this collection.

♪ Witmore, voice-over: Henry Folger and Emily Folger were unrelenting and acquired the greatest collection of original materials connected to Shakespeare anywhere in the world by far.

♪ If you look closely at the founding of the Folger Shakespeare Library, it's very clear that it was a memorial.

It's part of a larger movement in the early 20th century to create living memorials to famous people or events.

♪ A sculpture will look the same, roughly, year after year after year.

An institution will survive, but it will also open up, change, and adapt, and that's why we need institutions, and I think that's why both Shakespeare and the Folger remain important.

Curry, voice-over: The Folger's most prized acquisitions are 82 of the 235 copies of Shakespeare's "First Folio."

♪ Shakespeare's "First Folio" for many years has been in the furthest corner of the deepest vault, and now it's going to be inside the front door.

One of the ways we're going to share different aspects of these books is by turning the entire case into a data visualization.

Each shelf location where a copy of the book is will have a light to show you different things about the books-- which of the copies were owned by women, which of the copies are in the earliest bindings because many of these over 400 years have been bound and rebound multiple times.

You're seeing 82 books, and each one of these has variations that tells us something about the 400 years since these books were first printed.

We take things that are older, that are respected, that have been around for a while, and we figure out how to re-imagine them.

♪ Curry, voice-over: The Folger's Conservation Lab is in charge of ensuring these rare and valuable works can be safely displayed for all to view.

We are now in our Conservation Lab, where Rachel is going to show us a little bit of the work that is done on these materials.

I have here a "Second Folio."

When it came to us, this upper board was detached.

We want to restore stability so it can be safely handled and used.

As you can see, it looks much better now.

It really does.

This is a book from the 1530s.

It's a French schoolbook of Greek and Latin texts.

And this image that you see here is a printing press, Yes.

and so this is within a hundred years after the printing press was first used in Europe, and here's a depiction of one of these books being made, in essence.

Not only are the books important, but who's handled the books is important.

There's a way of using biology to track who's handled this book, where did it go.

The boards that are in a book have tree rings.

Those tree rings have data about climate.

Of course, we answer questions about who Shakespeare was, but we're really interested in everything you can learn from a collection like ours, and that's part of being a curious institution that's opening up and asking new audiences and new participants, including biologists, including climate scientists, students, and grandparents.

We want them all.

[Jazz band playing] Curry, voice-over: The Folger opened its new doors, and people came from far and wide.

It's unbelievable how they could go underground and do this without destroying the building above it.

♪ Woman: This is amazing.

I called and checked multiple times to make sure that all of the "First Folios" would be here because I really, really cared about that.

Woman: It used to be at the Folger, visitors would come in, and they would lower their voice.

It would be very churchlike.

No more of that.

We want to hear people's outside voices or their regular inside voices, so it's thrilling to just be here and kind of soak this up.

Witmore, voice-over: I love this place, and it's created a new way for me to think about scholarship, about the public, about community.

They should come here because we're not done with Shakespeare and Shakespeare's not done with us.

♪ It's an endless story, and I'm really glad we can finally tell it.

The Folger Shakespeare Library is one of the great research libraries in the world, but it is also a cultural destination.

[Applause] Curry, voice-over: Just 4 blocks from Capitol South Metro, the Folger Shakespeare Library is open Tuesday through Sunday.

Learn about theater and music performances, community events, teacher resources, and more at folger.edu.