You could’ve fried an egg on the sweltering sidewalk I trekked across last Friday to get to the Brooklyn Public Library (BPL) — which is, happily, a city-mandated cooling center. Lately, the Central Branch’s resplendent Art Deco facade has been illuminated after dark with a projection of a creature vaguely resembling a hippopotamus, one of the beloved Moomins from late Swedish-speaking Finnish author and artist Tove Jansson’s illustrated universe. I first spied the Moomintroll, as he’s known, earlier this year at Stockholm’s Prins Eugens Waldemarsudde, which staged a massive show about four Nordic illustrators in honor of the 80th birthday of Jansson’s captivating cast of fantastical characters. Collectively called the Moomins, the charming trolls have now taken over the BPL’s flagship library for Tove Jansson and the Moomins: The Door Is Always Open, where chapters of the queer artist’s remarkable life invite us into a sorely needed world of play.Installation view of Tove Jansson: The Door Is Always Open at the Brooklyn Public Library’s Central Branch (photo Lakshmi Rivera Amin/Hyperallergic)The show invites us to walk into the storybook world of Jansson’s Moomins, which the exhibition text describes as “one of tolerance, equality and care.”Libraries are public spaces first and foremost, something Jansson believed in deeply — so it’s only fitting that The Door Is Always Open weaves its way through the very fabric of community at the Central Branch. Installations explaining her career and the genesis of the series dot the airy lobby, emphasizing the trolls’ appreciation for the natural world, equality, and individuality. The installations were cleverly designed to alternately resemble a chapter book, an unfolding accordion of pages, and even a living room from the trolls’ home in Moominvalley. Visitors can step into the free and adventurous everyday world of the Moomins, from the idiosyncrasies she bestowed on each character (Snufkin loves to play the harmonica and spend time alone) to the carefully designed Moominhouse (whose door, as the exhibition name suggests, is always open). Librarygoers wandered past and through the installations, while students typed away on laptops and families rested at the cafe, a scene that I suspect would’ve made the artist smile.Jansson’s prolific artistic output included painting, poetry, writing, and more.If this show is any indication, Jansson was a force of nature. The second floor of the library chronicles her work as an illustrator for books like a 1962 edition of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit (1937), her later years and travels with her partner Tuulikki Pietilä, and the legacy of the Moomins brand she founded alongside her brother in the late 1950s. We learn that she sustained herself with a practice that spanned poetry, advertising, murals and public art, and playwriting, and had established a successful career as a painter by her mid-20s. But when she published the first Moomins story at age 25, the course of her life shifted away from commercial painting. And there’s a reason she threw herself into writing the story of the Moomins instead. According to the wall text, “just as Tove was beginning to make a name for herself as an artist, the Second World War broke out and painting seemed meaningless.” I was struck by that sentence, in no small part because it mirrors what many artists may feel amid the genocide in Gaza and the seemingly endless injustices of our world flaring up all at once.One installation recreates the living room of the Moominhouse, which is open to anyone and everyone who wanders through.What was meaningful to Jansson in that moment, though, was making art of a different kind. Fashioning this other world entirely of her own making — one where trolls aren’t enemies, as they’re so often depicted in Scandinavian and other mythologies, but cherished friends and family, and fairy tale conventions give way to the principles of justice that ground her characters, even as they face internal and external challenges. The exhibition even extends into the children’s section on the first floor of the library and includes little Moomin cut-outs standing at a height where children can look them in the eye, offering a way to practice Jansson’s call to approach strangers as friends.To my mind, it’s no accident that a queer artist and author dreamt up such a compassionate haven, where difference isn’t demonized and conflict is an opportunity for growth. As the programming around the exhibition makes clear, she recognized the wisdom of children and the invaluable role of art in nurturing imagination and empathy.The portal as a metaphor is nothing new. Yet, regardless of your age, The Door Is Always Open empowers you to feel its true meaning — gently and generously, as if for the first time.A visitor watches a film about the making of a six-foot-tall Moominhouse model completed in 1979 by Jansson, her partner Pietilä, and Finnish doctor Pentti Eistola, now held by the Moomin Museum in Tampere, Finland.The exhibition extends into the children’s section on the first floor of the library.Biographical installations delve into Jansson’s upbringing in an artistic family, her determination to sustain herself as an artist in a male-dominated market, and her and her partner’s relationship during a time when Finnish law criminalized queerness.Adorable artwork on the walls of the children’s section of the library“Tove refused to conform to the expectations of society, the art world or gender roles, choosing to live her life as she wished,” reads the exhibition text.Tove Jansson and the Moomins: The Door Is Always Open continues at the Brooklyn Public Library’s Central Library through September 30. The exhibition was organized by the Brooklyn Public Library with Moomin Characters, Moomin Arabia, Finnair, and the City of Tampere in Finland, home to the world’s only Moomin Museum.