Allan Meltzer, the leading historian of the nation’s central bank, and Tom Hoenig, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, join Crosby Kemper III, director of the Kansas City Public Library for a public conversation on the past, present, and future of the Federal Reserve System. The program takes place on Wednesday, July 21, at 6:30 p.m. at the Central Library, 14 W. 10th St.

Meltzer, a professor of political economy at Carnegie Mellon University, is the author of the two-volume A History of the Federal Reserve, covering the years 1913-51 and 1951-86. Hoenig, chief executive of the Tenth District Federal Reserve Bank since 1991, is an economist and currently serves as a voting member of the Federal Open Market Committee.

The program coincides with the unveiling of the painting, Signing of the Federal Reserve Act by Willard G. Kurtz that is on temporary display at the Central Library. The painting depicts President Woodrow Wilson signing the legislation creating the Federal Reserve Bank on December 13, 1913, in the presence of those most responsible for the act’s passage. Painted in 1923, Signing of the Federal Reserve Act is more than six feet high and nearly nine feet long. It is on a six month loan from the Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library and Museum in Staunton, Va.