Pledge a membership

We are collecting pledges, not payments, until our 501(c)(3) status is granted. When it is, we will write to you with instructions — and you may change your mind at any point before then.

You would be joining an old tradition. The Boston Athenaeum began as a supper club with a reading room, incorporated in 1807 on the pledges of its shareholders; the great library came afterward, as the residue of people reading together. The collection follows the members, not the other way around.