Upcoming Lectures & Talks
6 upcoming lectures and talks from Concord Museum, with dates, venues and ticket links taken from the organization’s own pages and refreshed weekly. All lectures in Greater Boston →
Fri Oct 9 · 7:00pm
On the opening day of Mark Dion: Eccentric Collectors Like Us, join us for a unique Forum with renown artist Dion in conversation with Ruth Erikson, Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, to discuss Dion’s collaboration with the Museum for his newest special exhibition.
Tue Oct 20 · 7pm
Historian Peter Mancall discusses his new book Contested Continent, a history of North America from 1000 to 1680 that traces the developments leading toward the eventual founding of the United States. Mancall, who teaches at the University of Southern California, is the author of Fatal Journey, on Henry Hudson’s final expedition, and The Trials of Thomas Morton. The evening is part of the Concord Festival of Authors.
Thu Oct 29 · 7pm
Nathaniel Philbrick discusses his new book The Rush, which recasts the Gold Rush as “the origin story of America’s modern contradictions: capital consolidated at dizzying speed, democracy in thrall to private power, xenophobia weaponized in the name of liberty.” Philbrick won the 2000 National Book Award for In the Heart of the Sea and is the author of Mayflower, Bunker Hill and Valiant Ambition.
Thu Nov 5 · 7:00pm
Lydia Willsky-Ciollo, a professor of religious studies at Fairfield University, traces how Thoreau spent decades crafting a theology of wildness, one centred on "the divinity extant in every person and in every molecule of creation." In the museum's account, Thoreau left that work open, hoping his readers would pick up the pen and write theologies of wildness of their own. The talk is also streamed free online.
Fri Nov 6 · 7:00pm
Joanne Freeman, professor of history and American studies at Yale, talks about the Revolutionary era: the ideas, conflicts and personalities that shaped the founding of the United States, and how its debates over power, democracy and citizenship still resonate. Freeman wrote Affairs of Honor, on honor, dueling and politics in the early republic, and The Field of Blood, on violence in Congress before the Civil War.
Fri Nov 13 · 9:00am
A day-long symposium on museum collecting, past and present, asking what motivates it and who decides what is worth preserving, with emerging scholars and a keynote by the artist Mark Dion. It accompanies the museum's exhibition Mark Dion: Eccentric Collectors Like Us. Dion's installations borrow the methods of natural history and the cabinet of curiosities to examine how institutions gather and display objects. College students attend free.
