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Event Archive

Search our archive of past events at the Library! You can search by keyword - such as event title, subject, or presenter name - or by a date range. To search for an exact phrase, put it in quotation marks. If you know the specific date of an event, enter the same date in both fields. Search results will only show events that match ALL entered terms.

Format: 2013-05-23
Format: 2013-05-23
  • Think you’re film literate? Not until you’ve experienced the masterpieces of world cinema presented as part of this new series.
    Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)
    Sunday, December 9, 2012
    Plaza Branch

     

    Twenty Films Essential to Cinema Literacy

    Think you’re film literate? Not until you’ve experienced the masterpieces of world cinema presented as part of this new series. Former Kansas City Star film critic Robert W. Butler (now a member of the Library’s Public Affairs staff) provides opening and closing remarks.

  • Members of the Out Loud Teen Reader's Theatre Group, made up of local adolescents interested in reading and sharing stories out loud, have spent six weeks reading and rehearsing (and having fun) to prepare their own modern twist on Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.
    A Christmas Carol, Reduced
    Friday, December 7, 2012
    Plaza Branch

    Members of the Out Loud Teen Reader's Theatre Group, made up of local adolescents interested in reading and sharing stories out loud, have spent six weeks reading and rehearsing (and having fun) to prepare their own modern twist on Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.

    This event is co-sponsored by Kansas City Repertory Theatre, the Unicorn Theatre, and the Kansas City Actors Theatre.

  • Author/musician/rickshaw driver Eric Brende offers new lyrics for a Christmas favorite that reflect a greener, cleaner, more frugal approach to celebrating the holidays.
    The Twelve Days of Christmas, Revisited - Eric Brende
    Thursday, December 6, 2012
    Plaza Branch

    Ever get the feeling that Christmas has morphed into something it was never supposed to be?

    How did a celebration of joy, togetherness, love, and hope transmute into an extended shopping spree accounting for 25 percent of annual consumer spending? 

  • Organizers demonstrate how the community can help make WikiKC.org a central access point for information about all things Kansas City.
    An Introduction to WikiKC
    Thursday, December 6, 2012
    Central Library

    Organizers for WikiKC – a collaborative, community-driven effort to share local knowledge about Kansas City – will be on hand at the Central Library, 14 W. 10th St. on Thursday, December 6, 2012, from 4-6 p.m. to show interested users how they can contribute to the effort.

    The event will take place in Helzberg Auditorium. Participants are encouraged to bring their own laptop computers or tablets.

  • Drawing on exclusive access to Joseph Kennedy’s papers, historian David Nasaw offers a portrait of a complicated man – financier, filmmaker, kingmaker, and father of a president.
    The Patriarch: The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy - David Nasaw
    Tuesday, December 4, 2012
    Central Library

    Was he an anti-Semite and a Nazi sympathizer? An appeaser and isolationist?

    For all his public activities – financier, film producer, kingmaker, father of a president - Joseph P. Kennedy remains an elusive figure. Historian David Nasaw draws on exclusive access to Kennedy’s papers to explore the complicated personality.

    Nasaw is Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. Distinguished Professor of American History at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

  • Keith Eggener explores the heritage of architect Louis Curtiss, the “Frank Lloyd Wright of Kansas City” and a pioneer of the “curtain wall” design that paved the way for the modern skyscraper.
    Louis Curtiss: Kansas City Architect - Keith Eggener
    Sunday, December 2, 2012
    Central Library

    Architectural historian Keith Eggener looks at the heritage of architect Louis Curtiss (1865-1924), often described as “the Frank Lloyd Wright of Kansas City” and a pioneer of the “curtain wall” design featured in his 1909 Boley Building at 11th and Walnut.

    Featuring internal skeletons of steel or concrete and sheathed in lightweight glass, Curtiss’ buildings paved the way for the modern skyscraper.

    Eggener is a professor of American Art and Architecture and director of graduate studies at the University of Missouri-Columbia.

  • Think you’re film literate? Not until you’ve experienced the masterpieces of world cinema presented as part of this new series.
    The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
    Sunday, December 2, 2012
    Plaza Branch

     

    Twenty Films Essential to Cinema Literacy

    Think you’re film literate? Not until you’ve experienced the masterpieces of world cinema presented as part of this new series. Former Kansas City Star film critic Robert W. Butler (now a member of the Library’s Public Affairs staff) provides opening and closing remarks.

  • The Owen/Cox Dance Group offers an entertaining and irreverent updating of the Yuletide favorite featuring new interpretations of Tchaikovsky by some of Kansas City’s best jazz players.
    The Nutcracker and the Mouse King
    Friday, November 30, 2012
    Plaza Branch

    Tchaikovsky's immortal music played in the style of AC/DC?

    The Sugar Plum Fairy as a cross-dressing burlesque performer?

    No, this won't be your mother's Nutcracker.

    With their tongues firmly in cheek, members of Kansas City's Owen/Cox Dance Group usher in the holiday season with The Nutcracker and the Mouse King on Friday, November 30, 2012, at 6:30 p.m. at the Plaza Branch, 4801 Main St.

  • Biographer Jonathan Steinberg allows Otto von Bismarck’s contemporaries to tell the story of this German statesman who united a nation but had only contempt for his fellow man.
    Jonathan Steinberg - Bismarck: A Life
    Thursday, November 29, 2012
    Central Library

    In the late 19th century statesman Otto von Bismarck unified Germany while embodying everything brutal and ruthless about Prussian culture. Biographer Jonathan Steinberg allows Bismarck’s friends and foes to tell the story of this complex giant: a hypochondriac with the constitution of an ox and a brutal tyrant who could easily shed tears.

    Steinberg is the Walter H. Annenberg Professor of Modern European History at the University of Pennsylvania.

  • Michael Scheibach examines how Americans – especially impressionable young people - coped with the threat of nuclear annihilation during the height of the Cold War.
    Michael Scheibach - Living with the Atomic Bomb
    Wednesday, November 28, 2012
    Central Library

    A specialist in the Atomic Age, Michael Scheibach examines how Americans in the 1940s, ‘50s, and ‘60s dealt with the threat of nuclear annihilation with an emphasis on the impact of Civil Defense drills, merchandising campaigns using atomic imagery, and popular entertainments like comic books and science fiction movies.