History was made on Oct. 24, 2022 when for the first time the image of an Asian American appeared on United States currency. This distinct honor goes to Anna May […]

Budapest, 1944: Vice Consul Carl Lutz and the Swiss Legation of Budapest started the largest diplomatic operation to rescue Jews during WWII. Thanks to an ingenious system of safe-conduct papers […]

During Deeper Lectures Sahar Damoni shares the context and journey that has shaped her life and work as a Palestinian artist in Israel/Palestine, sharing key, life-changing moments that led her […]

Two multi-hyphenate artists share excerpts from their new book projects—Daniel Alexander Jones’ Love as Light and jaamil olawale kosoko’s Black Body Amnesia–discussing the process for creating as a source of […]

The Neiger family was living a peaceful life in the Jewish community of Krakow when the arrival of World War II changed their lives forever. When Nazis forced the family […]

Annelies and Marianne Bernstein were among the 1,700 German Jews in Berlin who survived the Holocaust by posing as non-Jews. Known as “U-boats” in the slang of their time, the […]

A revolutionary new theory and call to action on animal rights, ethics, and law from the renowned philosopher Martha C. Nussbaum. Animals are in trouble all over the world. Whether […]

Reading. A sweeping, unique graphic memoir about an artist’s year abroad in Paris and how it gave way to an all-encompassing love affair and crushing heartbreak as he wrestled with […]

Sarah Morgenthau interviews Andrew Meier about his book, Morgenthau: Power, Privilege, and the Rise of an American Dynasty, a New York Times Editors’ Choice which follows the epic and intimate […]

New conversation series between fiction and non-fiction writers, in which writers discuss the ways in which they grapple with similar subject matter through different lenses, and with different perspectives. The […]

Examine the work of photographers who are lending their voices to defining what it means to be Indigenous today. Photojournalists Donovan Quintero (Navajo), Tailyr Irvine (Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes), […]

Black History Month lecture.

A witty, provocative look inside the tumultuous marriages of five writers, illuminating the creative process as well as the role of money, power, and fame in these complex and fascinating […]

Encanto tells the tale of an extraordinary family, the Madrigals, who live hidden in the mountains of Colombia in a magical house, in a vibrant town, in a wondrous, charmed […]

Black History Month lecture.

On an August night in 1923, Zhu Ziqing and Yu Pingbo, two prominent Chinese writers, took a boat ride along the famed Qinhuai River in Nanjing and each wrote an […]

David Wiener was born on May 30, 1926, in Lodz, Poland, one of Moshe Chaim and Hannah Sur Wiener’s nine children. When he was thirteen, David escaped alone from Lodz, […]

Two of the greatest Jewish voices of the past half-century appear on stage together for the first time in what promises to be a significant public intellectual event. French philosopher, […]

Louis Greenstein, Sufija Abdur-Rahman, and Sara Lippman read from their work during this month's virtual salon.

An incisive, deeply resonant debut novel about a nonconsensual sexual encounter that propels one woman’s final semester at an elite New England college into controversy and chaos—and into an ill-advised […]

An intimate and empowering anthology of essays that explore the changing face of female desire in whip-smart, sensuous prose, with pieces by Tara Conklin, Camille Dungy, Melissa Febos, Lisa Taddeo, […]

Romance novels have historically been written by women, for women and about women. The genre has gone through many iterations over time, from the early romances of Jane Austen to […]

Family lore had it that author Bonnie Siegler’s grandfather Jules crossed paths with Marilyn Monroe in Midtown Manhattan late one night in 1954, her white dress flying up around her […]

During Deeper Lectures Sahar Damoni shares the context and journey that has shaped her life and work as a Palestinian artist in Israel/Palestine, sharing key, life-changing moments that led her […]

Why are queer communities often found at geographic peripheries like the waterfront? What is the connection between drag and the seaport? Join the Seaport Museum for a conversation with drag […]

Black History Month lecture.

Many in the second generation have chosen to write about their experiences as the children of Holocaust survivors. The products of these efforts take many different forms, from personal recollections […]

In the new book Arthur Miller: American Witness from Yale’s Jewish Lives series, distinguished theater critic John Lahr brings a unique perspective to the life of Arthur Miller, the playwright […]

In celebration of Black History Month, join Cornelius Eady, renowned poet, musician, co-founder of Cave Canem, and former Interim Director of Poets House for a reading and talk. Recently he […]

Reading and discussion. The untold story of climate migration in the United States—the personal stories of those experiencing displacement, the portraits of communities being torn apart by disaster, and the […]

Black History Month lecture.

The Rosenstrasse Protest of 1943 was held against the incarceration and potential deportation of roughly 2,000 people who were arrested by the Gestapo on February 27, 1943. With their loved […]

Innovations rarely come from “experts.” When it comes to improbable innovations, a legendary tech VC told Sebastian Mallaby, the future cannot be predicted, it can only be discovered. It is […]

YA launch with Lizzy Mason. In a world that feels distorted by celebrity and the manipulations of social media and public opinion, Natalie and Carter need something real to hold onto. Remind Me to Hate You Later is a moving account of grief, depression, complex relationships, love, and the search for truth.

Join historian and author Claire Bellerjeau as she introduces Elizabeth, or Liss. Enslaved on Long Island, Liss showed great agency when she risked everything to escape with a British commander during the Revolutionary War. Despite her bravery, within weeks of her escape Liss was re-enslaved in British-held Manhattan, where she interacted with Washington’s lead spy, […]

Set in Civil Rights–era Harlem, this novel features shady cops and local gangsters in an entertaining and spellbinding way. Join NYPL staff for a moderated discussion.

Reading. A Bustle, LitHub, Debutiful, and NYLON Most Anticipated Book of 2023. A magnetic and unforgettable story of desire and its complexities, and a powerful reckoning with memory, loss, and longing, Madelaine Lucas’s debut novel, Thirst for Salt, reveals with stunning, sensual immediacy the way the past can hold us in its thrall, shaping who […]

Géraldine Schwarz’s riveting account of her German and French grandparents’ lives during World War II is an urgent warning against forgetting the lessons of history in the dangerous rise of far-right nationalism in Europe, the UK, and the U.S. In her book, Those Who Forget: My Family’s Story in Nazi Europe, Schwarz weaves together the […]

In this special Saturday afternoon lecture, Julie Flavell will present her book The Howe Dynasty, the first biography of a British "First Family." The Howe family had as much at stake as the Washingtons and Adamses in the conflict that created the United States. Meet the men and women of the aristocratic Howe dynasty and […]

Women's History Month lecture.

Lecture.

Joint book launch. From Sophie Ward, the Booker Prize-longlisted author of Love and Other Thought Experiments, comes a masterful and gripping thriller about truth, silence, and the weight of the past. Meanwhile, Margot Douaihy presents her masterful debut, Scorched Grace in which Sister Holiday, a chain-smoking, heavily tattooed, queer nun, puts her amateur sleuthing skills […]

An American Renaissance: Beaux-Arts Architecture in New York City, written by Phillip James Dodd with photography by Jonathan Wallen, is a sumptuous book on an era – roughly from the 1870s to the 1930s – when New York acquired and displayed its wealth and sophistication with complete confidence. The titans of American finance and industry […]

For this month's Non-Fiction/Fiction conversation series Join Sarah Schulman and K.M. Soehnlein in commemorating the 30-year anniversary of ACT UP.

John Sibley Williams, Barbara Graham, and Sergio Troncoso read from their work during this month's virtual salon.

With its gleaming shopping centers and refurbished row houses, today’s Harlem bears little resemblance to the neighborhood of the midcentury urban crisis. In The Roots of Urban Renaissance: Gentrification and the Struggle over Harlem, first published in 2017 by Harvard University Press, Brian D. Goldstein traces Harlem’s Second Renaissance to a surprising source: the radical […]

In this lecture, Ken Scarlett will discuss the British Southern Strategy for conquering America and extinguishing the American Revolution. He will discuss the role of a quisling in the framing of their base strategy and how those plans were completely defeated culminating with the forced British evacuation from Charleston, South Carolina (Victory Day). Ken will […]

Brooklyn born novelist, poet, educator and international speaker, Ellease Ebele N. Oseye, whom Maya Angelou described as "a seer of the interior landscape," has been teaching literature of African peoples at Pace University for 48 years. She has also taught at Borough of Manhattan Community College for twenty years. Professor Oseye's novel, Let the Lion […]

In commemoration of the twentieth anniversary of the American war in Iraq, join us for an informal and open discussion about the war through political cartoons. In addition, we can explore how concepts such as the "Turner's Frontier Thesis," "Entitlement to Greatness," "The End of History" help explain the American support for military interventionism and […]

In commemoration of the twentieth anniversary of the American war in Iraq, join us for an informal and open discussion about the war through political cartoons. In addition, we can explore how concepts such as the "Turner's Frontier Thesis," "Entitlement to Greatness," "The End of History" help explain the American support for military interventionism and […]

Reading and discussion. A young woman finds herself in the crosshairs of powerful and very dangerous enemies when she travels to Cairo to uncover the truth about her brother’s mysterious death in this smart, atmospheric, and propulsive literary thriller from the acclaimed author of A Beautiful Crime and Orient

The Sassoons, known as “the Rothschilds of the East,” were one of the richest families in the world during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Baghdadi Jewish family built a vast financial and trade empire that spanned continents, became members of British Parliament, and owned some of Britain’s leading newspapers. In his new book The […]

In this program, poet David Mills will read from and reflect upon the research behind his poetry collection, Boneyarn, a book of poems about slavery in New York City. For this reading, Mr. Mills will focus on the poems about enslaved women in his collection. The collection also includes a suite of poems dedicated to […]

Dr. Gisella Perl was a Hungarian Jewish gynecologist who was imprisoned at Auschwitz. While there, she acted to address the terrors that were visited upon women by the Nazi regime, as happened in all concentration camps. If a woman was discovered to be pregnant, she was often beaten or killed; Dr. Perl vowed to help […]

Book discussion group. All are welcome.

Delve into the events leading up to the Alhambra Decree and what happened to the Jewish community in the wake of the edict in this panel discussion. On March 31, 1492, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain issued the Alhambra Decree, also known as the Edict of Expulsion, which gave Jews until the end […]

Lecture. Between 1776 and 1783, Great Britain hired more than thirty thousand German soldiers to fight in its war against the American rebels. Collectively known as Hessians, the soldiers and accompanying civilians, including hundreds of women and children, spent extended periods of time in locations as dispersed and varied as Canada in the North and […]

Artificial intelligence (AI) has impacted many industries around the world—banking and finance, pharmaceuticals, automotive, medical technology, manufacturing and retail. But it has only just begun its odyssey toward cheaper, better and faster predictions that drive strategic business decisions. When prediction is taken to the max, industries transform, and with such transformation comes disruption. What is […]

Livestreamed. Thirty-five years after this landmark of urban history – originally titled We're Still Here in a 1986 first edition – Jill Jonnes continues to chronicle the rise, fall, rebirth, and ongoing revival of the South Bronx. The once-thriving New York City borough, ravaged in the 1970s and ’80s by disinvestment and fires, then heroically […]

Lecture. China’s growth over the past four decades has positioned state capitalism as a durable foil to the orthodoxy of free markets, to the confusion of many in the West. How are capitalism and entrepreneurship practiced in Xi’s “China Model”? How much of the Chinese economic miracle could be credited to Maoist ideology? What implications […]

Founded in 1420, the Forbidden City in Beijing had served as the center of Chinese royal power for five centuries. Following the collapse of the Qing Dynasty in 1911, the imperial complex had been turned into the Palace Museum in 1925. In recognition of the role it has played, The 178-acre (72-hectare) compound with its […]

Abdul Ali, Hananah Zaheer and Rosalia Scalia read from their work during this month's virtual salon.

In the summer of 1781, after spying on the British troops in Manhattan for six weeks, General Washington and General Rochambeau made a critical decision. They would not attack the British in New York but instead would take their troops across the Hudson River and march to Yorktown, Virginia to confront General Cornwallis’ army in […]

In Our Shoes: On Being a Young Black Woman in Not-So "Post-Racial" America is a memoir in essays about young Black women and the stereotypes and preconceived notions they are expected to live up to, examined through the lens of Brianna Holt’s lived experience and pop culture to help readers unlearn their biases and expand […]

Inspired by the adventurous spirit of The NYRB Classics series, NYRB Poets features the work of poets from around the world, classical and modern, ancient and contemporary, in elegant, pocket-size editions. We’re celebrating their 10th anniversary by highlighting the many works of poetry in translation published by NYRB Poets. We will be joined by some […]

The 80th anniversary of the beginning of the momentous Warsaw Ghetto Uprising is on April 19th this year. In this talk, Dr. Zachary Mazur will reflect on the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising as a powerful example of Jewish resistance and action in the face of Nazi oppression during the Holocaust. Mazur’s presentation draws upon never-before-seen sources […]

In May 1923, when Shanghai publisher and Chicago Tribune reporter John Benjamin Powell bought a first-class ticket for the Peking Express, he pictured an idyllic overnight journey on a brand-new train of unprecedented luxury—exactly what the advertisements promised. Seeing his fellow passengers, including the mysterious Italian lawyer Giuseppe Musso (a confidante of Mussolini and lawyer […]

Screenwriter Lu Wei, often referred to as “China’s top screenwriter,” is the mastermind behind the initial drafts and storylines of some of the most iconic films in Chinese cinema, including “Farewell My Concubine,” “To Live,” “Qin Song,” “Shuangqi Zhen Daoke,” and “Red Cherry.” Despite his instrumental contributions to these films, Lu Wei has remained relatively […]

Art Spiegelman’s Maus remains as poignantly relevant today as it was when it was first published serially beginning in 1980, and then in two book volumes in 1986 and 1991. Among many other reasons for Maus’ present cultural impact, Hillary Chute argues that Spiegelman’s comics narrative reveals the capacity of the medium as a form […]

Maritime-themed book club. In partnership with McNally Jackson Books—located at 4 Fulton Street, just a few doors down from the Museum entrance—Seaport Museum staff and special guests will stir up lively discussions informed by our shared love of literature, history, and preservation. Our literary selections will be announced one month in advance.

Economists endlessly debate the nature of legal tender monetary systems—coins and bills issued by a government or other authority. Yet the origins of these currencies have received little attention. Dror Goldberg tells the story of modern money in North America through the Massachusetts colony during the 17th century. As the young settlement transitioned to self-governance […]

Reading and discussion. Celebrated Cavafy scholar and a noted translator of his work Daniel Mendelsohn will engage in conversation with acclaimed poet Jana Prikryl on Cavafy’s stature as a “poet of the world,” which will consider the poet’s biography, the global influences on his work, as well as the art of translation, and the process […]

Livestreamed. Constructed in eleven months, the 1250-foot Empire State Building, the world's tallest skyscraper from 1931 to 1971, was a marvel of modern engineering. The frame rose more than a story a day; no comparable building since has matched that rate of ascent. The construction was orchestrated by general contractors Starrett Brothers & Eken, premier […]

A moving and wickedly funny memoir about one woman’s life as the daughter of a Warhol superstar and the intimate bonds of mother-daughter relationships.

Emanuel Rosen, author of If Anyone Calls, Tell Them I Died, and Noah Lederman, author of A World Erased: A Grandson’s Search for His Family’s Holocaust Secrets, both reflect on the Holocaust in their writings as descendants of Holocaust survivors. They each explore how losses suffered by one generation, and the holes left by the […]

Reading and discussion. Celebrated Cavafy scholar and a noted translator of his work Daniel Mendelsohn will engage in conversation with acclaimed poet Jana Prikryl on Cavafy’s stature as a “poet of the world,” which will consider the poet’s biography, the global influences on his work, as well as the art of translation, and the process […]

Reading. After years away from her family's homeland, and reeling from a disastrous love affair, actress Sonia Nasir returns to Haifa to visit her older sister Haneen. This is her first trip back since the second intifada and the deaths of their grandparents: while Haneen made a life here commuting to Tel Aviv to teach […]

In the 1920s, Berlin was home to a thriving transgender community, with trans-focused magazines, famous drag clubs, and Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institute for Sexual Science, where some trans people went for gender-affirming care. Hitler’s rise to power in 1933 changed everything. In this talk, Laurie Marhoefer (he/they) explores what happened trans people under the Nazi state, […]

Spend the evening in Battery Park City listening to eclectic voices presented by Asian American Writers’ Workshop. This event will be a reading with a conversation with poets on their ruminations and thoughts on love, queer and otherwise. The lineup will feature Wo Chan, Jasmine Reid, Xan Forest Phillips, and Devyn Manibo.