American Inspiration

An extraordinary achievement of storytelling and scholarship, Chasing Beauty illuminates the fascinating ways the Gardner museum and its holdings can be seen as a kind of memoir, dazzling and haunting, created with objects instead of words. Don’t miss hearing from the award-winning author Natalie Dykstra about the complex and singular woman behind this fascinating and beloved Boston museum—a tale of beauty and loss, grit, and American self-invention.

Join the Wyner Family Jewish Heritage Center and American Inspiration for a program with professional historians and Holocaust experts Dr. Elizabeth White and Dr. Joanna Sliwa, discussing the astonishing story of Dr. Josephine Janina Mehlberg—a Jewish mathematician who saved thousands of lives in Nazi-occupied Poland by masquerading as a Polish aristocrat.

Presented by Dr. Elizabeth White and Dr. Joanna Sliwa.

The Great Abolitionist is the first major biography of Charles Sumner in over 50 years. Employing his “vast knowledge of 19th-century Boston and its diffident attitude toward slavery and integration,” Stephen Puleo calls his book a “biographical history” that brings to life two decades when the nation’s very fate hung in the balance -- when slavery consumed Congressional debate, America careened toward civil war, and the country dealt with the war, the assassination of a President, and the monumental task of Reconstruction.

From the New York Times bestselling author of Satchel and Bobby Kennedy, a sweeping and spellbinding portrait of the longtime kings of jazz—Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Count Basie—who, born within a few years of one another, overcame racist exclusion and violence to become the most popular entertainers on the planet.

This is a hybrid event.

Moderated by David Leonard

This breathtaking new history of the Irish immigrants who arrived in the United States during the Great Potato Famine shows how their strivings in and beyond New York exemplify the astonishing tenacity and improbable triumph of Irish America. Following an extended illustrated presentation, our award-winning guest author will be in dialogue with genealogist-moderator Melanie McComb; then, they’ll answer your questions.  

Moderated by Melanie McComb

In this enlightening personal account, a man steeped in our country’s history and myths tells the story of his groundbreaking Slave Dwelling project—his surprising mission to sleep overnight in former slave dwellings that still stand across United Stated. His account reveals the fascinating history behind these sites and sheds light on larger issues of race in America.