Boston Athenaeum

Boston Athenaeum

By Boston AthenaeumSociety & Culture
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Boston Athenaeum episodes

  • Dr. Adam Koppel, Dr. David Meeker, Dr. Craig C. Mello, and Carl Zimmer : Biotechnology Panel
    May 21, 2018 at the Boston Athenæum.
    Join us for a panel discussion that will explore exciting developments in the life sciences. The latest trends in gene therapy, gene editing, and RNA interference--to name a few subjects--will be examined. The panelists will also trace the journey of consumer and clinical products from the spark of an idea to product-testing in the lab. Other questions for discussion include: What are current trends in the life sciences and how can they be extended into the future? And what impact will those trends have on the greater Boston area? Come learn about this fascinating field and its impact on both an individual and societal level.
    Carl Zimmer, esteemed science writer for the New York Times, will serve as moderator for the panel comprised of three outstanding speakers: Nobel Laureate Dr. Craig C. Mello representing academic research, Dr. Adam Koppel of Bain Capital Life Science Ventures representing venture capital, and Dr. David Meeker of KSQ Therapeutics, formerly of Genzyme/Sanofi, representing industry.
    1 hr 32 min
  • Poets' Theatre, “The Poet Behind the Mask (or Dramatis Personae)”
    May 7, 2018 at the Boston Athenæum.
    Poets are supposed to pour their souls into their work. In so doing, however, they often adopt masks, speaking through others. This cast of characters can be extremely varied: genders are switched, professions are tried on, contrary ideas rehearsed, Phillis Wheatley hangs out with Robinson Crusoe, Sacagawea headlines with Crazy Jane. This set of readings by actors from The Poets' Theatre, which ranges from Erica Funkhouser to Alfred Lord Tennyson to Richard Howard, from the Earl of Rochester to Elizabeth Bishop to Lloyd Schwartz, reveals poets in masquerade, ventriloquizing a wide array of extraordinary individuals, even pretending to be... versions of themselves.
    1 hr 9 min
  • Marilyn Yalom, “The Amorous Heart: An Unconventional History of Love”
    May 22, 2018 at the Boston Athenæum.
    The symmetrical, exuberant heart is everywhere: it gives shape to candy, pendants, the frothy milk on top of a cappuccino, and much else. How can we explain the ubiquity of what might be the most recognizable symbol in the world?
    In The Amorous Heart, Marilyn Yalom tracks the heart metaphor and heart iconography across two thousand years, through Christian theology, pagan love poetry, medieval painting, Shakespearean drama, Enlightenment science, and into the present. She argues that the symbol reveals a tension between love as romantic and sexual on the one hand, and as religious and spiritual on the other. Ultimately, the heart symbol is a guide to the astonishing variety of human affections, from the erotic to the chaste and from the unrequited to the conjugal.
    47 min
  • Lucas Cowan, “GLOW”
    May 8, 2018 at the Boston Athenæum.
    Lucas Cowan, Public Art Curator for The Rose Kennedy Greenway Conservancy, will present on The Greenway's 2018 Public Art Curatorial theme titled GLOW, a public exhibition of commissioned light-based artworks, historically significant Massachusetts light based roadside architecture, and interactive experiences that showcases the rapidly evolving concept of light and art, helping to shape our sense of place, and our collective and individual identities.
    With the 2018 exhibition GLOW, spectators will have the opportunity to interact with the The Greenway in the evenings and see how the public will actually use the park after dark. The project centers on the exhibition of 8 large scale historic neon signs from local businesses c.1914-1965 that once existed throughout Massachusetts. The exhibition of the historical neon signs also presents a tremendous opportunity to engage new audiences who are interested in 20th century popular culture. Furthermore, the exhibition represents our first time working with a collector, and we are excited to present Dave Waller’s story to the public—why he collects, and how he restores and preserves these signs.
    42 min
  • Joseph L. Koerner, “Hieronymus Bosch, Enemy Painter”
    May 17, 2018 at the Boston Athenæum.
    Joseph Leo Koerner pays tribute to the enigmatic artistry of Hieronymus Bosch. Active in the Netherlands around 1500, at the eve of the Protestant Reformation, Bosch was a master-portraitist of devils, nightmares, cosmic catastrophes, and hellish punishments. In cultivating evil as his strange artistic specialty, Bosch also cast himself as potentially demonic, a painter of enemies who might also be an enemy painter. A person of his time, Bosch nevertheless has relevance today, in our era of increased xenophobia and polarized politics.
    An absorbing study of the dark paradoxes of human creativity, Bosch and Bruegel is also a timely account of how hatred can be converted into tolerance through the agency of art. It takes readers through all the major paintings, drawings, and prints of these two unforgettable artists ― including Bosch’s notoriously elusive Garden of Earthly Delights, which forms the core of this historical tour de force.
    54 min
  • Sarah E. Igo, “The Known Citizen”
    May 10, 2018 at the Boston Athenæum.
    Every day, Americans make decisions about their privacy: what to share and when, how much to expose and to whom. Securing the boundary between one’s private affairs and public identity has become a central task of citizenship. How did privacy come to loom so large in American life? Sarah Igo tracks this elusive social value across the twentieth century, as individuals questioned how they would, and should, be known by their own society.
    Popular journalism and communication technologies, welfare bureaucracies and police tactics, market research and workplace testing, scientific inquiry and computer data banks, tell-all memoirs and social media all propelled privacy to the foreground of U.S. culture. Jurists and philosophers but also ordinary people weighed the perils, the possibilities, and the promise of being known. In the process, they redrew the borders of contemporary selfhood and citizenship.
    The Known Citizen reveals how privacy became the indispensable language for monitoring the ever-shifting line between our personal and social selves. Igo’s sweeping history, from the era of “instantaneous photography” to the age of big data, uncovers the surprising ways that debates over what should be kept out of the public eye have shaped U.S. politics and society. It offers the first wide-angle view of privacy as it has been lived and imagined by modern Americans.
    52 min
  • Noah Wilson-Rich, “Our Future with Bees”
    November 29, 2017 at the Boston Athenæum.
    If you eat food, you need bees. The world’s bees can create economic and ecological sustainability, if only we let them. As pollinators, bees bring us over 100 fruit and vegetable crops and provide feed for our livestock industry. Yet bees are dying at an alarming rate. Data from urban environments indicate that bees are doing better in cities. Why is this? Learn how to get involved in urban beekeeping, and how to save these vitally important creatures.
    56 min
  • Robert Kuttner, “Can Democracy Survive Global Capitalism?”
    April 26, 2018 at the Boston Athenæum.
    Before and after World War II, a serendipitous confluence of events created a healthy balance between the market and the polity—between the engine of capitalism and the egalitarian ideals of democracy. Under Roosevelt’s New Deal, unions and collective bargaining were legalized. Glass-Steagall reined in speculative finance. At Bretton Woods, a global financial system was devised explicitly to allow nations to manage capitalism. Yet this golden era turned out to be lightning in a bottle. From the 1970s on, a power shift occurred, in which financial regulations were rolled back, taxes were cut, inequality worsened, and disheartened voters turned to far-right, faux populism.
    Robert Kuttner lays out the events that led to the postwar miracle, and charts its dissolution all the way to Trump, Brexit, and the tenuous state of the EU. Is today’s poisonous alliance of reckless finance and ultra-nationalism inevitable? Or can democracy find a way to survive?
    33 min
  • Joseph Rosenbloom, “Redemption: Martin Luther King Jr.'s Last 31 Hours”
    April 17, 2018 at the Boston Athenæum.
    Redemption is an intimate look at the last thirty-one hours and twenty-eight minutes of King's life. King was exhausted from a brutal speaking schedule. He was being denounced in the press and by political leaders as an agent of violence. He was facing dissent even within the civil rights movement and among his own staff at the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. In Memphis, a federal court injunction was barring him from marching. As threats against King mounted, he feared an imminent, violent death. The risks were enormous, the pressure intense.
    Drawing on dozens of interviews by the author with people who were immersed in the Memphis events, Redemption features recently released documents from Atlanta archives, and includes compelling photos. The fresh material reveals untold facets of the story including a never-before-reported lapse by the Memphis Police Department to provide security for King. It unveils financial and logistical dilemmas and recounts the emotional and marital pressures that were bedeviling King. Also revealed is what his assassin, James Earl Ray, was doing in Memphis during the same time and how a series of extraordinary breaks enabled Ray to construct a sniper's nest and shoot King.
    Redemption is an "immersive, humanizing, and demystifying" (New York Times) look at the final hours of Dr. King's life as he seeks to revive the non-violent civil rights movement and push to end poverty in America.
    47 min
  • Nathaniel Silver, “Fra Angelico: Heaven on Earth”
    March 29, 2018 at the Boston Athenæum.
    In 1899, Isabella Stewart Gardner acquired the first Fra Angelico painting in America. The exhibition Heaven on Earth at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum reunites for the first time the founder's magnificent Assumption and Dormition of the Virgin with its three companions from the Museo di San Marco, Florence. Conceived as a set of jewel-like reliquaries between 1424 and 1434 for one of the most important churches in Florence, they tell the story of the Virgin Mary’s life. This lecture explores how a Dominican friar in Renaissance Florence transformed the history of western art with breathtaking paintings of peerless originality. Immerse yourself in the material splendor of his craftsmanship and enjoy a behind-the-scenes look at the preparations for this exhibition.
    Renaissance master Fra Angelico (c. 1400-1455) transformed the history of western art with his breathtaking paintings. Heaven on Earth reunites for the first time the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum’s magnificent Assumption and Dormition of the Virgin with its three companions from the Museo di San Marco, Florence. Conceived as a set of jewel-like reliquaries for one of the most important churches in Florence, they tell the story of the Virgin Mary’s life. Brought together with unprecedented loans from Italy and the United States, the exhibition invites you to explore Fra Angelico’s ground-breaking narrative art, marvel at his peerless creativity and immerse yourself in the material splendor of his craftsmanship.
    This lecture will take you behind the scenes in the preparation for this exhibition, into the conservation laboratory where all four reliquaries were recently conserved and reveal some of the important discoveries made along the way. It will also unfold the fascinating history of Mrs. Gardner's Assumption and Dormition of the Virgin, a landmark in the history of American collecting as the first Fra Angelico painting to come to the United States.
    56 min

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The Boston Athenaeum, a membership library, first opened its doors in 1807, and its rich history as a library and cultural institution has been well documented in the annals of Boston’s cultural life.…