150 Years and Counting: TCPL Continues Year-long Sesquicentennial Celebration

TCPL continues its year-long sesquicentennial celebration with a series of exhibits and related programs.

September 26 - 28 2014 A weekend-long exploration of Abraham Lincoln’s struggle to meet the constitutional challenges of the Civil War.

Friday, September 26,  5 – 7 pm
After-hours access to the traveling exhibit which inspired the Library’s celebration for an evening of art featuring self-guided tours of Lincoln:  The Constitution and the Civil War and its three companion exhibits, Montage Histories:  Tompkins County, New York, through Photographs 1864-2014, Tompkins County in a Time of War:  Life on the Home Front and on the Battlefield and Mightier than the Sword: The Impact of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

5:30 pm 
Cornell University’s Glee Club, under the direction of Robert Isaacs, will perform Toby Twining’s “Lincoln the Musician,” a dramatic and compelling interpretation of the Gettysburg Address.

7 pm  
Cinemapolis will present Civil Warriors, an original  film produced by PhotoSynthesis Productions about the first African American regiment and the Ithaca men who registered to fight in the Civil War.  A panel discussion moderated by Eric Acree, featuring narrator Professor Sean Eversley-Bradwell and co-producers/directors Che Broadnax and Deborah Hoard will be held immediately following the screening.

Saturday, September 27, 11 am - 2 pm 
A representative of TCPL’s Teen Advisory Group, portraying Abraham Lincoln, will serve as a docent providing mini tours of “Lincoln:  The Constitution and the Civil War.”

4 pm
Excerpts from  Uncle Tom’s Cabin, TCPL's featured book during Banned Books/Freedom to Read, will be read during the Tompkins County Public Library Foundation’s  Second Annual Readathon.

Sunday, September 28, 2 pm 
Elmira College Professor Charlie Mitchell will present “Re-reading Uncle Tom's Cabin after Django Unchained and Twelve Years a Slave,” an illustrated lecture.  This program will be held in the Library’s BorgWarner Community Room.

October - date to be decided
Edward E. Baptist, associate professor, Department of History, House Professor and Dean, Carl Becker House, Cornell University, will talk about Lincoln and the Civil War.

Wednesday October 22, 7 pm
“The Language of War,” an original dramatic reading presented by the Tompkins County Civil War Sesquicentennial Commemoration Commission will offer a local perspective on life in Tompkins County during the Civil War and capture the drama of the era.

Separate blogs about each exhibit will follow.