Recent Events

SALON: Citizen Reporters with author Stephanie Gorton | February 28, 2020
Tracing McClure’s Magazine from its meteoric rise to its dramatic combustion, Stephanie Gorton’s Citizen Reporters is a thrillingly told biography of a powerhouse magazine that forever changed American life and a timely case study that demonstrates the crucial importance of journalists who speak the truth.

SALON: The History of the Book with Jim Egan and Rick Ring | February 21, 2020
Professor Jim Egan and Librarian Rick Ring will tell stories about their encounters with rare books with touchstones including the holdings of the Providence Athenæum, and the history of book collecting in Rhode Island. In conjunction with the exhibit Bibliomania: Book Arts at the Providence Athenæum.
Sponsored by Mullen Scorpio Cerilli CPAs

Popular Recordings

Colson Whitehead | September 27, 2019
Named “a genuine literary phenomenon” by The New York Times, Colson Whitehead recently was the first author in almost a decade to appear on the cover of Time. His 2016 novel The Underground Railroad won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. His newest novel The Nickel Boys has topped bestseller lists since its publication last month, and to universal acclaim.
Sponsored by Chas A. Miller III and Birch Coffey / The Ira S. and Anna Galkin Charitable Trust

SALON: Stephen Greenblatt | May 17, 2019
In partnership with The Modern Language Association (MLA)
Harvard University professor Stephen Greenblatt will speak on “Survival Strategies: Shakespeare on Power” as part of the MLA Public Conversations Series.

SALON: Egyptian Obelisks of Rome with Vincent Buonanno | November 16, 2018
Thirty years ago, Vincent Buonanno began collecting illustrated books, travel guides, and maps, all on the single theme of Rome in its Renaissance and Baroque periods of urban development from 1500 to 1750, including the phenomenon of ancient Egyptian obelisks relocated throughout the cities as focal points of urban monuments, churches, and piazzas. Buonanno discusses these celebrated images as the European development of engraving and etching copper plates, beginning as a simple means of producing multiple illustrations and developing into a high art form.

SALON: Arnold Weinstein | October 5, 2018
Many of our greatest works of literature and art are studded with wreckage and reversals, challenging our so-called ‘knowledge,’ as well as our assumptions, by prioritizing sentience and subjectivity. Today’s information-culture, with its algorithms and electronic immediacy, is locked out of the actual reaches and texture of lived experience. Acclaimed Brown University professor Arnold Weinstein argues that the Humanities show us who we are.

A Night in Crimetown | July 12, 2017
Marc Smerling and Zac Stuart-Pontier, creators of the hit podcast Crimetown, spend an evening at the Ath for their first appearance in Providence.
Sponsored by Partridge Snow & Hahn LLP

The Art of the Memoir | May 20, 2017
Authors Andre Dubus III, Dani Shapiro, and Ann Hood discuss their works and the art and power of memoir.
In partnership with Goat Hill Writers