Events

The Library is here to help you learn and connect with your community through our wide array of free events, programs, classes, book clubs, and more. Please check listings to confirm if a program is in-person, online, or outdoors.

If you have any questions about the events listed below, please contact the branch for more information. See here for service updates at the Library.

Discover our wide array of free online events.

Audience:
Borough:
(mm/dd/yyyy)

14 events found.

Date/TimeTitle/DescriptionLocationAudience
Tue, April 2
@ 6:30 PM
Talks at the Schomburg
IN-PERSON Marilyn Nance, photographer for the US delegation of FESTAC ’77 and author of Last Day in Lagos, Kwame S. Brathwaite, son of Black is Beautiful photographer Kwame Brathwaite and director of the Kwame Brathwaite Archive, and Dorothy M. Davis, president of Griffith J. Davis Photographs and Archives, will join Schomburg Photographs and Prints Division’s La Tanya Autry, for a conversation about stewarding archives made over the last five decades by culture shifting photographers and manag…
Schomburg Center for Research in Black CultureAdults,

50+,

Book Lovers
Thu, April 4
@ 6:30 PM
Conversations in Black Freedom Studies
About This Event VIRTUAL Join the virtual conversation as scholars Blair LM Kelley (Black Folk: The Roots of the Black Working Class), Ava Purkiss (Fit Citizens: A History of Black Women’s Exercise from Post-Reconstruction to Postwar America), Theresa Runstedtler (Black Ball: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Spencer Haywood, and the Generation That Saved the Soul of the NBA), and Bobby J. Smith II (Food Power Politics: The Food Story of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement) discuss the everyday lives of…
ONLINEAdults,

50+,

Book Lovers
Wed, April 10
@ 6 PM
Talks at the Schomburg
About this event IN-PERSON The Black Curators Matter Oral History Project is an intergenerational dialogue series between Black visual art curators who have made an outstanding impact across the arts and cultural world, presented by the Department of African American and African Diaspora Studies (AAADS) at Columbia University, in collaboration with the Columbia Center for Oral History Research. The final in a series of public conversations about Black visual art curators, this evening's progr…
Schomburg Center for Research in Black CultureAdults,

50+,

Book Lovers
Tue, April 16
@ 3:30 PM
This event will take place in person at Harry Belafonte 115th Street Library. Join Keisha TK Dutes, audio and podcast producer, for a listening party! We'll listen to her original podcast The Weeksville Project, which chronicles the life of a family living in Weeksville, Brooklyn's free Black community of the 19th century, beginning with their patriarch Cumberland’s arrival after escaping slavery. Each of the three short stories focuses on a moment of time and a key member of that generation.…
Harry Belafonte 115th Street LibraryTeens/Young Adults (13-18 years)
Thu, April 18
@ 1 PM
World Literature Festival
Award-winning chefs and writers explore the rich history of Afro-Diaspora cuisine. This event will be taking place online via Google Meet. FEATURING Lazarus Lynch Lyana Blount Anthony Curry (moderator) Join Countee Cullen Library for an author talk Breaking Bread over the Black Soul, an event celebrating the rich tapestry of Afro-Diaspora cuisine and its profound cultural significance. This program invites you to delve into the heart and soul of food, where every dish tells a story of r…
OnlineAdults,

50+,

Book Lovers,

Businesspeople
Sat, April 20
@ 1:30 PM
This event will take place in person at the Morningside Heights Library. Join the Morningside Heights Library for our Black Historical Fiction Decades Reading Challenge Open Discussion group. This group is a reading challenge and a book club series that encourages learning about and exploring different decades of Black history throughout the twentieth century. The group meets ten times throughout the year, each meeting focusing on a specific decade. After a participant registers for the event,…
Morningside Heights Library, Community RoomAdults
Thu, April 25
@ 5:30 PM
World Literature Festival
Escritores latinx queer dinámicos hablarán sobre sus caminos que los llevaron hacia los Estados Unidos. Acompaña a Iván Monalisa Ojeda, autor y artista transgénero latinx de dos espíritus, y a Jaquira Díaz, escritora de ficción, ensayista, periodista, crítica cultural y profesora puertorriqueñ, en conversación con la Dra. Rosalina Díaz, antropóloga e investigadora en temas de género, identidad y poder en la sociedad taína, quienes hablarán sobre su labor literaria e influencias. Para asi…
Bronx Library Center, Auditorium Immigrants
Mon, May 6
@ 6:30 PM
7 Stories Up at SNFL
Author Chris Payne joins us to discuss his book, Where Are Your Boys Tonight? The Oral History of Emo's Mainstream Explosion 1999-2008, with writer Leslie Simon. This event will take place in person at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library on the 7th Floor. A “vivid and breathless” (Billboard) oral history of emo’s takeover from 1999 to 2008, featuring My Chemical Romance, Fall Out Boy, Paramore, Panic! At the Disco, Taking Back Sunday, Jimmy Eat World, Dashboard Confessional. If Meet…
Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library (SNFL), Event CenterAdults,

50+,

College & Graduate Students
Sat, May 18
@ 2 PM
Before his untimely passing, Talib Rasul Hakim (1940-88) was already becoming a widely influential composer, one who suffused his music for chamber and orchestral forces with intense deliberation, considered improvisations, dynamic rhythmic profiles, and purposeful silences. Hakim saw his compositions as more than just music: he saw music performance as the equivalent to an almost religious awakening. In the 1978 book The Black Composer Speaks, Hakim maintained, “It is hoped that whenever [my] m…
New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center, Bruno Walter AuditoriumAdults
Wed, May 22
@ 5:30 PM
The Bowery is one of NYC’s oldest and most architecturally diverse streets. Stretching 1.25 miles from Chatham Square to Cooper Square, it has been a Native American footpath, a Dutch farm road and the site of NYC’s first free Black settlement as well as an early social hub for the working class, gangs, gays, and immigrant Irish, Italians, Chinese, Jews and Germans. Stephen Crane once called it “the most interesting place in New York.” In this talk, David Mulkins, the President of the Bowery…
Ottendorfer LibraryAdults,

50+,

College & Graduate Students
Wed, May 29
@ 1 PM
David Vaughan's The Dance Historian Is In
Register For this Dance Historian Is In, former Joffrey Ballet dancer Trinette Singleton presents touchstones from the Joffrey Ballet’s history with works from the repertoire and the Joffrey Methodology. Beginning with the early 1960s following the Joffrey Ballet’s split with Rebecca Harkness, Singleton discusses the events of that first year as the company began to establish itself. Singleton highlights various works that went into the repertoire during that period, along with the 1967 additio…
New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center, Bruno Walter Auditorium
Online
Adults
Mon, June 17
@ 11 AM
Genealogy Essentials
Discover genealogical resources at the New York Public Library with an exploration of vital records and the census. First, learn how to search for and find your ancestors on birth, marriage, and death certificates. Next, we'll explore the history of the U.S. Federal Census, explore what other types of census records exist, and offer a variety of search strategies to use in your genealogy research. This class is online only. To join this class, Register here Captioning is provided. New…
Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, Irma and Paul Milstein Division of United States History, Local History and Genealogy
Online Only
Adults
Tue, June 18
@ 4 PM
This program will be held in person at Bronx Library Center. Come test your knowledge and join us for a fun-filled hour of Black history inspired trivia. There is no registration, however space is limited and patrons will be permitted entry on a first come, first served basis. *Possible prizes for participants.*
Bronx Library CenterAdults
Wed, June 26
@ 1 PM
David Vaughan's The Dance Historian Is In
Register Dance educator and former member of the Eleo Pomare Dance Company, Dyane Harvey Salaam presents this month’s The Dance Historian Is In, along with company members Dr. Carl Paris, PhD and Robin Becker. They will venture into the mind and soul of master creative Eleo Pomare—the man, the artist, and the maker of artists. Born in Colombia, Pomare was a dancer and choreographer who trained with renowned choreographers, including José Limón, and established the Eleo Pomare Dance Company in 1…
New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center, Bruno Walter Auditorium
Online
Adults