Bluford Branch is closed Wednesday, February 1st due to lack of water services.
Signature Event Archive
Search the Signature Event Archive to discover past Library events. Watch videos, hear speaker interviews, and listen to audio recordings of previous presentations. Search by keyword (event title, subject, or presenter name), location or by date range.
This year’s Searching the Psyche Through Cinema series continues with a screening and discussion of Waiting to Exhale (1995, R, 127 min.), which follows the lives of four very different friends working through the struggles and triumphs of everyday life. Co-presented by the Greater Kansas City-Topeka Psychoanalytic Center.
Emanuel Cleaver, Kay Barnes, Mark Funkhouser, Sly James, Nick Haines
Four former Kansas City mayors gather for the first time in an extraordinary forum co-presented by the Citizens Association of Kansas City and Kansas City PBS. They take stock of our city today while looking back at what their administrations were able to achieve, what they’d hoped to accomplish but couldn’t, and why some perennially promised things are so hard to deliver.
In a discussion of his definitive biography, bestselling author Jeff Pearlman discusses the life and exploits of one of the greatest athletes in history. Bo Jackson starred in baseball (with the Kansas City Royals) and football, and Nike’s “Bo knows” commercials helped cement him as a cultural icon. A career-shortening injury only fed his legend: What more might he have done?
Lucille Windsor, Paul Hindemith, Lamar Sims, Robert Gibby Brand
Four acclaimed Kansas City-area performers join a special musical celebration of Venice, Italy, and all who’ve fallen into its incurable thrall over the centuries. The 70-minute program spotlights the works of classical composers and popular songwriters who lived, worked, and played in Venice – from Giuseppe Verdi and Gioachino Rossini to Cole Porter and Noel Coward.
The annual Searching the Psyche Through Cinema series, which looks to the arts to illuminate our understanding of ourselves, returns in partnership with the Greater Kansas City-Topeka Psychoanalytic Center. Leading off: a screening of Silver Linings Playbook (2012, R, 122 min.) and discussion led by psychoanalyst John Whipple and film critic Beck Ireland.
In the launch of a new series, Turning Points, in partnership with the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, military historian David W. Mills looks at America’s decision to provide desperately needed food relief to vanquished Germans at the end of World War II. It eventually turned Germany into a close ally, which it remains to this day.
Drawing from her KC 1900 blog series, local author and historian LaDene Morton details how Kansas City rallied from a devastating setback – a fire in April 1900 that destroyed the grand new convention hall set to house the Democratic National Convention. It was rebuilt in time to welcome 11,000 delegates and spectators at the convention’s opening three months later, on July 4.
Military historian Christopher Johnson assesses the 2003 film The Last Samurai – starring Tom Cruise – and its depiction of social, political, and military transition in Japan in the 1870s in the latest installment of the Library’s Hollywood vs. History series in partnership with the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College.
Think barbecue is all Kansas City has to offer? Matt Stewart says that’s far, far from true. The Fox4 News reporter discusses his new book Unique Eats and Eateries of Kansas City with the Library’s Anne Kniggendorf, exploring a few of the 86 best – and most unusual – dishes and restaurants the city has to offer.
John Musgrave has been candid about his Vietnam War experiences and related struggles, notably as a featured voice in Ken Burns’ documentary series The Vietnam War and most recently in an acclaimed memoir, The Education of Corporal John Musgrave. In a special Library event, the Independence native discusses the book and his life during and since the war.