BPL Presents is BPL’s curated cultural program, with arts and culture offerings including author talks, live performances, music, film and visual art exhibitions that explore the critical issues of our time in Brooklyn and beyond.
Upcoming
CBH Talk | Blackface Minstrelsy and the Racial Foundation of American Musical Culture
anti-racism author talks BPL Presents
In his new book, Blacksound: Making Race and Popular Music in the United States, musicologist Matthew Morrison unpacks the political legacy of blackface minstrelsy, showing not only how blackness was commodified by white people as popular entertainment during the nineteenth century,…
Frank Rich Delivers the 2024 Kahn Humanities Lecture
author talks BPL Presents lectures and discussions
BPL Presents invites you to the 2024 Kahn Humanities Lecture with Frank Rich—a journalist, author, and television producer.A writer-at-large for New York magazine, he was previously chief drama critic and an opinion columnist for The New York Times. In this unique talk, he…
Xochitl Gonzalez on Anita de Monte Laughs Last, with Nurys Pimentel
author talks book discussion BPL Presents
Join New York Times bestselling author Xochitl Gonzalez and BPL's own Nurys Pimentel as they discuss Anita de Monte Laughs Last.
Gonzalez delivers a mesmerizing novel about a first-generation Ivy League student who uncovers the genius work of a female artist decades after her…
CBH Talk | Severe Mental Illness: Our Collective Response and Responsibility
author talks book discussion BPL Presents
Jonathan Rosen’s acclaimed book, The Best Minds: A Story of Friendship, Madness, and the Tragedy of Good Intentions, has helped move the needle on our understanding of severe mental illness and the ways that society -- at the governmental, medical, and individual levels -- has failed…
Lisa Ko & Lisa Hsiao Chen in Conversation
CBH Talk | Natalie Foster and Tressie McMillan Cottom Discuss “The Guarantee”
anti-racism author talks book discussion
The Guarantee asks us to imagine an America where housing, health care, a college education, dignified work, family care, an inheritance, and an income floor are not only attainable by all but guaranteed, by our government, for everyone.
But isn’t this pie-in-the-sky…
Colm Tóibín discusses Long Island with Meghan O'Rourke
CBH Talk | Elizabeth Gloucester, The Most Powerful Black Woman Lost to History
BPL Presents brooklyn history Center for Brooklyn History
Co-presented by the Center for Brooklyn History and The Brooklyn Heights Association
Elizabeth Gloucester, was born into slavery in 1817 in Richmond, Virginia. When she died in Brooklyn Heights six decades later, the Brooklyn Eagle described her as “the wealthiest colored…
Silent Movie Mirror: Harold Lloyd in SPEEDY (1928) with live piano accompaniment by Makia Matsumura
HAROLD LLOYD in SPEEDY (1928) 86 minutes
Lloyd's last comedy to be released in the silent era was shot on location and is a valentine to New York City. He plays Harold "Speedy" Swift, who is baseball-crazy and can't seem to hold a job, but he does find the time to…
Carnegie Hall Citywide: The Met Orchestra Chamber Ensemble
Maggie Smith & Isaac Fitzgerald on You Could Make This Place Beautiful
In her memoir You Could Make This Place Beautiful, poet Maggie Smith explores the disintegration of her marriage and her renewed commitment to herself. The book begins with one woman’s personal heartbreak, but its circles widen into a reckoning with contemporary womanhood, traditional…
CBH Talk | The Brownstone Boys and "For the Love of Renovating"
BPL Presents Center for Brooklyn History conversations
In 2018, Barry Bordelon and Jordan Slocum bought a 130 year-old Brooklyn brownstone and blogged about the trials and triumphs of renovation under the byline “the Brownstone Boys.” The upshot was a devoted following of fellow renovators, a thriving restoration business, and now – a book!…
Joel Whitney presents Flights: Radicals on the Run, with Amitav Ghosh
Joel Whitney's genre-defying nonfiction work Flights creates an archetypal hero’s journey from the stories of progressive creators whose struggle for truth, and for freedom from persecution, sent them into literal and metaphorical exile. Whitney portrays a rich array of refugees all forced to…
Just Conversations | Making NYC Home: The Trials and Triumphs of Asylum Seekers and Migrants
CBH Talk | Voices from New Netherlands: Unsealing the Vrooman Letters
BPL Presents brooklyn history Center for Brooklyn History
The Dutch scholar Frans R.E. Blom had an experience that every historian dreams of. He was the first to open and read sealed documents of historic significance that were centuries old – in his case letters written by Dutch migrants newly settled in the colony of New Netherlands. The…
Film Screening: Shirley
The intimate portrayal of trailblazing political icon Shirley Chisholm (portrayed by Regina King), the first Black Congresswoman and the first Black woman to run for President of the U.S., and the cost of accomplishment for Shirley herself. This film tells the story of Chisholm's boundary-…
Francine Prose Discusses 1974: A Personal History
Francine Prose comes to Brooklyn Public Library to discuss her first memoir, 1974: A Personal History, about the close relationship she developed with activist Anthony Russo, one of the men who leaked the Pentagon Papers--and the year when our country changed.
During her twenties,…
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