The society is housed in the former home of Horace Greeley, the founder of The New York Herald Tribune, and a visitor must walk upstairs and through Greeley’s study, past his desk and old typesetting equipment, to see the exhibition. It seems fitting that one visionary publisher should play host to another.

Image Reader’s Digest, which DeWitt Wallace founded in the 1920s, had one of the first corporate art collections, including a Renoir. Credit... Collection of Reader's Digest

DeWitt Wallace, the founder of the Digest, had what at the time was a revolutionary idea. In the early 20th century, he believed that people were overwhelmed by too much information and needed help sorting it out. He began culling what he considered the best stories from other publications and condensing them into easily consumable pieces.

Mr. Wallace was initially met with skepticism. The exhibition includes several panels that chart the magazine’s history, and the first, “Birth of an Idea,” includes a letter from the editor of The Red Cross Magazine, John S. Phillips, granting Mr. Wallace permission to excerpt an article. “I have looked over your little publication,” Mr. Phillips writes. “But, personally, I don’t see how it will be able to get enough subscribers to support it.”

The early lives of Mr. Wallace and his wife, Lila Bell Acheson Wallace, are documented, as is their extensive philanthropy and art collection. Mrs. Wallace started collecting art in the 1940s, creating one of the first corporate collections in the country.

At one time, the halls, conference rooms and even the cafeteria at the Digest’s headquarters were decorated with paintings by Renoir, Chagall, van Gogh, Degas and the like. Mrs. Wallace believed it was important that employees be intellectually stimulated in their work environment. Alas, visitors to the exhibit will not see any of these works; most were sold at auction in the late 1990s. Instead, a small pile of 1990 calendars titled “Great Paintings From the Digest Collection” sits on a chair, with a handwritten note reading, “Free — help yourself.”