BPL Presents is BPL’s curated cultural program, with arts and culture offerings including author talks, live performances, music, film and visual art exhibitions that explore the critical issues of our time in Brooklyn and beyond.
Center for Brooklyn History
Brooklyn's culture past and present from the Center for Brooklyn History
Upcoming
Bettina L. Love discusses Punished for Dreaming
Join us for an author presentation and Q&A from Dr. Bettina L. Love. Featured on the Brooklyn Public Library Book Prize 2024 longlist, Love’s PUNISHED FOR DREAMING reckons meaningfully with the impact of 40 years of racist public school policy on a generation of Black lives.
In…
Edwidge Danticat Discusses We’re Alone with Nicole Dennis-Benn
Tracing a loose arc from Edwidge Danticat’s childhood to the COVID-19 pandemic and recent events in Haiti, the essays gathered in We’re Alone include personal narrative, reportage, and tributes to mentors and heroes such as Toni Morrison, Paule Marshall, Gabriel García Márquez, and James Baldwin…
CBH’s Brooklyn Trivia Showdown
Think you know Brooklyn history? Well, it’s time to put that to the test at CBH’s Brooklyn Trivia Showdown! From the rise of the Brooklyn Bridge to the rise of Brooklyn pizza, we’ve got the iconic moments, quirky facts, and bizarre tidbits that make this borough the cultural…
Classical Interludes: Aizuri Quartet and Kinan Azmeh
Five Boroughs Music Festival presents Music and Migration, a collaborative program stemming from a deep friendship between the Aizuri Quartet and the Syrian-American clarinetist and composer Kinan Azmeh. All five of the artists have different personal relationships to and experiences of…
Amitava Kumar Discusses My Beloved Life with Katie Kitamura
An absorbing, exceptionally moving novel that traces the arc of a man’s life, an ordinary life made exceptional by the fact that he has loved and has been loved in turn.
Jadunath Kunwar’s beginnings are humble, even inauspicious. In 1935 in a village near George Orwell’s birthplace, Jadu’…
CBH Talk | Joining the Clubs: Inside the Ethnic Power Centers of 1960s Brooklyn Politics
In 1960s and 70s Brooklyn, the borough's political clubs were the temples of political power. Decisions made in those halls reshaped the borough’s political structures in ways that cleaved along racial and ethnic lines, specifically Irish, Jewish, and Black. Perceived threats became…
Classical Interludes: Harlem Chamber Players
Members of The Harlem Chamber Players -- violinists Ashley Horne and Claire Chan, violist William Frampton, and cellist Wayne Smith -- will perform a concert of works by past and living Black composers as well as a European classic. The full program will be:Joseph Bologne (aka Chevalier…
Tariq Ali Discusses You Can’t Please All with Nermeen Shaikh
Join BPL Presents for a conversation with Tariq Ali on his new memoir You Can't Please All: Memoirs 1980 - 2024.
The revolutionary upsurge of 1968–1975 jump-hopped continents with ease but finally petered out. What happened after is the subject of You Can’t Please All. Tariq Ali recounts a…
Kiss & Paste: A Valentine Collaging Party
Are you cut out for love? Then get ready to create Valentines with vintage vibes!
We’ve curated a romantic selection of images from the CBH collection to help you bring your vision to life. Whether your masterpiece is for a crush, a bestie, or just for fun, join…
CBH Talk | Judith Giesberg Discusses “Last Seen: The Enduring Search by Formerly Enslaved People to Find Their Lost Families”
Join historian Judith Giesberg for a discussion of her groundbreaking book, Last Seen: The Enduring Search by Formerly Enslaved People to Find Their Lost Families, which brings to light the resilient efforts of formerly enslaved people to reunite with family members torn apart by…
CBH Talk | The Honorable Ed Towns in Conversation with Deputy Borough President Kim Council
For five decades former Congressman Ed Towns stood at the center of Brooklyn change as the first African American Deputy Borough president (1976 - 1982) and U.S. Representative for New York’s 10th congressional district (1983 - 2013). Representing historically Black neighborhoods…
Just Conversations | Voices from New York State’s Reparations Commission
About Just ConversationsJust Conversations is a series co-presented by the Center for Brooklyn History and Brooklyn Org that brings into dialogue issues facing our borough, city, and society and gives voice to the change makers who move us towards a more equitable future.This program is the second…
Jessica Valenti on Abortion
In a stirring and succinct examination of post-Roe America, “one of the most successful and visible feminists of her generation” (Washington Post) takes on what’s become the country’s most resonant political issue.
A KIRKUS REVIEWS BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
In her most urgent book yet,…
Classical Interludes: Sonic Spectrum III
Hear a collection of music for winds, percussion, and piano, all written by some of the most exciting composers of today. The concert includes a new work by American composer Elise Arancio, commissioned by CMS.
Sonic Spectrum III
Liza Lim: Ming Qi (Bright Vessel)…
Jamieson Webster Discusses On Breathing with Jia Tolentino
Join BPL Presents and Jamieson Webster, who discusses On Breathing: Care in a Time of Catastrophe, a gorgeous, expansive piece of narrative non-fiction about care, dependence, and what it means to breathe in an age of environmental catastrophe.
A few moments after birth we begin to use our…
Ariel Dorfman Discusses Allegro
This thrilling historical mystery starring Mozart tells of friendship and betrayal, and how music allows us to defy death—from the acclaimed author of Death and the Maiden and The Suicide Museum.
In 1789 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart visits the grave of Johann Sebastian Bach in Leipzig, looking…
Agnes Callard Discusses Open Socrates with Elizabeth Bruenig
BPL Presents partners with the Authors Guild Foundation to co-present Agnes Callard, an iconoclastic philosopher who revives Socrates for our time, showing how we can answer—and, in the first place, ask—life’s most important questions. Callard will be in conversation with Elizabeth Bruenig.
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Greg Grandin Discusses America, América with Francisco Goldman
BPL Presents welcomes the Pulitzer Prize–winning historian, with the first comprehensive history of the Western Hemisphere, a sweeping five-century narrative of North and South America that redefines our understanding of both…
The story of how the United States’ identity was formed is…
Katie Kitamura Discusses Audition
Join BPL Presents as Katie Kitamura takes the Dweck stage to discuss Audition, an exhilarating, destabilizing Möbius strip of a novel that asks whether we ever really know the people we love.
Two people meet for lunch in a Manhattan restaurant. She’s an accomplished actress in rehearsals…
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