Signature Event Archive

Search the Signature Event Archive to discover past Library events. Watch videos, hear speaker interviews, and listen to audio recordings of previous presentations. Search by keyword (event title, subject, or presenter name), location or by date range.
Signature Event Video Video Signature Event Audio Audio Signature Event Interview Interviews
E.g., 2019/07/23
E.g., 2019/07/23

Thomas Hart Benton Paints the Ozarks

Missouri Valley Sundays

No artist captured the people and landscape of early 20th-century Missouri more than native son Thomas Hart Benton. As a child growing up in southwest Missouri, and later as an adult, he hiked the Ozarks’ hills and valleys and floated its rivers. Benton’s travels throughout the region are reflected in many of his paintings and writings.

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Steve Sitton, administrator of the Thomas Hart Benton Home & Studio State Historic Site in Kansas City, discusses the inspiration the artist took from his time and experiences in the Ozarks – noted in a 1971 Environmental Protection Agency film, A Man and a River, about a Benton float trip on the Buffalo River in Arkansas.
Sunday, July 21, 2019
Program: 
2:00 pm
Central Library
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Pissarro III Launch

For Benjamin Todd Wills, art is born of curiosity as well as creativity.

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Benjamin Todd Wills discusses his airborne Pisarro missions, which use variations in altitude and speed and interactions with light, wind, and moisture to create images recalling the brush strokes of some of history’s great impressionists. The Kansas City artist invites his audience to join him in launching the third craft in his “aeronautic visual art program” from the Central Library’s fifth-floor Rooftop Terrace.
Saturday, July 20, 2019
Program: 
12:00 pm
Central Library
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Galaxy Quest (1999)

2019 Off-the-Wall Film Series: Well (Multi)versed
Hollywood actors from a Star Trek-like TV show (Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver, Alan Rickman, Tony Shalhoub, and Sam Rockwell) get mistaken for actual galactic adventurers when real aliens conscript the crew to help defend the universe against reptilian invaders.

Doors open: 8 p.m.  •  Program: 8:45 p.m.
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Hollywood actors from a Star Trek-like TV show (Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver, Alan Rickman, Tony Shalhoub, and Sam Rockwell) get mistaken for actual galactic adventurers when real aliens conscript the crew to help defend the universe against reptilian invaders.
Friday, July 19, 2019
Program: 
8:00 pm
Central Library
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Ralph Steadman: Proud to be Weirrd

Anita O’Brien, an original co-curator of the Library’s special traveling exhibit, Ralph Steadman: A Retrospective, discusses the work and life of the distinctive artist best known for his longtime creative relationship with gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson.
 
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Anita O’Brien, an original co-curator of the Library’s special traveling exhibit, Ralph Steadman: A Retrospective, discusses the work and life of the distinctive artist best known for his longtime creative relationship with gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson.
Wednesday, July 17, 2019
Reception: 
6 pm
Program: 
6:30 pm
Central Library
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Event Audio

Flying Debris Show

Friday Night Family Fun
Kansas native Richard Holmgren fills his comedy variety show with zany stunts, amusing tricks, audience participation—and always an inspirational message. It’s part of the Library’s 2019 Summer Reading Program, Dare to Discover.

Appropriate for all ages.
 

***PLAZA BRANCH PARKING ADVISORY***

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Kansas native Richard Holmgren fills his comedy variety show with zany stunts, amusing tricks, audience participation—and always an inspirational message. It’s part of the Library’s 2019 Summer Reading Program, Dare to Discover. Appropriate for all ages.
Friday, July 12, 2019
Program: 
6:30 pm
Plaza Branch
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Remembering Emmett Till

Drive through the Mississippi Delta today, and you’ll find it dotted with memorials to major figures and events from the civil rights movement. Most chilling, perhaps, are those recalling the 1955 murder of Emmett Till, a tragedy of hate and injustice that became a milestone in the fight for racial equality.

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The University of Kansas’ Dave Tell discusses his new book Remembering Emmett Till, which looks at the conflicted backstory of a growing array of memorials recalling the grisly 1955 murder of Emmett Till. Turns out there’s money to be made in luring civil rights tourists. Politics play a role. And persistent vandalism of the signs and monuments betrays enduring racism.
Thursday, July 11, 2019
Program: 
6:30 pm
Plaza Branch
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Event Audio

KC Fringe Festival Preview

Nearing the start of the 15th annual KC Fringe Festival—a two-week performing and visual arts extravaganza spread across multiple Kansas City venues—some of its hottest acts deliver a special preview.

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Nearing the start of the 15th annual KC Fringe Festival – a two-week performing and visual arts extravaganza spread across multiple Kansas City venues – some of its hottest acts deliver a special preview. Included: a Right Between the Ears radio play (Fantasmo vs. the Vampire Women).
Wednesday, July 10, 2019
Program: 
6:30 pm
Central Library
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Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet

Writer Claire L. Evans, a contributor to Vice, The Guardian, and Wired and former editor of the multiplatform Motherboard, spotlights the unsung female visionaries who’ve helped write the story of the internet and related technology in a discussion of her book Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet.
 
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Writer Claire L. Evans, a contributor to Vice, The Guardian, and Wired and former editor of the multiplatform Motherboard, spotlights the unsung female visionaries who’ve helped write the story of the internet and related technology in a discussion of her book Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet.
Monday, July 8, 2019
Reception: 
6 pm
Program: 
6:30 pm
Central Library
Event Audio

Orz Boyz

Kansas City engages in educational, cultural, and commercial exchanges with a dozen sister cities across the globe, in part through the annual Kansas City Sister Cities World Cinema Series.

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The Kansas City Sister Cities World Cinema Series opens its six-film lineup with a 2008 Taiwanese drama about two troublemaking schoolboys, each with grownup-size challenges, who bond over their belief in an imaginary, escapist world called Orz. A post-screening discussion is led by a scholar/expert on Taiwanese culture and history and the film’s subject matter. Recommended for ages 18 and up.
Saturday, July 6, 2019
Program: 
11:00 am
Plaza Branch
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Mesner Puppet Theater: The Cat Came Back

Friday Night Family Fun

Based on the folk song made popular by children’s performer Fred Penner, this performance tells the tale of Old Mister Johnson and a mysterious cat that just won’t stay away. Give it to somebody else. Send it to outer space. The kitty keeps coming back.

Appropriate for all ages.
 

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Based on the folk song made popular by children’s performer Fred Penner, this performance tells the tale of Old Mister Johnson and a mysterious cat that just won’t stay away. Give it to somebody else. Send it to outer space. The kitty keeps coming back. For all ages.
Friday, June 28, 2019
Program: 
6:30 pm
Plaza Branch
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