Programs

Filtering by: “Public”
[SOLD OUT] Behind the Bookcase Tour | Mary Shelley: The Godmother of Goth | In-Person
Mar
27

[SOLD OUT] Behind the Bookcase Tour | Mary Shelley: The Godmother of Goth | In-Person

In this tour we will explore the life and works of this radical, proto-feminist, and quintessential Romantic as we sift through early editions of her works, along with manuscripts and letters of her husband, poet Percy Shelley, and the couple’s questionable company.

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Workshop | Moods: Yin Yoga Illuminated by the Poems of Mercedes de Acosta | In-Person
Mar
29

Workshop | Moods: Yin Yoga Illuminated by the Poems of Mercedes de Acosta | In-Person

Join yogi Liza Seltzer and Rosenbach John C. Haas Director Kelsey Scouten Bates for this poetry-inspired yin yoga practice. You’ll be guided into passive, longer-held poses that invoke both stillness and openness in body and mind; you’ll listen from this place of openness to the writing poet Charles Hanson Towne describes in his introduction to Moods as having “a haunting quality, a breath of mystery, as though a ghost walked into a garden.” 

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[SOLD OUT] Course | The Civil War Diary of Emma Mordecai with Melissa R. Klapper | In-Person
Mar
30

[SOLD OUT] Course | The Civil War Diary of Emma Mordecai with Melissa R. Klapper | In-Person

Join the Rosenbach for a special seminar on Jewish women’s history in the beautiful parlor of the Rosenbach brothers’ home on Delancey Place. Led by gifted teacher and scholar Melissa Klapper, the course explores the new book The Civil War Diary of Emma Mordecai.

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Behind the Bookcase Tour | Bookish Legends : A. S. W. Rosenbach & Belle da Costa Greene in Correspondence | In-Person
Apr
11

Behind the Bookcase Tour | Bookish Legends : A. S. W. Rosenbach & Belle da Costa Greene in Correspondence | In-Person

In this Behind the Bookcase tour, we will read a selection of letters that follow the four-decade professional relationship of Dr. A.S.W. Rosenbach and Belle da Costa Greene, J. Pierpont Morgan’s librarian and inaugural director of the Pierpont Morgan Library (now the Morgan Library & Museum).

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Course | Reading A Midsummer Night’s Dream with Jim Casey | Virtual
Apr
16

Course | Reading A Midsummer Night’s Dream with Jim Casey | Virtual

This course on Midsummer Night’s Dream will be an interactive experience and will rely on your participation, enthusiasm, and free-flowing conversations. Each time we meet, we will practice a variety of reading techniques that will enable you to begin experiencing Midsummer(and eventually all of Shakespeare’s plays) more deeply and effectively on your own. 

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Course | Victorian Female Detectives with Olivia Rutigliano | Virtual
Apr
17

Course | Victorian Female Detectives with Olivia Rutigliano | Virtual

For modern readers, the great secret of the Victorian cultural world is that lady detective characters were among the most popular in the literature of the time. In this course, we will explore many of the most popular of these characters and interrogate how they reflected the spectrum of Victorian attitudes about women and how they both played into and resisted conventional Victorian conceptions of (and anxieties about) female ability, acumen, psychology, and labor.  

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Biblioventures | Sherlock Monthly | Virtual
Apr
19

Biblioventures | Sherlock Monthly | Virtual

November 16, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
December 14, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
January 11, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
February 15, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
March 15, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
April 19, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
May 17, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
June 21, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm

Our Sherlock Mondays Biblioventure was such a success, we’ve decided to continue exploring the Sherlockian canon with Sherlock Monthly. Every month, we’ll focus on one Sherlock Holmes adventure in the order they were first published.

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Course | Reading Jane Austen’s Persuasion with Paula Byrne | Virtual
Apr
22

Course | Reading Jane Austen’s Persuasion with Paula Byrne | Virtual

Persuasion is often considered Austen’s autumnal novel, her most mature work, and a farewell to her life as a fiction writer. In this course, we will examine the many ways in which she deploys her satire, and we will explore the novel’s themes of heartbreak, hope, personal growth, and second-chance love.  

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Behind the Bookcase Tour | Curiouser and Curiouser: A Look at Lewis Carroll | In-Person
Apr
24

Behind the Bookcase Tour | Curiouser and Curiouser: A Look at Lewis Carroll | In-Person

Mathematician and cleric Charles Lutwidge Dodgson published children’s books under the pen name Lewis Carroll. This tour explores both the man and the author with the help of letters from Dodgson to his publishers, original drawings by John Tenniel (the illustrator of the Alice books), photographs of children taken by Dodgson, and of course, copies of his books.

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Rosenbacchanal 2025
Apr
26

Rosenbacchanal 2025

Rosenbacchanal 2025: The Power of the Book will feature a conversation between writer and essayist Adam Gopnik, best known as a staff writer at The New Yorker for the past forty years, and Honoree Arthur Spector, the Rosenbach’s Chair Emeritus. Their discussion will explore the allure, the potency, and the omnipresence of one the most powerful objects the world has ever known: the book.

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Course | Supreme Injustice: Slavery, The Constitution, and the U.S Supreme Court with Paul Finkelman | In Person
Apr
27

Course | Supreme Injustice: Slavery, The Constitution, and the U.S Supreme Court with Paul Finkelman | In Person

This engaging seminar, held in the Rosenbach’s historic house, will begin with a discussion of how slavery helped shape the Constitution, which ironically, was written in Pennsylvania–the first state in the nation and the first political jurisdiction in the Western World to take steps to end slavery. 

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Behind the Bookcase Tour | Mexico: Race and Revolution in the Borderlands | In-Person
Apr
28

Behind the Bookcase Tour | Mexico: Race and Revolution in the Borderlands | In-Person

This tour features the Rosenbach’s collections from Mexico and Texas, including materials from the Spanish Empire, the early years of Mexican independence, and relations with the expanding United States in the 1800s.

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Course | Reading The Mystery of Edwin Drood serially with Edward G. Pettit | Virtual
Apr
28

Course | Reading The Mystery of Edwin Drood serially with Edward G. Pettit | Virtual

The Rosenbach holds in its collection the original serial parts of The Mystery of Edwin Drood.  Throughout this course, we’ll read the existing six serial parts as the first readers did, one part at a time for six sessions, then we’ll spend a final session discussing the many ways Dickens could have unspooled his final mystery, perhaps even solving the mystery of Edwin Drood itself.    

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Course | Book Arts: Intro to Celtic Calligraphy | In Person
May
4

Course | Book Arts: Intro to Celtic Calligraphy | In Person

In this two-hour, immersive, hands-on workshop, distinguished local Irish American calligrapher and manuscript illuminator Susan Kelly vonMedicus will introduce you to Irish manuscript heritage and teach the Uncial script found in the Book of Kells and other early Irish manuscripts.

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Behind the Bookcase Tour | Early Hebrew Books III | In-Person
May
8

Behind the Bookcase Tour | Early Hebrew Books III | In-Person

This in-depth tour brings us back to the early 18th century as we journey from New York City, home to America’s first Jewish community, to Cambridge, Massachusetts. Together, we’ll meet a vivid cast of characters, learn about a dramatic public spectacle in Harvard Yard, and work with some of Dr. Rosenbach’s treasures of early American Judaica.

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Behind the Bookcase Tour | Elizabeth Siddal and The Pre-Raphaelites with Jennifer Summerfield and Kyle Cassidy | In-Person
May
9

Behind the Bookcase Tour | Elizabeth Siddal and The Pre-Raphaelites with Jennifer Summerfield and Kyle Cassidy | In-Person

On this tour, explore the mythical, enchanting work of the Pre-Raphaelites through the Rosenbach’s collection, and then step into the life of the Pre-Raphaelite’s’ most recognizable muse, Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal, through the first popularly available edition of her poetry. 

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[SOLD OUT] Book-Club | The Ladies of the House of Love: “Horrid Novels”: Gothic Inspirations for Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey  | In-Person
May
13

[SOLD OUT] Book-Club | The Ladies of the House of Love: “Horrid Novels”: Gothic Inspirations for Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey  | In-Person

  • May 13, 2025 | 6:30 pm - 8:00 pm

  • June 3, 2025 | 6:30 pm - 8:00 pm

  • July 8, 2025 | 6:30 pm - 8:00 pm

  • September 9, 2025 | 6:30 pm - 8:00 pm

  • October 14, 2025 | 6:30 pm - 8:00 pm

  • November 11, 2025 | 6:30 pm - 8:00 pm

  • December 9, 2025 | 6:30 pm - 8:00 pm

This special book club season of The Ladies of the House of Love will begin with three iconic Gothic works, including one, Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), that Austen heavily satirizes in Northanger Abbey. Then, the club will explore lesser-known books that Austen references as “horrid novels” in Northanger. Finally, on December 9, 2025, just one week before Austen’s 250th birthday, the club will read Northanger Abbey and hold a birthday party for the Authoress.  Don’t miss this unique opportunity to immerse yourself in the world of the Gothic as part of a community of fellow book lovers and Janeites!

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Biblioventures | Sherlock Monthly | Virtual
May
17

Biblioventures | Sherlock Monthly | Virtual

November 16, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
December 14, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
January 11, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
February 15, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
March 15, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
April 19, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
May 17, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
June 21, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm

Our Sherlock Mondays Biblioventure was such a success, we’ve decided to continue exploring the Sherlockian canon with Sherlock Monthly. Every month, we’ll focus on one Sherlock Holmes adventure in the order they were first published.

Learn More →
Biblioventures | Sherlock Monthly | Virtual
Jun
21

Biblioventures | Sherlock Monthly | Virtual

November 16, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
December 14, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
January 11, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
February 15, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
March 15, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
April 19, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
May 17, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
June 21, 2025 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm

Our Sherlock Mondays Biblioventure was such a success, we’ve decided to continue exploring the Sherlockian canon with Sherlock Monthly. Every month, we’ll focus on one Sherlock Holmes adventure in the order they were first published.

Learn More →
The Rosenbach Presents | Gallery Talk & Neighborhood Walking Tour with Treasures Featured Artist John Y. Wind | In-Person
Jun
22

The Rosenbach Presents | Gallery Talk & Neighborhood Walking Tour with Treasures Featured Artist John Y. Wind | In-Person

Join artist John Y. Wind at the Rosenbach’s brand new exhibition, Treasures from the Rosenbach’s Collection: History of the Material Text for a special viewing of his artworks and a tour of the show before stepping outside for a walk to the John Frederick Lewis / John Yaron Wind home on Delancey Place. 

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Behind the Bookcase Tour | Fakes & Forgeries | In-Person
Jun
26

Behind the Bookcase Tour | Fakes & Forgeries | In-Person

What is the difference between a fake and a forgery? How do either of those differ from a copy? And why does authenticity matter in museum collections? On this tour, we’ll explore these questions by using a wide range of objects in the Rosenbach’s renowned collection.

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