The Library is thrilled to announce that Neil Gaiman, the prolific and admired author whose work includes American Gods, Coraline, and the graphic novel series The Sandman, will be the guest speaker for the Fall 2023 Malloy Lecture in the Arts.
The current allotment of tickets has been exhausted for the Fall 2023 Malloy Lecture in the Arts. We are currently assessing capacity and hope to release a limited bank of tickets later this summer. Please check back to the website for more information. The event will also be livestreamed, at no charge. And there will be a limited number of Neil Gaiman-signed books available during StoryFest on Saturday, October 21, and Sunday, October 22.
Renowned for his stage presence and oration, Gaiman routinely sells out large venues throughout the United States. Following his early work as a journalist and biographer, Gaiman achieved fame — and cult status — with The Sandman series, which ran for 75 issues and earned him nine Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards and three Harvey Awards. In 1991, Sandman was recognized with the World Fantasy Award for Best Short Story, making it the first comic ever to receive a literary award.
Following Sandman, Gaiman turned to novels, producing The New York Times best-sellers Good Omens (1990), Neverwhere (1995), Stardust (1999), American Gods (2001), and Anansi Boys (2005), as well as the short story collections Smoke and Mirrors (1998) and Fragile Things (2006). American Gods was honored with both the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award, and Smoke and Mirrors was nominated for the UK's MacMillan Silver Pen Awards as the best short story collection of the year.
Gaiman also has written a number of celebrated children’s and young adult books, including Coraline (2002), The Wolves in the Walls (2003), Odd and the Frost Giants (2008), The Graveyard Book (2008), and Crazy Hair (2009), among many others.
Coraline won the British Science Fiction Award, the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, the Bram Stoker Award, and the American Elizabeth Burr/Worzalla Award; Crazy Hair was shortlisted for the Kate Greenaway Medal; and The Graveyard Book won the UK's Booktrust Prize for Teenage Fiction and the 2010 UK CILIP Carnegie Medal, as well as the Newbery Medal, the highest honor given in U.S. children's literature, and the Locus Young Adult Award and the Hugo Best Novel Prize. With those honors, Gaiman became the first author ever to win both the Newbery Medal and the Carnegie Medal with the same book.
Unsurprisingly, given their popularity and acclaim, Gaiman’s books have been adapted for film and theater. Stardust and Coraline were both made into feature films, with Coraline winning a BAFTA Award and earning an Oscar nomination for Best Animated Film. Coraline was also adapted as a musical, and The Wolves in the Walls was developed into an opera by the Scottish National Theatre in 2006.
Gaiman traces much of his success back to libraries, of which he is an avowed fan, making him the perfect fit to serve as the featured guest for the Fall 2023 Malloy Lecture.
“I wouldn't be who I am without libraries,” Gaiman said. “I was the sort of kid who devoured books, and my happiest times as a boy were when I persuaded my parents to drop me off in the local library on their way to work, and I spent the day there. I discovered that librarians actually want to help you: They taught me about interlibrary loans.”
The Malloy Lecture in the Arts is made possible by a generous contribution from Westport artist Susan Malloy. The Westport Library created the lecture series in 2002 as a free, public annual discussion by an individual who has had a significant cultural influence and whose work has enhanced the understanding and appreciation of the arts.
The Westport Library is proud to welcome Richard Butler as the Library’s Spring 2023 Malloy Lecture in the Arts guest speaker. This event will be held Saturday, April 1, at 7 pm (rescheduled from Tuesday, February 28, due to inclement weather).
Reserved seats for this event have been filled. There will be a livestream of the show, and a recording will be available for viewing afterward. Click here to view the livestream at the time of the event.
Butler is a British painter and musician. While perhaps best known as the singer and founder of the Psychedelic Furs, Butler’s painting career began well before his music career, while he was still a student at Epsom Art School. He created the artwork for the Psychedelic Furs’ early gigs and had strong influence on the album art and visual presentation of the band. Throughout the 1980s, when the band achieved worldwide success and toured widely, Butler put his painting on the back burner. It was only after the band took an extended hiatus in the early 90s that he returned to his first love. Since then, he’s kept at it and found a balance between both endeavors.
With his daughter as his muse, Butler produces expressionistic portraits of pensive female subjects, who serve as ciphers for himself. As he described it: “In a way, I think all of my paintings are self-portraits in that, though the face I am painting may not be my own, the feeling I get back from the painting is certainly an important element of my own psyche.” Focused on the material qualities of his medium, Butler smudges, distorts, and overlays patterns onto his models’ faces, creating dynamic compositions at once naturalistic and hallucinatory.
In addition, he has continued to create music with several side projects. He also released a solo album in 2006, and in 2020 he put out the first new Psychedelic Furs album in nearly 30 years, which was met with international chart success and great acclaim from both fans and critics alike. And although the band continues to tour extensively, so has Butler’s work as a painter continued, having launched exhibitions in New York, Los Angeles, Miami, London, Berlin, and other prestigious galleries throughout the world.
For the 2023 Malloy Lecture in the Arts, Butler will be joined in conversation with friend and renowned American musician, record producer and Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Chris Frantz. Frantz was the drummer for both Talking Heads and Tom Tom Club, which he co-founded with wife and Talking Heads bassist Tina Weymouth. A longtime resident of Fairfield, Connecticut, Frantz has been a programmer at WPKN for more three years.
The Malloy Lecture in the Arts is made possible by a generous contribution from Westport artist Susan Malloy. The Westport Library created the lecture series in 2002 as a free, public annual discussion by an individual who has had a significant cultural influence and whose work has enhanced the understanding and appreciation of the arts.
The Westport Library is proud to welcome Anna Deavere Smith as the Library’s 2020 Malloy Lecture in the Arts guest speaker. This virtual event will be held on Tuesday, November 10th at 7:00pm.
PLEASE NOTE: THIS IS AN ONLINE EVENT, AND REGISTRANTS WILL RECEIVE LINKS TO VIEW THE PROGRAM 48 HOURS BEFORE THE EVENT
The Malloy Lecture in the Arts is made possible by a generous contribution from the late Westport artist Susan Malloy.
Playwright, actor, and educator Anna Deavere Smith uses her singular brand of theatre to explore issues of community, character, and diversity in America. The MacArthur Foundation honored Smith with the “Genius” Fellowship for creating “a new form of theatre - a blend of theatrical art, social commentary, journalism, and intimate reverie.”
Ms. Smith, who has been listening to people across the country from all walks of life for decades, uses Walt Whitman’s idea “to absorb America” as inspiration. To illustrate her goal of bringing people “across the chasms” of what she calls the “complex identities of America,” Ms. Smith performs portrayals of the people she’s interviewed during the course of her presentation, recreating a diversity of emotions and points of view on controversial issues.
Best known for crafting more than 15 one-woman shows drawn from hundreds of interviews, Smith turns these conversations into scripts and transforms herself onstage into an astonishing number of characters. In her speaking events, Smith discusses the many “complex identities of America,” and interweaves her discussions with portrayals of people she has interviewed to illustrate the diversity of emotions and points of view on controversial issues.
Her most recent play, Notes from the Field, looks at the School-to-Prison Pipeline and injustice and inequality in low-income communities. Winner of an Obie Award and the 2017 Nortel Award for Outstanding Solo Show, Notes from the Field was named one of the Top 10 Plays of the year by Time magazine. The film adaptation of Notes from the Field is available through HBO, while the paperback adaptation, Notes from the Field, is a collection of students and teachers, counselors and congressmen, preachers and prisoners, discussing their direct and indirect experiences with the School-to-Prison Pipeline.
In 2012, Smith was awarded the National Humanities Medal, presented by President Obama and in 2015, she was named the Jefferson Lecturer, the nation’s highest honor in the humanities. She also is the recipient of the prestigious Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and most recently, the 2017 Ridenhour Courage Prize and the George Polk Career Award for authentic journalism.
Smith’s breakthrough plays, Fires in the Mirror, a runner-up for the Pulitzer Prize, and the Tony-nominated Twilight: Los Angeles, tackle issues of race and social inequality that have become touchstones of her work. Her portrayals of patients and medical professionals in Let Me Down Easy delivered a vivid look at healthcare in the United States. The show aired on PBS’ Great Performances.
Currently, Smith appears on ABC’s hit series Black-ish and the ABC legal drama For the People. She is probably most recognizable as the hospital administrator on Showtime’s Nurse Jackie and the National Security Advisor on NBC’s The West Wing. Her films include The American President, Rachel Getting Married, and Philadelphia.
Smith is the founding director of the Institute on the Arts and Civic Dialogue, which was launched at Harvard University and is now housed at New York University, where she is a Professor at Tisch School of the Arts. Her books include Letters to a Young Artist and Talk to Me: Listening Between the Lines.
She has been an Artist-in-Residence at MTV Networks, the Ford Foundation, and Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. Smith was appointed to Bloomberg Philanthropies’ 2017 U.S. Mayors Challenge Committee, a nationwide competition urging innovative solutions for the toughest issues confronting U.S. cities. She holds honorary degrees from Yale, the University of Pennsylvania, and Julliard, among others.
The Malloy Lecture in the Arts is made possible by a generous contribution from Westport artist Susan Malloy. The Westport Library created the lecture series in 2002 as a free, public annual discussion by an individual who has had a significant cultural influence and whose work has enhanced the understanding and appreciation of the arts.
Past programs have included Philippe de Montebello, Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art; distinguished playwright Arthur Miller; artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude; musicians Joshua Bell and Frederic Chiu; poet-laureate Billy Collins; Vartan Gregorian, President of the Carnegie Corporation; author Joyce Carol Oates; cartoonist Roz Chast; actor Christopher Plummer; stage, film and theater star John Lithgow; preeminent classical dancer Jacques d'Amboise; music legend Clive Davis, author Salman Rushdie, Falsettos: In Conversation, and Bernstein on Broadway.
The Westport Library welcomes Art Spiegelman, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and artist of Maus, In the Shadow of No Towers, and Breakdowns.
PLEASE NOTE: Registration is now full. To join the waitlist, please email the Library's Program and Events Manager Cody Daigle-Orians at cdaigle-orians@westportlibrary.org. Wait list registrants are limited to 2 tickets per order.
For updates please check the Westport Library website: westportlibrary.org.
The Malloy Lecture in the Arts is made possible by a generous contribution from the late Westport artist Susan Malloy.
Art Spiegelman has almost single-handedly brought comic books out of the toy closet and onto the literature shelves. In 1992, he won the Pulitzer Prize for his masterful Holocaust narrative Maus— which portrayed Jews as mice and Nazis as cats. Maus II continued the remarkable story of his parents’ survival of the Nazi regime and their lives later in America. His comics are best known for their shifting graphic styles, their formal complexity, and controversial content. In his lecture, “What the %@&*! Happened to Comics?” Spiegelman takes his audience on a chronological tour of the evolution of comics, all the while explaining the value of this medium and why it should not be ignored. He believes that in our post-literate culture the importance of the comic is on the rise, for "comics echo the way the brain works. People think in iconographic images, not in holograms, and people think in bursts of language, not in paragraphs.”
Having rejected his parents’ aspirations for him to become a dentist, Art Spiegelman studied cartooning in high school and began drawing professionally at age 16. He went on to study art and philosophy at Harpur College before becoming part of the underground comix subculture of the 60s and 70s. As creative consultant for Topps Bubble Gum Co. from 1965-1987, Spiegelman created Wacky Packages, Garbage Pail Kids and other novelty items, and taught history and aesthetics of comics at the School for Visual Arts in New York from 1979-1986. In 2007 he was a Heyman Fellow of the Humanities at Columbia University where he taught a Masters of the Comics seminar. In 1980, Spiegelman founded RAW, the acclaimed avant-garde comics magazine, with his wife, Françoise Mouly—Maus was originally serialized in the pages of RAW. Before being published by Pantheon, who have published many of his subsequent works including illustrated version of the 1928 lost classic, The Wild Party, by Joseph Moncure March.
He and Mouly more recently co-edited Little Lit, a series of three comics anthologies for children published by HarperCollins ("Comics-They're not just for Grown-ups Anymore") and Big Fat Little Lit, collecting the three comics into one volume. Currently, he and his wife publish a series of early readers called Toon Books—picture books in comics format. They have co-edited A Toon Treasury of Classic Children’s Comics (Fall 2009). His work has been published in many periodicals, including The New Yorker, where he was a staff artist and writer from 1993-2003.
In 2004 he completed a two-year cycle of broadsheet-sized color comics pages, In the Shadow of No Towers, first published in a number of European newspapers and magazines including Die Zeit and The London Review of Books. A book version of these highly political works was published by Pantheon in the United States, appeared on many national bestseller lists, and was selected by The New York Times Book Review as one of the 100 Notable Books of 2004.
Spiegelman’s work also includes a new edition of his 1978 anthology, Breakdowns; it includes an autobiographical comix-format introduction almost as long as the book itself, entitled Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@&*!; as well as a children’s book (published with Toon Books), called Jack and the Box. In 2009 Maus was chosen by the Young Adult Library Association as one of its recommended titles for all students (the list is revised every 5 years and used by educators and librarians across the country). McSweeney’s has published a collection of three of his sketchbooks entitled Be a Nose. A major exhibition of his work was arranged by Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, as part of the "15 Masters of 20th Century Comics" exhibit (November 2005). In 2005, Art Spiegelman was named one of Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People and in 2006 he was named to the Art Director’s Club Hall of Fame. He was made an Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in France in 2007 and—the American equivalent—played himself on an episode of “The Simpsons” in 2008. In fall 2011, Pantheon published Meta Maus, a companion to The Complete Maus – it is the story of why he wrote Maus, why he chose mice, cats, frogs, and pigs, and how he got his father to open up (the new book includes a DVD of the transcripts of Art’s interviews with his father; it is not a graphic novel, but it is populated with illustrations, photos and other images). MetaMaus has been awarded the 2011 National Jewish Book Award in the Biography, Autobiography, and Memoir category. In 2015 he collaborated with renowned French artist JR on The Ghosts of Ellis Island. Spiegelman has also edited a new book about the artist Si Lewen titled Si Lewen’s Parade: An Artist’s Odyssey.
In 2011, Art Spiegelman won the Grand Prix at the Angoulême International Comics Festival, marking only the third time an American has received the honor (the other two were Will Eisner and Robert Crumb). The honor also included a retrospective exhibition of his artwork, shown in the Pompidou Center and traveled to the Ludwig Museum in Cologne, the Vancouver Art Gallery, the Jewish Museum in NYC, and the last stop at the AGO Art Gallery of Ontario. The accompanying book is CO-MIX: A Retrospective of Comics, Graphics, and Scraps. His project, WORDLESS!,a multimedia look at the history of the graphic novel, had its world premiere at the Sydney Opera House in October 2013 and its US premiere at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in January 2014. In 2015 he was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2018 he received the Edward MacDowell Medal, the first-ever Edward MacDowell Medal given in comic art.
Spiegelman photo credit Enno Kapitz
The Malloy Lecture in the Arts is made possible by a generous contribution from Westport artist Susan Malloy. The Westport Library created the lecture series in 2002 as a free, public annual discussion by an individual who has had a significant cultural influence and whose work has enhanced the understanding and appreciation of the arts.
Past programs have included Philippe de Montebello, Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art; distinguished playwright Arthur Miller; artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude; musicians Joshua Bell and Frederic Chiu; poet-laureate Billy Collins; Vartan Gregorian, President of the Carnegie Corporation; author Joyce Carol Oates; cartoonist Roz Chast; actor Christopher Plummer; stage, film and theater star John Lithgow; preeminent classical dancer Jacques d'Amboise; music legend Clive Davis, author Salman Rushdie, Falsettos: In Conversation, and Bernstein on Broadway.
The 2018 Malloy Lecture was part of Leonard Bernstein at 100, which is a two-year world-wide celebration of the 100th birthday of Leonard Bernstein, composer, conductor, educator, musician, cultural ambassador and humanitarian. The celebration officially kicked off on August 23, 2017, Bernstein’s 99th birthday, and will continue through his 100th year until August 25, 2019.
Leonard Bernstein (August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American composer, conductor, author, music lecturer, and pianist. He was among the first conductors born and educated in the US to receive worldwide acclaim. According to music critic Donal Henahan, he was “one of the most prodigiously talented and successful musicians in American history.”
His fame derived from his long tenure as the music director of the New York Philharmonic, from his conducting of concerts with most of the world's leading orchestras, and from his music for West Side Story, Peter Pan, Candide, Wonderful Town, On the Town, On the Waterfront, his Mass, and a range of other compositions, including three symphonies and many shorter chamber and solo works.
Bernstein was the first conductor to give a series of television lectures on classical music, starting in 1954 and continuing until his death. He was a skilled pianist often conducting piano concertos from the keyboard.
As a composer, he wrote in many styles encompassing symphonic and orchestral music, ballet, film and theater music, choral works, opera, chamber music and pieces for the piano. Many of his works are regularly performed around the world, although none has matched the tremendous popular and critical success of West Side Story.
The Westport Library’s 2018 Malloy Lecture in the Arts, Bernstein on Broadway, celebrated the life and contributions of legendary composer and conductor the late Leonard Bernstein, specifically his influence on modern American musical theater. The evening was part of the worldwide celebration of Bernstein’s 100th birthday.
The first half of the evening focused on Bernstein’s innumerable contributions to Broadway and featurde a panel discussion with two of Bernstein’s three children, Nina Bernstein Simmons and Alexander Bernstein, moderated by conductor, composer and producer George Steel. The discussion was enhanced with extraordinary archival Bernstein family footage showing scenes of their life in Fairfield, summers in Martha’s Vineyard, and elsewhere.
The second half of the evening featured live musical performances of some of Bernstein’s most iconic pieces including selections from West Side Story, On the Town, and Wonderful Town. The selections were performed by Broadway soloists including Tony Award nominee Tony Yazbeck, Amy Owens and Bryonha Marie Parham. The evening also included a special performance by the Staples High School Orphenians. The evening’s Musical Director, Michael Barrett, also performed a four-hand piano arrangement of the Candide Overture with celebrated pianist Frederic Chiu.
The Malloy Lecture in the Arts brought Broadway to Westport with a powerhouse panel of talent from the Great White Way. The evening featured a discussion of the Broadway hit Falsettos with the men behind the show - Tony Award-winning composer and lyricist William Finn and Tony Award-winning playwright and director James Lapine and the revival’s Tony-nominated star Stephanie J. Block. The evening was moderated by five-time Emmy Award-winning Executive Producer of Live! From Lincoln Center, and Westport resident, Andrew C. Wilk followed by a heart-pounding performance of selections from some of Block’s most notable Broadway roles .
The Lecture was held at the Westport Playhouse and filled all 550 seats.
World-renowned author and human rights advocate Salman Rushdie delivered the 2015 Malloy Lecture in the Arts to a packed house of more than 1,000 people at Staples High School auditorium. Widely regarded as one of the greatest writers of our time, Rushdie is the author of 13 novels including: Midnight’s Children, The Satanic Verses, The Moor’s Last Sigh and The Ground Beneath Her Feet.
Among countless accolades and honors, Rushdie is a Fellow of the British Royal Society of Literature and holds honorary doctorates and fellowships at six European and six American universities, is an Honorary Professor in the Humanities at M.I.T, and Distinguished Writer in Residence at Emory University. He has received the Freedom of the City in Mexico City, Strasbourg and El Paso, and the Edgerton Prize of the American Civil Liberties Union. He holds the rank of Commander in the Order of Arts and Letters - France’s highest artistic honor. Rushdie is currently a Distinguished Writer in Residence at New York University.
The 2014 Malloy Lecture in the Arts brought music mogul Clive Davis to Westport. Davis is a Grammy Award-winning producer, Artists & Repertoire (A&R) executive and is a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as the only non-performer along with other legends such as Eric Clapton, Earth, Wind & Fire and James Taylor. From 1967 to 1973, Davis was the president of Columbia Records. He was the founder and president of Arista Records from 1975 through 2000 until founding J Records. From 2002 until April 2008, Davis was the chairman and CEO of the RCA Music Group.
Davis is credited with launching the careers of artists that achieved superstar status, such as Janis Joplin, Laura Nyro, Santana, Bruce Springsteen, Chicago, Billy Joel, Blood, Sweat & Tears, Loggins & Messina, Aerosmith, Whitney Houston, Barry Manilow and Daryl Hall and John Oates to name just a few.
Jacques d’Amboise, celebrated danseur and choreographer, was the 2012 Malloy Lecture in the Arts speaker. D’Amboise was made famous for his work as a principal dancer with the prestigious New York City ballet where he worked closely with storied choreographer George Balanchine. D’Amboise himself later choreographed ballets for the New York City Ballet. As well as ballets, d’Amboise performed in films, including Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and Carousel.
D’Amboise also has an impressive commitment to arts education founding National Dance Institute in 1976 which has been bring dance to children for more than 40 years. D’Amboise has received numerous honors and awards, including 1990 MacArthur Fellowship, a 1995 Kennedy Center Honors Award, a National Medal of the Arts, a New York Governor’s Award and an Honorary Doctorate Degree from Boston College among others. He is also the author of two books: I Was a Dancer and Teaching the Magic of Dance.
Celebrated actor and author John Lithgow was the 2011 Malloy Lecture in the Arts speaker. As a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Lithgow serves on a commission to advance the cause of the humanities and social sciences, advocating for action by the government. He is also a staunch advocate for literacy and arts education for children.
Lithgow graduated from Harvard College in 1967 with an A.B. in history and literature. He remained connected with the institution and while on their Board of Overseers in the 90’s, created Arts First, an annual springtime festival of undergraduate arts and established the Harvard Arts Medal, presented yearly to alums who have gone into the creative arts. Past recipients include: Jack Lemmon, YoYo Ma, John Updike, Tommy Lee Jones, and Bonnie Raitt.
Lithgow has received two Tony Awards, six Emmy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, three Screen Actors Guild Awards, an American Comedy Award, four Drama Desk Awards, and has been nominated for two Academy Awards and four Grammy Awards. He has received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and has been inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame.
In September, Canadian actor Christopher Plummer took the stage for the Malloy Lecture. Beginning with his film debut in Stage Struck, Plummer’s career has spanned six decades. He is known for portraying Captain von Trapp in The Sound of Music, and has also portrayed several major historical figures, including Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington in Waterloo, Rudyard Kipling in The Man Who Would Be King, Mike Wallace in The Insider, Leo Tolstoy in The Last Station, and J. Paul Getty in All the Money in the World.
Over the course of his auspicious career, Plummer has received accolades for his work, including an Academy Award, a Genie Award, two Emmy Awards, two Tony Awards, a Golden Globe Award, a SAG Award, and a British Academy Film Award; he is one of the few performers to receive the Triple Crown of Acting. Having won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor at age 82 for Beginners and having received a subsequent nomination at 88 for All the Money in the World, Plummer is both the oldest Academy Award acting winner and nominee.
