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Event Archive

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Format: 2013-05-21
Format: 2013-05-21
  • Carol Inge Hockett examines the influence of commercial art and advertising on the ‘60s Pop Art movement and artists like Andy Warhol, James Rosenquist, Tom Wesselmann, and Claes Oldenburg.
    The Other Mad Men: Pop Art in Perspective
    Tuesday, March 12, 2013
    Plaza Branch

    From the work of former commercial artist and window display designer Andy Warhol to billboard painter James Rosenquist, the American advertising world helped to inform and inspire the Pop Art movement. Arts educator Carol Inge Hockett explores the painting, sculpture, and printmaking of Warhol, Rosenquist, Tom Wesselmann, and Claes Oldenburg, as well as the work of pop poet Ronald Gross.

    Hockett is coordinator of the School and Family Programs at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University and formerly worked at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.

  • Author Pat O’Neill examines the colorful history of the Irish in Kansas City, particularly as it played out on both sides of the law.
    Lawyers, Lawmen, and Outlaws
    Sunday, March 10, 2013
    Central Library

    Pat O’Neill looks at the colorful history of the Irish in Kansas City – particularly as it played out on both sides of the law – in this presentation designed to augment the Library’s current exhibit about the Kansas City Police Department, Kansas City’s Finest.

    O’Neill is a proud son of Erin whose father created the local St. Patrick’s Day Parade. He is the owner of O’Neill Marketing & Event Management, and the author of From the Bottom Up: The Story of the Irish in Kansas City.

  • Think you're film literate? Not until you've experienced the masterpieces of world cinema presented as part of this series.
    THE CIRCUS (1928)
    Sunday, March 10, 2013
    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.

  • Park University’s Courtney Culp discusses the event that led to the arrival of Annie Chambers in Kansas City.
    The Madam's Arrival: Annie Chambers Comes to Kansas City
    Saturday, March 9, 2013
    Westport Branch

    Eighteen-sixty-nine was indeed a year of sweeping changes in Kansas City, Missouri. It introduced the arrival of perhaps the most influential of technological additions ever to be made to the area—the Hannibal Bridge. It also marked the year when Annie Chambers arrived, ready to begin a new career in the thriving town. Both signaled the beginning of a new age in the Midwestern cow town.

  • Kansas City and Seville, Spain, are sister cities. Thus this series of Spanish-language movies by “bad boy” director Pedro Almodovar. He loves women – and makes them the focus of his provocative films.
    "BROKEN EMBRACES" (2009; R)
    Saturday, March 9, 2013
    Plaza Branch

    Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodovar goes into Hitchcock mode for this tale of illicit love and brutal revenge. A film director accepts financing from a ruthless industrialist and falls for the man’s beautiful mistress (Penelope Cruz), who is starring in the movie.
    The story is told in flashback as the director – now blind and surviving by writing screenplays – looks back on the turning point in his life and career.

  • Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Ford discusses his new novel Canada – the story of a teenager who flees his Montana home and begins a new life on the Saskatchewan prairie after his parents are arrested for bank robbery.
    CANADA
    Thursday, March 7, 2013
    Plaza Branch

    In Canada, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Richard Ford introduces us to teenager Del Parsons, who after his parents’ imprisonment for bank robbery flees his Montana home, beginning a new life on the Saskatchewan prairie.

    Ford reads from Canada and holds a conversation with UMKC Writer-in-Residence Whitney Terrell, organizer of the Writers at Work series. Ford is the author of the Bascombe novels, which include The Sportswriter and its sequels, Independence Day and The Lay of the Land.

    Co-sponsored by the Writers at Work Roundtable and the UMKC English Department.

  • Veteran White House journalist Carl M. Cannon takes a look at Michelle Obama, the first African American first lady, a Harvard-trained lawyer, and one of her husband’s most valued political mentors. This presentation is the first in the new series Beyond the Gowns: First Ladies in American History.
    MICHELLE OBAMA
    Wednesday, March 6, 2013
    Plaza Branch

    Veteran journalist Carl M. Cannon discusses the life of first lady Michele Obama on Wednesday, March 6, 2013, at 6:30 p.m. at the Plaza Branch, 4801 Main St.

    Michelle Obama is the 46th first lady of the United States, caretaker of an unpaid position that nevertheless is one of the most powerful in the world. How powerful? Put it this way: Even in this rarified air, Mrs. Obama stands out for her closeness to the president.

  • Author and Princeton University scholar Stacy Wolf examines the evolution of feminist thought and practice – both on stage and in the audience – as it relates to America’s musical theater. Wicked, anyone?
    Changed for Good: A Feminist History of the Broadway Musical
    Tuesday, March 5, 2013
    Plaza Branch

    From Adelaide in Guys and Dolls to Nina in In the Heights and Elphaba in Wicked, female characters in Broadway musicals have belted and crooned their way into the American psyche. Author Stacy Wolf looks not just at female characters but at women performers and creators to chronicle the evolution of feminist thought in this singularly American theatrical form.

    Wolf is a professor of theater and director of the Princeton Atelier at the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University. She is the author of A Problem Like Maria: Gender and Sexuality in the American Musical.

  • The seventh season of the Kansas City Public Library’s Script-in-Hand performances continues with the popular female-focused Women of the Years series. Presented by the Metropolitan Ensemble Theatre.
    I REMEMBER MAMA by John Van Druten
    Sunday, March 3, 2013
    Plaza Branch

    Performed here by the Metropolitan Theatre Ensemble, Mama is based on Kathryn Forbes’ fictionalized memoir of growing up with a loving family of Norwegian immigrants in San Francisco in the early years of the 20th century. First produced on Broadway in 1944 (Marlon Brando originated the role of young Nels), the play offers no earth-shaking dramatic fireworks, yet it became an American classic for capturing the family’s small joys, sorrows, and aspirations.

  • Kansas City and Seville, Spain, are sister cities. Thus this series of Spanish-language movies by “bad boy” director Pedro Almodovar. He loves women – and makes them the focus of his provocative films.
    "THE FLOWER OF MY SECRET" (1995 ; R)
    Saturday, March 2, 2013
    Plaza Branch

    Director Pedro Almodovar has created a traditional “women’s picture” -- but with the sort of twists we expect from the "bad boy" of Spanish cinema. Marisa Paredes plays a writer of romantic best-sellers who finds her marriage falling apart and her career threatened.