Previous Special Events

This heady mashup of mad scientist horror story, sexual fantasy, revenge yarn, and existential escape caper from director Pedro Almodovar is simultaneously creepy and beautiful.

Vera (Elena Anaya) is a prisoner in the clinic of an obsessive plastic surgeon (Antonio Banderas) who inch by inch, surgery by surgery is turning her into the most beautiful woman in the world.

Who is Vera? Where did she come from? And just what does she mean to the outwardly rational but emotionally tormented doctor? Is it love…or something else?

International Jugglers Association team champion Brian Wendling tosses his juggling skills and audience antics into high-energy fun! Give Brian three or more objects, and he’ll juggle them. Add three or more spectators, and you’ll wonder if he’s juggling the objects or the people!

Participate in a lively family show suitable for all ages.

Julia Hill spent nearly 60 years at the forefront of the battle for civil rights and equality. Now she participates in a public conversation with educator Mary Ann Wynkoop, discussing her own story as a Kansas City woman who made a difference.

Hill recently retired from the board of the local NAACP, which she once led. Her history as an activist includes protesting against segregated lunch counters in downtown department stores and presiding over the Kansas City School Board.

Unions have been blamed for budget deficits and for pampering workers with high pay and cushy benefits. Labor leader Bill Fletcher, Jr. tackles those accusations in his book “They’re Bankrupting Us!” He traces the roots of anti-union myths, examines the movement’s missteps and lists significant labor contributions like the minimum wage and 40-hour work week.

This annual film series returns for an examination of Kansas City’s own home-grown cinema auteur, Robert Altman.

The mutually supportive but tortured relationship between the troubled artist Vincent Van Gogh (Tim Roth) and his brother Theo (Paul Rhys) is the subject of this drama, which according to critic Roger Ebert “generates the feeling that we are in the presence of a man in the act of creation.”

Rated PG-13; 138 minutes.

Children and parents are invited to be part of monthly interactive story times presented by the Coterie Theatre. Coterie Theatre artists read from favorite children's books while audience members enjoy an opportunity to "jump into the story" and then participate in an improvised story of their own making.

Despite some outrageous humor, this is a sincere and ultimately heart-wrenching drama from Pedro Almodova that won an Oscar for best foreign language film.
A Madrid nurse (Cecilia Roth), devastated by the death of her teenage son, becomes surrogate mother to an extended family of misfit women: a pregnant nun (Penelope Cruz), a transsexual prostitute (Antonia San Juan), and a lesbian actress (Marisa Paredes).

Come out and enjoy a concert by one of Kansas City’s leading family entertainers.

Jim Cosgrove, local kid rocker and Library favorite, gives a high-energy performance that carries the message that resonates with people young and old: “Hang on to the wonder of youth and love yourself, your neighbor, and the earth.”

Appropriate for all ages.

Swiss architect Beat Kämpfen doesn’t just design self-sustained, solar-powered buildings. In the 2013 Regnier Lecture he takes that idea a step further, describing plus-energy buildings that not only meet the needs of their owners and operators but generate surplus energy that can be returned to the grid.

Kämpfen, this year’s Regnier Distinguished Visiting Chair at Kansas State University, is principal of Büro für Architektur (Office for Architecture) in Zürich, Switzerland.

As 1862 began the U.S. government was overwhelmed, the Treasury was broke, and the Confederacy was winning on the battlefield. A year later, under the leadership of an unschooled country lawyer, the tide had turned.

Drawing from his book Rise to Greatness: Abraham Lincoln and America’s Most Perilous Year, journalist/historian David Von Drehle explains how Lincoln fashioned a victory and set the blueprint for modern America.

Von Drehle has written for the Washington Post and Time magazine; among his books is Why They Fought: The Real Reason for the Civil War.