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
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Upcoming
2022 Night of Ideas
WHERE ARE WE GOING?
Brooklyn Public Library | Central Library
SATURDAY, MAY 21, 2022
7 PM - 12 MIDNIGHT
DOORS OPEN AT 6:30 PM
RSVP REQUIRED
RESCHEDULED DATE: Beginnings, Middles, and Ends IV: Evidence of Things Not Seen
This listing is for the rescheduled date of this program. RSVPs from the original date will be honored here.
Beginnings, Middles, and Ends explores the moments that make up our lives in...
Akwaeke Emezi presents You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty
Co-presented by the Brooklyn Public Library (BPL Presents) and Greenlight Bookstore. Feyi Adekola wants to learn how to be alive again. It’s been five years since the accident that killed the love...
Holding Court: The Business Section
Join artist Barnabas Crosby for a conversation with entrepreneurs and creatives who had to reimagine their businesses during the pandemic. The discussion complements his photographic...
Enacting Central Brooklyn: A Theatrical Sharing of Community and History
In May and June the Center for Brooklyn History opens its doors for limited, live programs! Before renovations to our ground floor begin, join us in the building for this special original...
Illuminating Manuscripts & Archives: An Interactive Close Reading of Mali Magic
In this live conversation, leading archivists, librarians, and writers unpack the significance of Malian manuscripts and the vast digitized platform Mali Magic created and offered in...
Lit Prize Post-Script Readings: Chanda Prescod-Weinstein on The Disordered Cosmos
In this series, past winners and nominees of the Brooklyn Public Library’s Literary Prize read and discuss their work. This time, it's Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein.In The Disordered Cosmos...
CBH Talk: When Public Libraries Serve Incarcerated Communities
Since 2014 Brooklyn Public Library has partnered with the NYC Department of Corrections on a program that allows families to visit their incarcerated loved ones via free video calls from the safe...
Jody Oberfelder Projects: Walking to Present
PLEASE NOTE: NEW EVENT DATE/TIME
Join us for a site-inspired walk with dance ensemble Jody Oberfelder Projects. Experience monuments and your own embodiment in a guided group...
Jody Oberfelder Projects: Walking to Present
PLEASE NOTE: NEW EVENT DATE/TIME
Join us for a site-inspired walk with dance ensemble Jody Oberfelder Projects. Experience monuments and your own embodiment in a guided group...
New Voices Festival: Confessions III
The second New Voices Festival explores our most deeply felt emotions. Works by 13 composers, three of them world-premieres, demonstrate the power of song to lay bare our innermost feelings....
CBH Talk: One Man’s Story of Gay Rights and Asylum
In May and June the Center for Brooklyn History opens its doors for limited, live public programs! Before renovations to our ground floor begin, join us in the building for one or more of these live...
Bibliobandido Comes to Brooklyn!
The Bibliobandido (Story Eater) is coming to Brooklyn and he is HUNGRY for children's stories... But it’s OK–we know that Brooklyn has got this covered!
Please join us on Central...
Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa on Woman of Endurance
Co-presented by the New Lots Library, A Woman of Endurance, set in nineteenth-century Puerto Rican plantation society, follows Pola, a deeply spiritual African woman who is captured and later sold...
Indigenous Poets Series: Laura Tohe
For BPL’s June Indigenous Poetry Series, Laura Tohe discusses her work.Join this one-of-a-kind series and find the full roster of 2022 poets here.
Laura Tohe is Diné and the current...
CBH Talk - A Rainbow Spin Through NYC: The LGBTQ Guide to a New York You Didn’t Know
In May and June the Center for Brooklyn History opens its doors for limited, live public programs! Before renovations to our ground floor begin, join us in the building for one or more of these live...
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Past Events
Theater of War: Hercules in Brooklyn, November 2016
Oliver Stone and Ben Wizner, September 2016
Edwidge Danticat and Jacqueline Woodson, April 2016
Alash, January 2016
Slavoj Žižek and Hari Kunzru, November 2016
The Night of the Cookers, February 2016
Viet Thanh Nguyen and Vu Tran, April 2016
Night of Philosophy. January 2017
Salman Rushdie with Joel Whitney, October 2015
John Irving, November 2015
SYBARITE5, February 2016
Yaa Gyasi, June 2016
Brooklyn Public Library gratefully acknowledges the many donors who have provided generous support for BPL Presents programs, including: Cheryl and George Haywood Endowment for Cultural Diversity, Dr. Beverly S. Jacobs, The Kahn Endowment for Humanities Programs, The Miriam Katowitz and Arthur Radin Fund, Los Blancos, Mapleton Endowment, NYU 370 Jay, National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, Sandra and Peter Schubert Endowment Fund, The Morris & Alma Schapiro Fund, The Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation, the Estate of Pearl S. Reuillard in memory of her parents Yetta and Louis Schwartz, Tauck Ritzau Innovative Philanthropy and the Brooklyn Eagles—a group of young and engaged supporters of Brooklyn Public Library and many other generous supporters.
Programs are also supported by Brooklyn Public Library’s Fund for the Humanities which was established through the generous support of the National Endowment for the Humanities, The Hearst Foundation, Inc., Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, The Starr Foundation, the Leon and Muriel Gilbert Charitable Trust, Henry and Lucy Moses Fund, Inc. and a gift in memory of Samuel and Pauline Wine.
