Online lecture. David Gellman explores the contradictions of the Jay family’s attitudes toward slavery over multiple generations. Enslaved and formerly enslaved people living in Jay households experienced isolation, even as members of the Jay family took increasingly radical approaches to law, policy, politics, and advocacy, culminating in John Jay’s signing of An Act for the […]

Reading. Midwood is a restless and intimate volume from a poet James Wood has called “one of the most original voices of her generation.”

In March 1938, German soldiers crossed the border into Austria, which was absorbed into Hitler’s Third Reich. Anticipating this, many Jews fled Austria. Sigmund Freud, however, stayed in his hometown of Vienna, even as prominent people who were close to him undertook a coordinated effort to persuade him to emigrate to England. Join the Museum […]

Maritime-themed book club that meets monthly. Tonight, talk about Dactyl Hill Squad: It’s 1863, and dinosaurs roam the streets of New York as the Civil War rages between raptor-mounted armies down South. Magdalys Roca and her friends from the Colored Orphan Asylum are on a field trip when the Draft Riots break out, and a […]

Between 1945 and the 1960s, the United States government brought more than 1,500 German scientists and engineers into the country through Project Paperclip to work on guided missiles, jet and rocket engines, aerodynamics, aerospace medicine, and submarine technology. The U.S. hoped these specialists could give them an advantage at the end of WWII and into […]

Reading. Registration required. 1863: In a small Creole cottage in New Orleans, an ingenious young Black woman named Stella embroiders intricate maps on repurposed cloth to help enslaved men flee and join the Union Army. Bound to a man who would kill her if he knew of her clandestine activities, Stella has to hide not […]

Professor Sarah Stein has spent a decade seeking out people who experienced fascist rule in Vichy-controlled Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia, Nazi-controlled Tunisia, and Italian-fascist Libya. The diversity and eloquence of their accounts is staggering: theirs are the voices of oracles, critics, resistance fighters, soldiers, narrators, translators, philanthropists, and religious leaders of all genders, races, classes, […]

For descendants of Holocaust survivors who became researchers and scholars, whether they devoted their professional lives to the Holocaust or to other topics, the Holocaust often accompanies their professional lives like a shadow. The new book Researchers Remember: Research as an Arena of Memory for Descendants of Holocaust Survivors, discusses this phenomenon through the stories […]

Reading. In this haunting and noirish novel by a leading author and critic, an Indian writer travels to Berlin and soon finds himself slipping into a fragmented, fuguelike state.

Reading. So often, Africa has been depicted simplistically as a uniform land of famines and safaris, poverty and strife, stripped of all nuance. In this bold and insightful book, Dipo Faloyin offers a much-needed corrective, weaving a vibrant tapestry of stories that bring to life Africa’s rich diversity, communities, and histories.

Reading. A perfect storm of comedic proportions erupts in a DC bookstore over the course of one soggy summer week--narrated by two very different women and punctuated by political turmoil, a celestial event, and a perpetually broken vacuum cleaner.

Free week­end of read­ings, work­shops, open mics, instal­la­tions, per­for­mances, writ­ing activ­i­ties, book­selling, chil­dren’s pro­gram­ming, a beer gar­den, deli­cious food, and a whole lot of lying around in the grass lis­ten­ing to poetry. By unit­ing the largest com­mu­ni­ty of poets in the coun­try and offer­ing a unique set­ting for lit­er­ary activ­i­ty, the New York City Poet­ry […]

Online lecture. Zhao Mengfu (1254-1322), legendary painter, poet, calligrapher and seal maker of the early Yuan Dynasty (1279-1368), is considered as one of the greatest and most influential masters of art and literature in China. His special brand of calligraphic style, with fluidity, strength and grace, earned him the honorific title of the “School of […]

In Freedomland, Annemarie Sammartino tells Co-op City's story from the perspectives of those who built it and of the ordinary people who made their homes in this monument to imperfect liberal ideals of economic and social justice. Located on the grounds of the former Freedomland amusement park on the northeastern edge of the Bronx, Co-op […]

China has been on the spotlight for its rapid urbanization and tremendous economic growth. Big cities form a major theme in the mainstream Chinese film industry. On September 13, we will explore a different China —far from the bright lights of Shanghai and Beijing—with independent film scholar Karen Ma and Columbia University professor Richard Peña […]

Lunchtime talk with UCLA Law Professor James Park, author of the forthcoming book The Valuation Treadmill: How Securities Fraud Threatens the Integrity of Public Companies, who will discuss the history of securities fraud regulation from the 1960s until the present. Public companies now face constant pressure to meet investor expectations. The typical public company must […]

Join us at the Museum for a conversation with photographer Martin Schoeller and Sara Softness, the Museum’s Curator of Special Projects. They will discuss the Museum’s new exhibition, Survivors: Faces of Life After the Holocaust, Martin’s acclaimed work, and what inspired him to create this moving instillation. The exhibition will be on view before and […]

In the face of unfathomable horror, fleeting moments of bravery and generosity remind us of our capacity for courage and compassion, even under the most harrowing of circumstances. Seventy-seven years after the Holocaust, a new animated trilogy from Humanity in Action brings three such histories to life. The three films in the series – Voices […]

Lunchtime talk. A climate catastrophe can be avoided, but only with a rapid and sustained investment in companies and projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions. To the surprise of many, this has already begun. Investors are abandoning fossil-fuel companies and other polluting industries and financing businesses offering climate solutions. Rising risks, evolving social norms, government […]

Reading. In The Unfolding, A.M. Homes' first novel since the Women’s Prize award-winning May We Be Forgiven, she delivers us back to ourselves in this stunning alternative history that is both terrifyingly prescient, deeply tender, and devastatingly funny, meanwhile, New York Times best-selling author Jill Bialosky weaves an explosive tale of art and myth, desire […]

Lunchtime talk. A climate catastrophe can be avoided, but only with a rapid and sustained investment in coMerger arbitrage, or merger arb, is the investment specialty focused on investing in announced mergers, acquisitions, takeovers and other corporate reorganizations. It is a practice that combines math, judgment and a keen understanding of various legal, regulatory and […]

Online lecture in Chinese. On August 11, 1872, a group of 30 Chinese government-sponsored students departed from Shanghai and embarked on a transpacific journey to study in the United States. They were led by Yung Wing, presumably the first Chinese student to have studied in the U.S. from 1847-1854. This history-making journey has since been […]

New, maritime-themed book club. Literary selections are announced one month in advance, and Seaport Museum staff and special guests will stir up lively discussions, informed by a shared love of literature, history, and preservation. 'Saved at the Seawall' is the definitive history of the largest ever waterborne evacuation. Jessica DuLong reveals the dramatic story of […]