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.

Video

Audio

IDEAL Entrepreneurship

Jackie Nguyen

Jackie Nguyen, founder of Café Cà Phê, highlights the second installment of the Library’s four-part series on how to make entrepreneurship in Kansas City more inclusive, diverse, equitable, accessible, and liberating – more IDEAL for all.

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Thursday, May 18, 2023 - 6:00pm

Reception:

5:30pm

Central Library

In Person Event

Online Event

Free-Form Collage Workshop

Craig Auge

Drop in anytime between 1 and 3 p.m. at the Rocky and Gabriella Mountain Gallery for a collage workshop overseen by artist and Library Exhibits Specialist Craig Auge. Take inspiration from 94 works on the walls around you, part of the National Collage Society’s annual Small-Format Exhibition. The workshop is open to both beginning and experienced artists of any age. All materials are provided.

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Saturday, May 13, 2023 - 1:00pm

Central Library

In Person Event

Adventures in Journalism: Reports from a Field

Jay Nordlinger

Jay Nordlinger has gained a reputation for open-mindedness in writing about politics, foreign affairs, and the arts, among other subjects, for National Review. He takes stock of journalism today, examining the roles of reporters, columnists, and editors and the practice of straight vs. opinion journalism. What’s good and bad? And how does one navigate this media environment?

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Wednesday, May 10, 2023 - 6:00pm

Reception:

5:30pm

Central Library

In Person Event

Xi Jinping and Taiwan: Where Is China Headed, and Why?

Geoff Babb, John Modinger, David C. McCaughrin

Conflict and Crisis

In the latest installment of the Library’s Conflict and Crisis series, a panel of military historians and experts from the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College examines the biggest and most dangerous concern in Sino-American relations today: Taiwan and the threat of forced reunification with its neighboring giant, China.

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Tuesday, May 9, 2023 - 6:00pm

Central Library

In Person Event

Online Event

Taking It to the Streets: Rethinking Mobility in America’s Cities

Peter Norton

MAKING A GREAT CITY

In the latest installment of the Library’s Making a Great City series, University of Virginia transit historian Peter Norton examines the need to revise our concept of city streets. They’re now so car- and speed-centric that they deter walking even where it would be a practical (and more affordable and sustainable) mode of everyday mobility.

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Thursday, April 27, 2023 - 6:00pm

Reception:

5:30pm

Plaza Branch

In Person Event

Online Event

An Ordinary Wonder

Buki Papillon, winner of the 2022 Maya Angelou Book Award

Buki Papillon’s acclaimed debut novel An Ordinary Wonder revolves around an intersex Nigerian teenager whose gender at birth is unclear, leading to their incorrect designation as male. Papillon talks to the Library's Kaite Stover about how the book delves into African belief systems, superstitions, and folklore to fully root the tale in the African nation, as well as to humanize and add weight and depth to the character’s challenge.

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Wednesday, April 12, 2023 - 6:00pm

Reception:

5:30pm

Plaza Branch

In Person Event

Online Event

the ripple, the wave that carried me home

Kansas City Repertory Theatre

The Kansas City Repertory Theatre offers the second of two free Library performances of the ripple, the wave that carried me home, a moving exploration of a family’s response to injustice and a daughter’s reckoning with her political inheritance. It’s part of the 2023 KC Rep for All community tour, bringing productions to audiences where they live.

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Wednesday, April 12, 2023 - 6:00pm

North-East Branch

In Person Event

Turning Points: U.S. Grant and the Battle of the Wilderness

Harry S. Laver

Harry S. Laver of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College recounts a critical juncture in the Civil War: the first meeting of its two preeminent commanders, Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee, in the dense Virginia woods in May 1864. Despite heavy casualties, Grant rejected retreat and inspiringly pressed ahead in confronting – and eventually defeating – Lee's army.

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Tuesday, April 11, 2023 - 6:00pm

Plaza Branch

In Person Event

Online Event

the ripple, the wave that carried me home

Kansas City Repertory Theatre

The Kansas City Repertory Theatre offers the first of two free Library performances of the ripple, the wave that carried me home, a moving exploration of a family’s response to injustice and a daughter’s reckoning with her political inheritance. It’s part of the 2023 KC Rep for All community tour, bringing productions to audiences where they live.

Learn More »

Tuesday, April 11, 2023 - 6:00pm

Central Library

In Person Event

Nelly Don: Labor, Unionization, and Community on the Factory Floor

Jane Greer

Missouri Valley Sundays

Drawing from her book Unorganized Women: Repetitive Rhetorical Labor of Low-Wage Workers, 1837-1937, the University of Missouri-Kansas City’s Jane Greer looks at how women working at Kansas City’s Nelly Don Garment Company in the 1930s sought a collective identity as practical and comfortable as the garments they stitched – but resisted union overtures.

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