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The New York Public Library, Humanities and Social Sciences Library
Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street, New York, NY 10018Related Exhibition
Dystopias and Alternate Realities: Drawings by Charles Addams
Charles Addams Gallery, Humanities and Social Sciences Library, Third Floor
September 9, 2000—January 27, 2001This display of drawings and New Yorker covers by Charles Addams features bizarre but humorous depictions of different, but not necessarily better, worlds. Included are Adam and Eve as the coming attraction in Eden, a sidewalk wheeler-dealer selling nooses, two archaeologists excavating the Chrysler Building, and, in an updated version of Gulliver's Travels, a surprised astronaut who finds himself tied to the moon and surrounded by tiny aliens.
All lecture and concert programs will take place in the Celeste Bartos Forum.
For information: (212) 930-0855 or The Public Education Program Office.Admission: Lectures: $10; $7 Library Friends and Conservators; Concerts: $12; $10 Library Friends and Conservators
Lecture Series
Futures: Bright, Dim, and Otherwise
A series of lectures co-sponsored by The New York Review of Books and The New York Public Library in which five distinguished contributors to the Review will discuss themes concerning the future of science, technology, and culture.Ian Buruma
The Future of Language and the Dominance of EnglishMonday, October 23, 2000 at 6 p.m.Ian Buruma is an Alastair Horme fellow at St. Antony´s College, Oxford. He is currently visiting Remarque Senior Fellow at the Remarque Institute, New York University. His most recent book is Anglomania.Richard Lewontin
Promises, Promises: The Pitfalls of Biological Prediction
Monday, October 30, 2000 at 6 p.m.
Richard Lewontin is Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology and Professor of Biology at Harvard University. He is the author of The Genetic Basis of Evolutionary Change, Biology as Ideology, and It Ain´t Necessarily So: The Dream of the Human Genome and Other Illusions.Charles Rosen
Music: The Future Ahead of TimeMonday, November 20, 2000 at 6 p.m.Charles Rosen is a pianist. His most recent book, Romantic Poets, Critics, and Other Madmen, received the Truman Capote Prize for Literary Criticism.Martin Filler
Surveying the Architectural Horizon: The Future of Futurism
Monday, November 27, 2000 at 6 p.m.
Martin Filler is the architecture critic of The New Republic and a contributing editor of House Beautiful. He is the co-author, with Olivier Bossière, of The Vitra Design Museum: Frank Gehry, Architect.Steven Weinberg
Future Science and the Future Universe
Monday, January 8, 2001 at 6 p.m.
Steven Weinberg holds the Josey Regental Chair in Science at the University of Texas at Austin. He has been awarded the Nobel Prize and the National Medal of Science for his work on the theory of particles and fields. His most recent book for a general audience is Dreams of a Final Theory.
The New York Public Library/Oxford University Press Lectures
The tenth in an annual lecture series presented by the Library and Oxford University Press. This year Martin Marty, Herbert Muschamp, and Edward Rothstein will each present a talk on utopianism as it relates to their respective disciplines. Oxford University Press will later publish their talks.Edward Rothstein
Utopianism and Its Discontents
Wednesday, January 17, 2001 at 6 p.m.
Edward Rothstein is cultural critic at large for The New York Times, writing on cultural politics, literature, music, the arts, and technology.Herbert Muschamp
Service Not Included
Wednesday, January 24, 2001 at 6 p.m.
Herbert Muschamp is the architecture critic of The New York Times.Martin Marty
“Even So, Look at That!”: After Utopias Fail
Wednesday, January 31, 2001 at 6 p.m.
Martin Marty is Professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago, where he was Fairfax M. Cone Distinguished Service Professor at the Divinity School. An ordained minister in the Lutheran Church, he has published and edited more than fifty books on theology, religious experience, and religious history.
Concert Series
Musical Utopias
Harpsichordist Anthony Newman and flutist Eugenia Zukerman present three concerts centered on three different musical paradises.The Court of Frederick the Great
Tuesday, October 17, 2000 at 6 p.m.
Although the reign of Frederick the Great of Prussia was brutal, his court was a utopia for music.The Court of Louis XIV
Tuesday, November 14, 2000 at 6 p.m.
Called the Sun King, Louis XIV spent millions in building his palace at Versailles, maintaining his brilliant court, and surrounding himself with brilliant musicians.The Flowering of American Music
Tuesday, January 30, 2001 at 6 p.m.
In 19th-century America, composers musically echoed writers with utopian visions like Emerson and Thoreau, whose works explored the sounds and rhythms of their young country. Music of Stephen Fry, Louis Moreau Gottschalk, Sidney Lanier, and William Henry Fry.
The New York Public Library, Donnell Library Center
20 West 53rd Street, New York, NY 10019
For information: (212) 621-0619 or 621-0609Admission: free
Envisioning the Future: Utopia and Dystopia on the Screen
Thursdays, November 2 — December 14, 2000 and January 4 — 25, 2001 at 2:30 P.M.
Throughout the 20th century, film and video makers have used their vivid imaginations and the technology at their fingertips to provide their audiences with visions of the future. In this 10-program series, Donnell Media Center accommodates many viewpoints. Early classics Aelita, Queen of Mars and Metropolis alternate with independent works (Mike Kuchar´s Sins of the Fleshapoids, Nam June Paik´s Good Morning, Mr. Orwell, James Benning´s Utopia). Renowned titles (Godard´s Alphaville) are juxtaposed with works less well-known (the Senegalese film Saaraba).Program specifics will be available in the monthly New York Public Library Events calendar (available at all branch libraries), online, and in detailed flyers produced by Donnell Media Center.• • •
The New York Public Library, Mid-Manhattan Library
455 Fifth Avenue at 40th Street, New York, NY 10016
For information: (212) 340-0948Admission: free
ConversationUtopian and Dystopian Views Offered in Science Fiction
Saturday, September 23, 2000 at 2 p.m.
A utopian educator and a poet and writer meet to discuss dark and light views of the future, including what education may be like. Dr. Howard Wolf is a Professor of English at SUNY Buffalo. Gerald Jonas is a poet and author. He also serves as a science fiction reviewer for The New York Times.Lectures
Utopia: The Search for the Ideal Society in the Western World
Wednesday, November 1, 2000 at 6 p.m.
Holland Goss, Research Curator of The New York Public Library´s exhibition Utopia: The Search for the Ideal Society in the Western World, will present a slide lecture on this landmark exhibition conceived and presented jointly by The New York Public Library and the Bibliothèque nationale de France.Holland Goss is a research curator in the Exhibitions Program Office of the Humanities and Social Sciences Library, and served as co-curator of the Library´s exhibition on the French writer Jean de La Fontaine. She has devoted the last three years to Utopia.
Arcadian Rhythms in the Concrete Jungle:
Utopian New York from the Automat to Adam Purple and Beyond
Saturday, January 27, 2001 at 2 p.m.
What impulse links the building of a new carousel atop a Harlem waste treatment plant with the perennial crowds at Coney Island beach? What ties the egalitarian culture of the Lower East Side´s now-vanished Garden Cafeteria to the flourishing urban landscape of Loisaida today? From the beginning of the industrial era, New York´s response to its crushing density and relentless pace has been to grow its own utopias. Eric Darton traces the path of ancient yearnings for equality, leisure, and limitless abundance into the heart of the 21st-century city.Eric Darton is the author of Free City, a novel, and Divided We Stand: A Biography of New York´s World Trade Center. His most recent book is the novel Year´s Utopia, A Discovery in Seven Climes. He has taught media, technology, and cultural change at Hunter College and Fordham University, and leads two ongoing writing workshops.
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