On January 17, 2026, Jelani Cobb — renowned journalist, scholar, and dean of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism — spoke at The Westport Library for Westport’s 20th Annual Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration.
380 community members braved the snow to gather in honor and reflection of the life and legacy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., resonating with the speakers’ insights on history’s present relevance, truth as key to the survival of democracy, and what is asked of us as a community as we engage with these vital ideas.
Click here to read the full interactive story, featuring photos and videos from the event.
This winter, The Westport Library is featuring Building Bridges Through Storytelling, a multi-gallery quilting exhibition currently spanning the Library’s Sheffer, South, and Jesup Galleries now through March 17, 2026. Like a patchwork quilt itself, the show weaves together three distinct yet interconnected exhibits — each exploring how art, memory, and narrative bind communities across generations and geographies.
In the Sheffer Gallery, the Southern Connecticut Modern Quilt Guild (SCTMQG) presents original quilts inspired by the exhibition’s theme. Building Bridges Through Storytelling highlights quilting as both a creative practice and a powerful storytelling medium. These works reflect shared experiences with a modern sensibility, from the pandemic to everyday acts of resilience.
A reception and artist talk for the exhibit will be held Thursday, January 15, from 6 to 8 pm. The reception kicks off at 6 pm, followed by an artist talk at 7 pm with Westport artist Miggs Burroughs and a panel of quilters featured in the exhibit.
Founded more than a decade ago, SCTMQG is dedicated to advancing modern quilting through art, education, and community engagement. The Guild also supports regional nonprofits, creating and donating quilts and pillowcases to organizations including Homes with Hope, Susie’s House, Connecticut Children’s Medical Center, and others.
The Guild’s first connection with author, educator, and quilting expert Tangular Irby laid the foundation for the interwoven saga of this three-part exhibition. At a SCTMQG meeting in 2023, Irby shared her family’s quilting traditions rooted in Gee’s Bend, Alabama, which migrated north as members of the Gee’s Bend community settled in Bridgeport, carrying their craft with them.
“While our footprints may fade, our stories can live on,” Irby said of her work in sharing and celebrating her quilting heritage.
This exchange between Irby and SCTMQG sparked a beautiful collaboration honoring the enduring journey of Gee’s Bend quilting across generations and geography. The resulting exhibit, A Traveling Legacy: From Gee’s Bend to the Nutmeg State, is now on display in the South Gallery. It showcases quilts crafted by Gee’s Bend descendants now residing in Connecticut.
This textile anthology traces the enduring legacy of Dinah Miller, one of the first documented Gee’s Bend quilters who was captured and brought to America from Benin, Africa. Her lasting impact lives in the patterned similarities these quilts share with traditional Benin weaving, preserving a storied history branching from Africa to Alabama to Bridgeport.
A reception and community talk with Irby and her fellow Gee’s Bend descendants, Eula Pettway and Sandra Juliet Pettway, will take place on Saturday, January 31, from 1 to 3 pm. A quilt sale will also take place from 12 to 5 pm that same day, offering a chance for Westport’s vibrant art community to participate in the interconnected narrative.
Described by the New York Times as “some of the most miraculous works of modern art America has produced,” Gee’s Bend quilts are celebrated worldwide and held in major museum collections. Known for their bold, abstract designs and vivid cultural expression, these quilts tell stories of faith, strength, and creativity that span generations. Their patterns and piecing styles have been enduringly passed down, surviving slavery and Jim Crow. They are a testament to the power of storytelling, expanding the realm of Black visual culture and opening doors to new understandings of American art and history.
While the respective work of SCTMQG and the Gee’s Bend quilters is showcased individually in the other galleries, their artistry comes together in the final piece in this exhibition. Uniting both exhibits is the Jesup Gallery’s centerpiece quilt, Building Bridges, collaboratively created by members of SCTMQG, the Bridgeport Gee’s Bend community, and quilters from Gee’s Bend, Alabama. Each community offers their own stories stitched into every seam.
Excitingly, the collaborative quilt will enter a new chapter when it finds a home in The Westport Library’s permanent art collection. This honored exchange will take place before the Building Bridges artist talk at 7 pm on Thursday, January 15.
Through striking designs and thoughtfully layered textiles, Building Bridges Through Storytelling invites viewers to reflect on how art preserves heritage and creates new narratives. Woven throughout this exhibition are stories of life, love, resilience, and community — a powerful reminder that storytelling, like quilting itself, continues to build bridges of understanding across generations.
For more information about the exhibition and related programs, visit the Art at the Library page.
As winter settles in, The Westport Library is once again turning the colder months into a season of connection, imagination, and discovery with its Children’s Winter Reading Program and Adult Winter Reading Challenge. These engaging initiatives are designed to spice up your winter and remind the community that reading doesn’t just enrich lives — it creates joy!
Running December 19, 2025, through February 23, 2026, the Children’s Winter Reading Program invites readers and non-readers alike to warm up with a good book. Open to all children and families, this program celebrates reading in every form: reading independently, being read to, or even deciphering the cereal box at breakfast. No matter how kids choose to participate, time spent reading is never wasted.
Because reading is tracked by minutes, every moment counts. Children can log time spent reading novels, picture books, graphic novels, comics, newspapers, magazines, and more. They can also log time spent listening to stories read aloud by caregivers, librarians, or teachers as well. Get creative with your reading material!
After signing up online, participants can visit the Library to receive an activity sheet and nine color-coded stickers. Completing 10 activities earns a book from the Library’s prize cart, while every additional 50 minutes of reading unlocks more stickers that will contribute to a collaborative community artwork on display at the Library. Children who are up to the challenge of reading 500 minutes will get to take home another book of their choice, giving them the chance to start building their own personal collection.
Interactive reading programs like this transform reading from an assignment into an experience. They help children maintain and strengthen literacy skills during school breaks, keep young minds curious and engaged, and create meaningful moments for families to read together. Most importantly, they help children associate reading with enjoyment, curiosity, and personal discovery — a connection that research shows is key to developing lifelong readers.
“This program offers a chance for families to build shared reading habits,” said the Library’s director of youth services, Mary Parmelee. “Parents who read inspire kids to read, and best of all, they get to share the joy of reading together.”
Luckily, there’s plenty of joy to go around with the return of the Library’s Adult Winter Reading Challenge, running December 22, 2025, through February 2, 2026. All kinds of readers are invited to rise to the challenge this season, from bookworms who can knock back a stack, to those embarking on a new journey to discover stories that speak to them.
After a highly successful inaugural 2024-25 campaign, the Library’s reference team has once again put together 10 thoughtfully curated categories designed to spark curiosity, encourage exploration across genres, and make reading feel playful rather than prescriptive. These top-secret categories will be revealed on December 22, when the challenge goes live.
Participants may complete as many categories as they wish, as long as they follow two simple rules: each category can only be used once, and each book counts toward a single category. Readers can log their completed books online and track their progress on the challenge leaderboard, sharing their momentum with other readers throughout the season.
Last winter’s challenge brought 44 readers who collectively read 272 books, with nearly one-third of participants completing all 10 challenges — a testament to the power of community motivation.
That sense of community extends beyond the page through the Westport Reading Challenge Facebook Group, where readers swap recommendations, celebrate milestones, participate in weekly giveaways, and cheer one another on.
Past participants rave about their delightful experiences with the Library’s adult reading challenges (there is also a longstanding Summer Reading Challenge), reveling in the chance to check books off their to-read lists and explore new kinds of stories they might not otherwise have considered before.
“I am always amazed by everything I read and the discovery of new genres,” said Norma H.
“I'm looking forward to reading these books cuddled up on the sofa in a warm blanket and a hot tea by my side,” said past Summer Reading Challenge frontrunner Amy S. in response to the teaser announcement for this winter’s challenge. In 2024, she held the top spot on the summer leaderboard among the Library’s most voracious readers, including head of adult reference services and collection curation Melanie Kelly.
Kelly offered her own insight into the fun of reading and engaging with other readers. “Whether you read for entertainment or self-care, or you’re motivated by friendly competition, or you enjoy sharing your love of books with your community, this challenge has something for everyone,” she said.
The 2025-26 Adult Winter Reading Challenge also connects with WestportREADS 2026, the Library’s annual community-wide reading initiative featuring immersive programming running January through March. Coinciding with the Adult Winter Reading Challenge, both opportunities reinforce the idea that reading is both a personal pleasure and a joyful shared experience. Excitingly, the Library’s reference team is also offering a hint that WestportREADS may play a part in one of the challenge’s categories…but you’ll have to stay tuned for the reveal on December 22!
From quiet moments of escape to lively online conversations, from picture books to page-turners, The Westport Library’s winter reading challenges invite readers of all ages to reignite their love of reading. Take part in one of life’s simplest and greatest pleasures by cozying up with a book this winter season!
Once again, WestportREADS returns to unite Westport’s community through the impact of a great book that sparks imagination, invites conversation, and resonates long after the last page is turned. As the 2026 WestportREADS selection, All the Water in the World by Whiting Award-winning author Eiren Caffall does all of this and more.
The Westport Library is thrilled to announce an exciting lineup of thematic programming that promises to enhance readers’ immersion — culminating on Thursday, February 19, in the Library’s Trefz Forum as Caffall joins the community for a keynote conversation on her debut novel with moderator Catherine Shen, host of CT Public’s Where We Live.
The full collection of copies of All the Water in the World will be available for borrowing Wednesday, December 10 (including as an e-book and an audiobook).
Launched in 2002, WestportREADS remains one of the Library’s most cherished annual traditions: a chance for neighbors to meet over a shared reading experience, for new and old friends to delight in discussion, and for the entire community to reflect together on literature that challenges, inspires, and stays with us.
From January through March, there will be discussion groups, including a lively Book Pub at Walrus Alley; screenings of thematically resonant films; an expert environmental talk that will connect the novel to our own lives; and even more communal happenings in the WestportREADS 2026 run of events.
In true community spirit, more than 550 attended the 2025 WestportREADS keynote address with Pulitzer Prize-winning author Hernan Diaz, and in 2024 Michael Finkel drew almost 400 for his keynote conversation about The Art Thief.
Selected for its masterful storytelling that speaks to the enduring human condition in the face of disaster, All the Water in the World follows the journey of Nonie, a girl with an intuitive connection to water, in a flooded future New York where a small group of families have built a makeshift settlement atop the American Museum of Natural History. As the group works to safeguard the remnants of humanity’s stories and knowledge, a catastrophic storm forces them north up the Hudson River in search of safety, community, and the possibility of a life rebuilt.
“Eiren Caffall created a fully imaginable world within a horrific new future that wasn’t all doom and gloom within a flooded city," said Jennifer Keller, one of the members of the WestportREADS 2026 selection committee. "All the Water in the World explores family and climate change in a rich coming-of-age story that we can all relate to in some way.”
Released in January 2025, this captivating literary thriller blends climate fiction, adventure, and family drama with stunning prose poignant as it is hopeful. By drawing parallels to real-life stories of curators in Iraq and Leningrad who protected their cultural collections during times of war, Caffall asks the reader to consider how we endure, what we value, and how we care for one another in uncertain times.
Best-selling author Rene Denfield praised the novel, urging, “Each sentence is a treasure. Read this and be changed.”
From a PageTurners discussion group to weekly Tell a Yarn… read-aloud crafting circle sessions to a conversation at the Westport Center for Senior Activities, WestportREADers will have several opportunities to read and discuss the book with others at the Library and around town.
A complementary film series offers a cinematic interpretation of the novel’s shared themes, exploring stories of climate, family, and adaptation with screenings of The Day After Tomorrow (2004), 2040 (2019), Waterworld (1995), and Night at the Museum (2006).
Prefacing Caffall’s keynote conversation is a special talk on Thursday, February 12 with executive director of CIRCA (the Connecticut Institute for Resilience and Climate Adaptation) James O’Donnell, who will bring local context to the global themes woven throughout the novel. Using calculated projections, O’Donnell will share the real impact of rising sea levels and offer practical changes we can make to offset the effects of climate change on Connecticut’s shoreline and the Long Island Sound — areas that Caffall herself has a long history with, outlined in her award-winning 2024 memoir The Mourner's Bestiary.
All the Water in the World promises to take the reader on a journey that offers hope in the survival of what matters most — love, community, and knowledge. These themes speak to the true mission behind WestportREADS: to share a love of reading and connect with your fellow readers.
Cozy up with your community and enjoy a good book with us this winter!
Past WestportREADS selections include Diaz’s In the Distance, Finkel’s The Art Thief, Firekeeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab, Towards a More Perfect Union: Confronting Racism by Layla Saad, and Exit West by Moshin Hamid, among others.
For more past WestportREADS selections, and to learn more about the annual event, visit the WestportREADS homepage on The Westport Library website.
WestportREADS is supported through a generous bequest by the estate of Jerry A. Tishman.
In the Jesup Gallery
December 19, 2025, through March 17, 2026
This winter, The Westport Library will feature a multi-gallery quilting exhibition that will span the Sheffer, South, and Jesup Galleries from December 19, 2025, through March 17, 2026. Like a patchwork quilt itself, the show will weave together three distinct yet interconnected exhibits — each exploring how art and narrative bind communities across generations and geographies.
Uniting the exhibits in the Jesup Gallery is Building Bridges, a centerpiece quilt collaboratively created by members of the Southern Connecticut Modern Quilt Guild, the Bridgeport Gee’s Bend community, and quilters from Gee’s Bend, Alabama. The quilt will be presented as a gift to The Westport Library’s permanent art collection, symbolizing creativity, connection, and storytelling stitched into every seam.
Through thread and fabric, this unique and meaningful art exhibition invites viewers to reflect on how art preserves history — and how communities continue to create beauty, meaning, and understanding together.
Gee's Bend Artist Statement
We are not an organization. We are women bound by our Gee's Bend connections and roots. Many of us are related. We are the descendants Dinah Miller, who was captured and abducted in Benin, Africa and illegally transported to Alabama in 1860 aboard the Clotilda, the last known U.S. slave ship. She is credited as one of the first documented quilters in Gee's Bend. I had been told many years ago that the way the women in Gee's Bend quilt is very similar to how the women in Benin weave. Now we know why.
About the Guild
Southern Connecticut Modern Quilt Guild is a community of 42 artists focused on modern quilting for the last 11 years. The Guild offers a space where people can meet, share, learn and create. Interested in advancing modern quilting and supporting growth through art, education, and community. While they focus on modern quilting and are part of the National Modern Quilt Guild, SCTMQG welcomes all quilters and fiber artists. Like the national guild, they seek to foster an inclusive environment built on encouragement and mutual respect where all are welcome.
As a 5O1(c)(3) organization, SCTMQG provides quilts and pillowcases to local organizations in line with their mission and nonprofit status. They have provided quilts for Susie’s House and Homes with Hope in Westport, as well as California Fire Victims. They have partnered with Columbus House in New Haven, providing quilts and pillow cases for people experiencing homelessness. They have also supplied pillowcases to Connecticut Children’s Medical Center in Harford,and Elizabeth Seton Children’s Center in White Plains.
Learning is a large part of the guild. Members of the guild teach one another, and additionally have teachers come in and teach different quilting techniques, lessons on color, and expand on the history of quilting, fiber, and sewing machines. They host biannual retreats in the spring and fall and meet twice per month to commune, sew together, and work on charity quilts.
Community is very important to SCTMQG. Two years ago, the guild met Tangular Irby when she spoke with her Bridgeport Gees Bend family and friends. She came to a guild meeting and taught about her family in Gees Bend, Alabama, and their quilt making; and she shared her quilts with and spoke about how many from Gees Bend transitioned to Bridgeport, continuing their quilting.
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For more about the Library art exhibits, visit the Art at the Library page.
In the South Gallery
December 19, 2025, through March 17, 2026
Reception and Artist Talk: Saturday, January 31, 1-3 pm, in the Trefz Forum; click here for more information.
(Reception kicks off at 1 pm, followed by an artist talk at 2 pm with author and Gee's Bend quilting expert Tangular Irby. Additionally, there will be a quilt sale at the Library from 12 to 5 pm that same day.)
About the Exhibit
This winter, The Westport Library will feature a multi-gallery quilting exhibition that will span the Sheffer, South, and Jesup Galleries from December 19, 2025, through March 17, 2026. Like a patchwork quilt itself, the show will weave together three distinct yet interconnected exhibits — each exploring how art and narrative bind communities across generations and geographies.
The South Gallery will display A Traveling Legacy: From Gee’s Bend to the Nutmeg State, showcasing quilts crafted by descendants of the celebrated Gee’s Bend, Alabama, who are now based in Connecticut. This exhibit traces the enduring legacy of Dinah Miller — one of the first documented Gee’s Bend quilters — and her descendants’ journey from Africa to Alabama to Bridgeport.
Gee's Bend quilts can be found in US museums and abroad. They are on postage stamps, journals, rugs, and more. Most recently, Gee’s Bend quilters were featured vendors in Target stores for Black History Month. The quits tell the story of the sweat and tears, the resilience and faith and the hopes and dreams that continue to run through the veins of Gee’s Bend descendants.
For this special show, the Southern Connecticut Modern Quilt Guild collaborated with their Gee's Bend quilting friends in both Alabama and Bridgeport on a quilt that will be displayed for the duration of the exhibits and will later become part of the Library’s permanent art collection, along with additional availability to schools and other town buildings.
Artist Statement
We are not an organization. We are women bound by our Gee's Bend connections and roots. Many of us are related. We are the descendants Dinah Miller, who was captured and abducted in Benin, Africa and illegally transported to Alabama in 1860 aboard the Clotilda, the last known U.S. slave ship. She is credited as one of the first documented quilters in Gee's Bend. I had been told many years ago that the way the women in Gee's Bend quilt is very similar to how the women in Benin weave. Now we know why.
About Tangular Irby
Tangular A. Irby is a speaker, author, and educator. She holds a BS in Business Administration, a Masters in the Art of Teaching, and a 6th Year in Educational Leadership. She has worked professionally with all grade levels, Pre-K through 12.
She is the host of The Legacy of our African American Lives Podcast and has published seven books, including Pearl and her Gee’s Bend Quilt. Her love of children's literature developed during her time as a second grade teacher. Tangular is the proud granddaughter of Gee’s Bend quilters Pearlie Kennedy Pettway and Jensie Lee Irby. Sharing their history is her way to honor their legacy.
Tangular has traveled, virtually and in-person, sharing her story with schools, libraries, quilt guilds and parent groups with the goal of inspiring others to research and document their own stories.
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For more about the Library art exhibits, visit the Art at the Library page.
In the Sheffer Gallery
December 19, 2025, through March 17, 2026
Reception and Artist Talk: Thursday, January 15, 6-8 pm, in the Trefz Forum; click here for more information.
(Reception kicks off at 6 pm, followed by an artist talk at 7 pm with a panel of artists featured in the exhibit.)
About the Exhibit
This winter, The Westport Library will feature Building Bridges Through Storytelling, a multi-gallery quilting exhibition that will span the Sheffer, South, and Jesup Galleries from December 19, 2025, through March 17, 2026. Like a patchwork quilt itself, the show will weave together three distinct yet interconnected exhibits — each exploring how art and narrative bind communities across generations and geographies.
In the Sheffer Gallery, the Southern Connecticut Modern Quilt Guild (SCTMQG) will present original quilts inspired by the titular theme. These works reflect on shared experiences with a modern sensibility, from the pandemic to everyday acts of resilience.
About the Guild
Southern CT Modern Quilt Guild is a community of 42 artists focused on modern quilting for the last 11 years. The Guild offers a space where people can meet, share, learn and create. Interested in advancing modern quilting and supporting growth through art, education, and community. While they focus on modern quilting and are part of the National Modern Quilt Guild, SCTMQG welcomes all quilters and fiber artists. Like the national guild, they seek to foster an inclusive environment built on encouragement and mutual respect where all are welcome.
As a 5O1(c)(3) organization, SCTMQG provides quilts and pillowcases to local organizations in line with their mission and nonprofit status. They have provided quilts for Susie’s House and Homes with Hope in Westport, as well as California Fire Victims. They have partnered with Columbus House in New Haven, providing quilts and pillow cases for people experiencing homelessness. They have also supplied pillowcases to Connecticut Children’s Medical Center in Harford,and Elizabeth Seton Children’s Center in White Plains.
Learning is a large part of the guild. Members of the guild teach one another, and additionally have teachers come in and teach different quilting techniques, lessons on color, and expand on the history of quilting, fiber, and sewing machines. They host biannual retreats in the spring and fall and meet twice per month to commune, sew together, and work on charity quilts.
Community is very important to SCTMQG. Two years ago, the guild met Tangular Irby when she spoke with her Bridgeport Gees Bend family and friends. She came to a guild meeting and taught about her family in Gees Bend, Alabama, and their quilt making; and she shared her quilts with and spoke about how many from Gees Bend transitioned to Bridgeport, continuing their quilting.
***
For more about the Library art exhibits, visit the Art at the Library page.
If a picture is worth a thousand words, The Westport Library’s upcoming art exhibits tell a volume of stories — just in time for StoryFest 2025.
In conjunction with the Library’s annual literary festival, the art featured this fall will be on display from October 8 through December 16 in the Library’s Sheffer, South, and Jesup Galleries. Each exhibit provides captivating visual narratives that align with StoryFest as a celebration of the story in all forms, featuring storytellers across all forms of media.
Every Picture Tells a Story: Photographs from the Westport Public Art Collections will be on display in the Sheffer Gallery. An opening reception for the exhibit will take place on Wednesday, October 15, at 6 pm, with a presentation by guest curator and photographer Arthur Nager following at 7 pm.
Every Picture Tells a Story includes photographs from the Westport Public Art Collections (WestPAC) that highlight the work of the many visionary photographers represented in the collection. Nager worked with the Library’s exhibit curator Carole Erger-Fass and members of WestPAC to identify photographs that demonstrated diverse creative and technological approaches to the medium. The work on display includes portraits and landscape studies, as well as historical, documentary, and abstract imagery in black and white and color.
The exhibit features internationally renowned photographers Philippe Halsman, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Eliot Porter, and Lucia Nebel White; along with Westport photographers including Larry Silver and David Kalman, whose featured works focused on the town and region; and photojournalists Spencer Platt and 2015 BOOKED for the evening honoree Lynsey Addario, among others.
Nager will also be leading a three-part Verso University workshop, Visual Storytelling: Develop Your Photographic Vision, in conjunction with his exhibit and with StoryFest 2025.
Larry Morse’s Black Men Reading will be on display in the South Gallery, with an opening reception on Wednesday, October 29, at 6 pm and an artist conversation between Morse and Westport artist Miggs Burroughs at 7 pm.
The idea for this ongoing series began in early 2020, inspired by daily subway commutes where Morse observed fellow passengers, including the occasional sight of Black men with books in hand. A lifelong avid reader, Morse was captivated by such rare moments, which resonated with him on a profound level — one that transcended timely happenings and spoke to deep-rooted aspects of identity, dignity, and representation.
The series’ title, Black Men Reading, reflects both the subject and the artist’s personal connection to it. The work calls to mind a historical truth: before the Civil War, teaching a Black person to read — or being caught reading — was punishable by violence, separation from family, or death. The series honors the enduring strength and resilience of literacy as an act of liberation, urging new generations to reclaim the joy and power of reading as a lifelong pursuit and a cultural inheritance.
Historical and social inequities have long affected the freedom to read within Black communities. Early exposure to books typically begins in the home environment. Systemic barriers have often shifted that responsibility to schools and educators, leaving a gap that this exhibit seeks to help bridge.
“Recognizing that knowledge is power, and that the kind of knowledge that comes from reading books is the most powerful kind of knowledge of all,” Morse said, “we realize why now, more than ever, it is so vitally important for Black men and women to establish the habit of reading, and to provide an example for others to follow.”
The Jesup Gallery will highlight an often-overlooked art form with the continuation of an album art series from the collection of American blues keyboardist and record producer Mark Naftalin and his wife, Ellen Naftalin.
Art of the Album: Modern Blues showcases a curated selection of LPs featuring Naftalin’s performances on keyboard, including those with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. From Mother Earth’s Living With the Animals, to Brewer and Shipley’s Tarkio, these albums capture the cultural pulse of a time when vinyl packaging became both a canvas and a collector’s keepsake.
In the 1960s and 70s, as American blues found new audiences across the globe, the album cover became its own form of visual art. Here in Westport, local music enthusiast Sally White shared her love of jazz and blues through her record nook at Klein’s Bookstore, providing a soundtrack of both legendary southern artists from the 30s and 40s and the emerging musicians they inspired.
Ellen Naftalin was 16 when she first heard the Paul Butterfield Blues Band in Sally’s. “Little did I know that I would one day marry the keyboard player,” she said.
With the rise of digital media, album art has become a nostalgic artifact, yet its legacy continues to shape how we experience and remember music. The Westport Library extends its utmost thanks to Ellen and Mark Naftalin for sharing this vibrant piece of American music history, spotlighting the artistry of those designers and musicians who helped define an era.
In the 2018 paper How Artificial Intelligence is Transforming the World, technology innovation researcher Darrel M. West posits that artificial intelligence (AI) is characterized by three qualities: intentionality, intelligence, and adaptability.
On Saturday, October 11, these qualities and their implications across law, business, healthcare, education, technology, and civic life will be explored in depth at AI & Us: A Civic Symposium, a public forum presented by Verso University, The Westport Library's lifelong learning and education initiative.
The event will run from 12 to 5:30 pm in the Library’s Trefz Forum, spanning three respective sessions (12-1:30 pm, 2-3:30 pm, and 4-5:30 pm). Tickets are $10 per session or $25 for all sessions. A student rate of $15 for all sessions is also available and will be honored with a valid student ID upon entry. Click here to purchase tickets.
From questions of ethics, medicine, and cybersecurity to the everyday impact of AI in Connecticut, this symposium invites attendees to examine how AI is shaping the future — and what it means for our communities. The event will offer multiple perspectives — from policymakers and technologists to journalists and academics. Each session will include an audience Q&A, fostering open dialogue and public insight.
From 12 to 1:30 pm, Scott J. Shapiro, Yale Law School professor and author of Fancy Bear Goes Phishing, will lead the procession with a discussion of AI’s role in legal reasoning, government ethics, and cybersecurity alongside Kevin Nguyen, features editor at The Verge and author of Mỹ Documents.
Following the opening keynote conversation is a stacked panel of world-class experts offering their insights on AI and its impact in Connecticut. From 2 to 3:30 pm, a cross-sector conversation moderated by Connecticut Mirror AI journalist Angela Eichhorst will examine the ways in which AI is shaping the state’s innovation landscape, higher education, healthcare, workforce, and legislation.
Panelists in conversation with Eichhorst include Vahid Behzadan, co-founder of the Connecticut AI Alliance; Dr. Suzanne J. Rose, executive director of research for Stamford Health; Dr. Barry Stein, chief clinical innovation officer and chief medical informatics officer at Hartford HealthCare; Connecticut State Senator James Maroney; and Jessica M. Dodge, director of innovation and entrepreneurship of Connecticut Economic & Community Development at the Connecticut Office of Innovation.
The final session of the day will kick off at 4 pm with closing reflections from Kate Crawford, one of AI’s leading scholars of artificial intelligence and its material impacts. Crawford is a research professor at the University of Southern California, senior principal researcher at Microsoft Research New York, and author of Atlas of AI. She was named one of the world's most influential people in AI by TIME100.
Nguyen will join Crawford in conversation, broadening the lens and connecting the day’s conversations to urgent global and ethical contexts.
As AI transforms the world around us, understanding its functions and impact is no longer optional — it’s essential. AI & Us: A Civic Symposium invites members of the community to engage directly with leading thinkers and practitioners, raising questions that will help chart a path toward a secure and informed future.
Verso University is The Westport Library’s lifelong learning and education initiative, functioning as a year-round series of high-level classes, workshops, and lectures designed to further education and learning — and above all, learning for a lifetime. These programs cover a wide variety of topics appealing to all ages and interests, from younger patrons to ones with more experience.
AI & Us is Verso University’s first-ever half-day public forum.
Verso University programs are made possible by the generous support of the Nancy J. Beard Lifelong Learning and Education Fund.
StoryFest, The Westport Library’s annual literary festival, is kicking off its eighth year by celebrating Indigenous Peoples’ Day with an exclusive book launch for We Survived the Night, the highly anticipated debut memoir by author and Oscar-nominated filmmaker Julian Brave NoiseCat — one day in advance of the book’s official nationwide release.
NoiseCat will be joined by Ramin Ganeshram, executive director of the Westport Museum for History and Culture, for a keynote conversation in the Library’s Trefz Forum on Monday, October 13, at 7 pm.
Tickets are $30 and include a copy of We Survived the Night. It is the same price for one seat and a copy of the book or two seats and a book. Books will also be available for purchase at the event and a signing will follow the talk.
As the largest annual literary festival in Connecticut and one of the biggest in the Northeast, StoryFest draws scores of authors and hundreds of readers, writers, and fans each year. With an interdisciplinary career that defies creative boundaries, NoiseCat’s work aligns with StoryFest at its core — a celebration of storytelling in all its forms across all types of media.
NoiseCat’s journalism has appeared in dozens of publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The New Yorker, and has been recognized with many awards including the 2022 American Mosaic Journalism Prize. In 2021, NoiseCat was named to the TIME100 Next list of emerging leaders.
He also is a critically acclaimed filmmaker who was nominated for an Academy Award for Sugarcane, directed alongside Emily Kassie, which follows an investigation into abuse and missing children at the Indian residential school NoiseCat’s family was sent to near Williams Lake, British Columbia.
Sugarcane premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, where NoiseCat and Kassie won the Directing Award in the U.S. Documentary Competition. Additionally, the film has been recognized with dozens of awards, including Best Documentary from the National Board of Review and, of course, the Oscar nod.
We Survived the Night is a stunning narrative that interweaves oral history with hard-hitting journalism and a deeply personal father-son journey into a searing portrait of Indigenous survival, love, and resurgence. Told in the style of a “Coyote Story,” a legend about the trickster forefather of NoiseCat’s people who was revered for his wit and mocked for his tendency to self-destruct, We Survived the Night brings a traditional art form nearly annihilated by colonization back to life on the page. Through a dazzling blend of history and mythology, memoir and reportage, NoiseCat unravels old stories and braids together new ones.
Penguin Random House, NoiseCat’s publisher, describes him as “one of the most powerful young writers at work today.” And his debut has been praised as “invigorating and soul-stirring” (Megha Majumdar, author of A Guardian and a Thief) and “a powerful archive of Indigenous pain and resistance” (Publishers Weekly).
“This is a love letter to Oakland, to the Canim Lake Band Tsq’secen of the Secwepemc Nation, to a father from his son, to the act of being a Native person in the 21st century finding ways to love even through all that wounds have opened and wrought,” said Tommy Orange, New York Times best-selling author of Wandering Stars. “With this, Julian Brave NoiseCat has written a book I’ve been waiting my whole life to read.”
Before turning full-time to writing and filmmaking, NoiseCat was a political strategist, policy analyst, and cultural organizer. In 2019, he helped lead a grassroots effort to bring an Indigenous canoe journey to San Francisco Bay to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the 1969 Alcatraz Occupation. Eighteen canoes representing communities from as far north as Canada and as far west as Hawaii participated in the journey, which was covered by dozens of local and national media outlets, including The New York Times.
In addition, NoiseCat is a champion powwow dancer and student of Salish art and history. His expansive repertoire pays homage to his cultural roots as a proud member of the Canim Lake Band Tsq'escen and a descendant of the Lil'Wat Nation of Mount Currie.
Ganeshram has served as the executive director of the Westport Museum since 2018. In recognition for her work as curator of the Museum’s 2018-19 exhibit, Remembered: The History of African Americans in Westport, Ganeshram received the prestigious award for Leadership in the Museum Field from the New England Museum Association. In 2019, Ganeshram was also awarded the Paul Cuffee Memorial Fellowship for the For the Study of Minorities in American Maritime History. And in 2022, she was named a fellow at the Fred W. Smith Library for the Study of George Washington at Mount Vernon.
Under Ganeshram’s leadership, the Museum has partnered closely with organizations focused on BIPOC cultural movements. With her at its helm, the Museum has been recognized by museum-industry leaders and by Connecticut Humanities as a standard-bearer for how small to midrange museums can truthfully and faithfully address American history around race and identity — particularly relating to slavery and civil rights.
StoryFest 2025 runs October 13 to October 20, starting with NoiseCat’s book launch and ending with a 10th anniversary celebration of Shonda Rhimes’ New York Times best-selling memoir, Year of Yes.
The festival rings in its hallmark weekend on Friday, October 17, by showcasing storytelling through film and music with a screening of the documentary Bonnie Blue: James Cotton’s Life in the Blues, followed by a concert event with James Montgomery’s Blues Band featuring SNL Beehive Queen Christine Ohlman.
Saturday, October 18, will feature a series of events starting at 10 am and going until 6 pm — including panel discussions, author talks, book readings, signings, and more.
Jesup Gallery
October 9 through December 16
Essay by Ellen Naftalin
In the 1960s and 70s, in the U.S., across the Atlantic, and all over the world, American Blues became known to a young audience. The face of popular music changed as the old and the new became accessible on 45s and 33 RPM albums.
Here in Westport, Sally White had a record nook in Klein's Bookstore on Main Street. As a devoted blues and jazz lover, she played the albums of the artists who had come up in the south in the 1930s and '40s, alongside the new young musicians and bands following in their footsteps. I remember the first time I heard the Butterfield Blues Band in 1966. It was on the loud speaker in Kleins. I was 16. Little did I know that I would one day marry the keyboard player, Mark Naftalin.
Beyond Westport lay the mysterious land of San Francisco. There, a great resurgence of the blues was occurring because of impresarios Bill Graham and Chet Helms. Their visionary approach to music events was to pair the likes of B.B. King, Muddy Waters, and other top stars of the Blues world, with groups like the Butterfield Blues Band, Big Brother, and The Doors at venues like Filmore West, Winterland, and the Avalon Ballroom. This was also happening at smaller clubs around the Bay Area and served to draw a young audience who then were exposed to the origins of the music.
At the same time, a young Janis Joplin sang her heart out on "Ball & Chain" by Big Mama Thornton at the Monterey International Pop Festival, produced by Lou Adler in 1967, thus exposing an audience of between 7,000 to 10,000 to a new form of music that had been born nearly half a century ago. After all, blues is the bottom line of American music.
Despite the far-reaching effect of the recordings, the musicians participating were mostly a close-knit group. Many of the same musicians played on multiple recordings and in multiple groups as the bands split apart and reformed. It was a heady time and place for musical experimentation.
This exhibit consists of some of the many records on which Mark Naftalin played keyboards. The artists who designed the album covers are credited wherever possible as are the band members.
Records like Mother Earth and East West have become classics. Brewer and Shipley's "One Toke Over The Line," a Top 10 hit at the time, became an anthem for the young baby boomers' resistance.
The advent of CDs and digital music had not yet arrived, so album covers and their design became an art form, much like the posters for events of the time.
These days, any of these and other albums can be heard on YouTube. The Art of the Album Cover was soon to become a thing of the past, but the music lives on.
Thank you to Ellen and Mark Naftalin for digging though their treasure trove of LPs and sharing this piece of unforgettable American recording history.
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For more about the Library art exhibits, visit the Art at the Library page.
South Gallery
October 9 through December 16
Reception: Wednesday, October 29, 6-8 pm, in the Trefz Forum; click here for more information.
(Reception kicks off at 6 pm, followed by a conversation between Morse and Miggs Burroughs at 7 pm.)
Artist Statement
The idea for this ongoing series came to me in early 2020, at a time when I regularly used the subway to commute to my place of work. As a lifelong avid reader, I was taken by the images of those few Black men, whom I all too rarely observed reading. The emotions I felt were not in any way influenced by current events in the news at that time, but sprang from feelings that touched me on a very deep level. As I see myself in each of the subjects I choose to paint, I have opted to name this series Black Men Reading.
When we recall that prior to the Civil War, it was against the law to teach a Black person to read — let alone for a Black person to be caught in the act of reading — and that the punishment could be physical harm, being sold away from family, and even death for either offense, we are reminded of the profundity of the subject.
As a direct result of economic, social, and historical realities stemming from this time and continuing into the present day, reading as a way of life has seldom been practiced or as emphasized in Black culture as it has in others. A love of reading requires the role of the early home environment. Instead, the task of teaching the skill and value of reading has been left largely to educators in the school system.
Recognizing that knowledge is power, and that the kind of knowledge that comes from reading books is the most powerful kind of knowledge of all, we realize why now, more than ever, it is so vitally important for Black men and women to establish the habit of reading, and to provide an example for others to follow.
About the Artist
Larry Morse was born in Harlem in 1947 and grew up largely in Hempstead, Long Island. After a tour of Vietnam during the Tet Offensive, he obtained a BFA from the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan. Living in the East Village for 20 years during a time of exciting social change, he also became a jazz drummer, and much of Larry’s work is greatly influenced by jazz.
After completing school, he worked for a time in commercial art, and then went on to teach art in the NYC Public school system. After 15 years, he retired in order to devote more time to painting, while supplementing his income as a Yellow Cab driver. He currently lives and paints in Ansonia.
Notable venues where Morse’s work has been shown include City Lights Gallery, the NEST, Bridgeport innovation Center, Bad Dog Brewery in Torrington, Gallery 287 and the Mothership in Danbury, Carol Peck’s Good News Cafe in Woodbury, the Easton Library, and the Mitchell Library in New Haven. His work is now included in the permanent collection of the Housatonic Museum.
For more, watch this recorded interview with Larry Morse.
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For more about the Library art exhibits, visit the Art at the Library page.
