Events Calendar

Bring awareness to your breath and explore yoga poses while seated in a chair. Benefits include stress reduction, flexibility, and balance. Led by Nobue Hirabayashi, Certified Yoga Instructor

To register and to receive the Zoom link, please click: Gentle Chair Yoga

This event is online only.

Cultural Historian Louise Kerz Hirschfeld discusses her varied career and life in theatre and television with Susan Haskins, longtime Producer and Co-Host of TheaterTalk. She discusses her early years, becoming interested in the theatre in her 20's, and assisting scenic designer and producer Leo Kerz, with whom she was eventually married and raised two sons. Following her first husband's passing, she spent the next 20 years as a single mother working in television, as a guest curator for museums and galleries, and as a researcher for the Tony Awards.

She then married theatrical caricaturist Al Hirschfeld, gaining an even richer relationship with the theatre world, and eventually became the President of the Al Hirschfeld Foundation. After Hirschfeld's passing, she met American businessman and philanthropist Lewis Cullman and their philanthropic work dovetailed and led to a third happy marriage. Louise remains dedicated to theatre, the arts, and supporting the work of the Hirschfeld Foundation.

Produced by the Theatre on Film and Tape Archive (TOFT), the interview was recorded at the Library for the Performing Arts on October 7, 2021 in front of the Al Hirschfeld permanent installation and the Bruno Walter Auditorium. It is presented here in its world premiere as part of our ongoing series The Creative Process.

• Peter Jay Sharp Theater
• The Juilliard School, 155 W. 65th St., New York, NY 10023

The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts honors the legacy of late American composer Stephen Sondheim with a small pop-up installation from the archives of the colleagues and friends of the legendary artist. Sondheim, who died on November 26, 2021, made an indelible impact on the history and tradition of American musical theatre.

The installation can be found in a newly created exhibition nook on the first floor of the Library for the Performing Arts at 40 Lincoln Center Plaza. The display includes a selection of letters that Sondheim wrote to prominent colleagues such as Harold Prince, Peter Stone, Boris Aronson, and Richard Rodgers. Additionally, the installation features pieces of set models and sketches for musicals Sondheim wrote with James Lapine, Into the Woods, Passion, and Sunday in the Park with George. The library also preserved original negatives taken at rehearsals of several musicals such as West Side Story–these images are also on display. 

The show is curated by Doug Reside, curator of Library for the Performing Art’s Billy Rose Theater Division, who shared personal reflections about Sondheim, as well as highlights from the collections, in an essay on NYPL’s website.

The Library for the Performing Arts, a New York Public Library research center dedicated to preserving and making accessible collections related to dance, recorded sound, and theater, has a multitude of material related to Sondheim in its archives. Sondheim was also named a New York Public Library Library Lion, honored for his contributions to the cultural landscape, in 2013.

Symphony Space and the Asian American Writers’ Workshop present a celebration of journalist, playwright, and political activist Wajahat Ali’s funny, wise, and necessary memoir Go Back to Where You Came From: And Other Helpful Recommendations on How to Become American. Emceed by Ali, this evening of storytelling, comedy, and music will probe the highs and lows of the American immigrant experience, featuring musician Zeshan B, author and former federal prosecutor Preet Bharara, acclaimed writers Cathy Park Hong (Minor Feelings) and Min Jin Lee (Pachinko), comedian Ismael Loutfi (Resolutions), and comedian and actress Aparna Nancherla (Corporate).

Special bonus: Tickets come with a copy of Go Back to Where You Came From. There are a limited number of companion tickets available, these tickets are $20 and do not include a book. To purchase a companion ticket, add a standard ticket and a companion ticket to your cart. The companion ticket will be discounted at checkout. Note that companion tickets are only available to purchase with a full-price ticket.

Produced in cooperation with the Asian American Writer's Workshop.

There will be pre-signed books for sale.

Pushing Boundaries: 60 Years of AFAM Exhibitions. This installation in the Audrey B. Heckler Gallery looks back at over six decades, highlighting key exhibitions in the history of the American Folk Art Museum. It features a selection of beloved works of art and rarely seen documents from the Museum’s archives.

Organized on the occasion of the Museum’s 60th anniversary, MULTITUDES will showcase some 400 stellar works, including recent gifts and new acquisitions that will be exhibited for the first time. The exhibition will feature a wide range of works – from dazzling early American portraits, needlework, and quilts, to idiosyncratic creations of the 20th and the 21st centuries, such as sculptures made of recycled materials, color-tinted photographs, and fragments of art environments. Presented non-chronologically, the works in the exhibition will be visually clustered to reveal not only their individuality but also their commonalities.

From extraordinary early American portraits and dazzlingly complex quilts to playful whimsy bottles, delicately hand-tinted photographs, and fragments of rare twentieth-century art environments, MULTITUDES is an exhibition that celebrates six decades of collecting at the American Folk Art Museum across four centuries of folk and self-taught art. 

Join exhibition curators Valérie Rousseau and Emelie Gevalt for a conversation on collecting stories, stewardship, and curatorial practices. Highlighting artists’ diverse experiences, identities, and creative practices, this dialogue will unpack some of the ways in which this wide-ranging exhibition expands our understanding of the Museum’s unique holdings. Learn more about beloved works from the collection, as well as new acquisitions by celebrated artists William Edmondson, Henry Darger, Ammi Phillips, Helen Rae, and many others on display for the first time.

Legendary Comedy Teams on Film

The only thing funnier than one comedian is two comedians. Ideally, one plays it “straight” in order to make the other’s madcap antics even more uproarious. Think Oliver Hardy giving a slow burn to the camera after bumbling Stan Laurel makes yet “another fine mess.” Think Dean Martin trying to perform a love song while bumbling Jerry Lewis steals the show. A comedy team can also offset each other with fast-paced rhetoric (Bud Abbott & Lou Costello), clashing personalities (George Burns & Gracie Allen, Thelma Todd & ZaSu Pitts), and even clashing lifestyles (Walter Matthau & Jack Lemmon).

Join film historian Max Alvarez for this tribute to vintage pratfalls, one-liners, slapstick stunts, and hilarious comedic angst. Comedy is all in the timing – and these brilliant cinematic comedy teams could not have returned at a better time!

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Debby Applegate gives LW! an inside look at her jaw-dropping biography Madam about the life of Polly Adler, the notorious “queen of vice” who played hostess to every gangster, politician, writer, sports star and Cafe Society swell worth knowing, and who as much as any single figure helped make the 1920s roar.

Choreographer and performance artist Merián Soto and director, puppet artist, and choreographer Patti Bradshaw discuss their time studying with and dancing the work of Elaine Summers. Borrowing from the collection of Summers's materials held at the Library for the Performing Arts, they will show clips from her film archive, including unique footage from her classes, as well as her work Crow’s Nest.

The Zoom webinar link will be emailed two days prior to the event, with reminders on the day.

photo: Color photograph of Elaine Summers with film camera, Elaine Summers Papers, Jerome Robbins Dance Division  (c. 1960 - 1969)

To attend, please click here to register.