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 | 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…
ART EXHIBIT OPENING RECEPTION
MERMAIDS & MORE by MIRIAM RANKIN
Just Conversations | Making NYC Home: The Trials and Triumphs of Asylum Seekers and Migrants
Silent Film Mirror: Buster Keaton in THE CAMERAMAN (1928) with live piano accompaniment by by Makia Matsumura
Buster Keaton in THE CAMERAMAN (1928) 69 minutes
Keaton's next-to-last silent comedy was his first film after leaving the security of his own independent studio to work for the more corporately-minded M-G-M. It takes place in New York City, where his love for Sally (Marceline…
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 with Adrienne Westenfeld
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,…
Argentine Tango Class
Argentine Tango Instructions
Advance registration is required
Silent Film Mirror: Charlie Chaplin in THE CIRCUS (1928) with live piano by Makia Matsumura
Charlie Chaplin in THE CIRCUS (1928) 72 minutes
Chaplin believed his Tramp character should not speak onscreen, and would make two more silent-based movies well into the 1930s. Today's film is his last to be released in the silent era. It finds the Tramp taking refuge in a…
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