If you are searching for Whitman-related events in the the New York area, please also check the Walt Whitman Birthplace website (we highly recommend the tours of the house Whitman Sr. built and Walt lived in for his first four years) and the Whitman House in Camden, NJ (step inside Walt’s home for his last decade).

If you have an event you’d like to list with us, please let us know: waltwhitmaninitiaitve@gmail.com.

 

Events

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  • Messiah Sing!

    Union Theological Seminary 3041 Broadway at 121st St., New York, NY, United States

    Join with The Dessoff Choirs and sing the choruses of G.F. Handel’s Messiah! Dessoff singers perform the solos.    Tickets: $15 Purchase at dessoff.org or at the door.

  • Welcome Yule!

    St Paul's Episcopal Church 199 Carroll St., Brooklyn, NY, United States

    The Dessoff Choirs, Malcolm J. Merriweather, music director, ushers in the winter holidays with a rare performance of MargaretBonds’ The Ballad of the Brown King. This holiday cantata, written in honor of Martin Luther King Jr., features a text by Langston Hughes and focuses on Balthazar, one of the Three Kings. The program also includes seasonal [...]

  • Happy Birthday, Walt Whitman!

    A National Public Reading of “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” A national public reading of Whitman’s sweeping meditation on time, our interconnectedness, and the transcendent power of art. The project is both an engaging introduction to Whitman and an opportunity to respond to the question at the heart of the poem: “What is it then between us?"

  • The Rosenbach presents: Bibliococktails: Walt Whitman

    Art in the Age 116 N 3rd Street, Philadelphia, PA, United States

    Art in the Age is proud to host the next installment of the Rosenbach's Bibliococktails series! Bibliococktails celebrates great literature and great libations. Event admission includes discussion, light refreshments and themed cocktails. In honor of poet, essayist, and journalist Walt Whitman, we've put together a menu of cocktails inspired by his works for you to sip [...]

  • WHITMANIA: Celebrating Walt Whitman’s New York and Brooklyn (The Bowery Boys Live at the Bell House)

    The Bell House 149 7th Street, Brooklyn, NY, United States

    Tickets The Bowery Boys: Join the Bowery Boys podcast for a live podcast recording this January as we explore the life of Walt Whitman at the Bell House, as part of the Brooklyn Podcast Festival presented by Pandora. We’ll be discussing the story of Whitman as a part of the year-long celebration to honor his [...]

  • Walt Whitman’s Prose and Poetry in Products and Advertisements

    Walt Whitman Birthplace Association 246 Old Walt Whitman Road, Huntington Station, NY, United States

    Join us for a special FREE Exhibition Preview and Reception!  Member Preview 2:00 - 3:00 PM Public Preview 3:00 - 5:00 PM As part of our Bicentennial Celebration, we are pairing with esteemed Walt Whitman collector, Ed S. Centeno, with an exhibition featuring various cultural artifacts, commercial products, fine arts, and advertisements which depict segments [...]

  • Whitman Bicentennial Poetry Contest

    To celebrate the bicentennial of Walt Whitman’s birth on May 31, 2019, Brooklyn Poets invites you to submit a poem to our Whitman Bicentennial Poetry Contest in response to the bard’s indelible question from “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry”: “What is it then between us?” Brooklyn Poet Laureate Tina Chang, Mark Doty and Rowan Ricardo Phillips will judge the [...]

  • Writers Making Books

    Arcadia University Galleries, Spruance Galleries 450 South Easton Road, Glenside, PA, United States

    This group exhibition is inspired by Walt Whitman’s instrumental role in the physical production of his many editions of Leaves of Grass, which—as scholar Edward Folsom has stated—the poet not only wrote, but made, “over and over again, each time producing a different material object that spoke to its readers in different ways” The show combines a selection of examples [...]

  • Five Up on Walt

    The Kelly Writers House, University of Pennsylvania 3805 Locust Walk, Philadelphia, PA, United States

  • Walt Whitman in His Time and Ours

    University of Delaware Morris Library Special Collections Gallery 181 South College Ave, Newark, DE, United States

    Born in 1819, Walt Whitman is considered the greatest American poet of the 19th century. To celebrate Whitman’s bicentenary, this exhibition examines his life and work in the context of the era in which he lived, exploring Whitman’s influence on American life, culture and other writers through his time to the present.

  • Walt Whitman’s Arcadia: Long Island Through the Eyes of a Poet & Painters

    Long Island Museum 1200 NY-25A, Stony Brook, NY, United States

    Walt Whitman’s writing reveled in a 19thcentury America that swept far past, in place and reference, the Long Island region that had once been his childhood home. Still, Whitman’s prose and poetry often reveals the Long Island that he loved, a place of farmers, fishermen, and uniquely beautiful landscapes and seascapes. This exhibition, marking the [...]

  • “Encompassing Multitudes: The Song of Walt Whitman”

    Harrison Institute and Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia 160 McCormick Road, Charlottesville, VA, United States

    Encompassing Multitudes: The Song of Walt Whitman will be on view in the Main Gallery of the Harrison Institute and Small Special Collections Library at the University of Virginia (Charlottesville, VA) from February 20 through July 27, 2019. The exhibition will celebrate the two-hundredth anniversary of Walt Whitman’s birth. The exhibit will display first printings of [...]

  • Whitman, Alabama

    Philadelphia Museum of Art 2600 Benjamin Franklin Pkwy, Philadelphia, PA, United States

    Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” is a joyful celebration of the diversity at the heart of this country—and our connectedness to one another. To commemorate the great American poet’s 200th birthday, we’re taking part in citywide events with an installation of filmmaker Jennifer Crandall’s Whitman, Alabama, an ongoing project that brings the poem to life [...]

  • “Sing Me The Universal – A Walt Whitman Bicentennial”

    Church of St. Francis Xavier 46 W 16th St., New York, United States

    American composers Vincent Persichetti (in his Celebrations) and Jorge Martín (in his One Hour to Madness and Joy) capture the power and transcendence of the words of Walt Whitman, while excerpts from the Mass in D minor (1860) of Bostonian John Knowles Paine highlight the poet’s radical individualism. With soloists, chorus, organ and percussion.

  • Whitman and the Civil War

    Union Theological Seminary 3041 Broadway at 121st St., New York, NY, United States

    Led by music director Malcolm J. Merriweather, Dessoff presents a program that reflects on the Civil War as seen through Whitman’s eyes. As a volunteer nurse in a Washington, DC military hospital, he was witness to the many horrors that wars inflict. René Clausen’s Three Whitman Songsand Jeffrey Van’s A Procession Winding Around Me: Four Civil War [...]

  • Poet of the Future: The Bicentennial of the Birth of Walt Whitman

    The Archibald S. Alexander Library 169 College Avenue, New Brunswick, NJ, United States

    The exhibition Poet of the Future: The Bicentennial of the Birth of Walt Whitman will showcase the library's collection of works by Walt Whitman, including various rare editions of Leaves of Grass, manuscripts, private press and artists' books. Highlights include first and second editions of Leaves of Grass, Whitman's own copy of the Author's Edition (1875) of [...]

  • Walt Whitman’s Poetic Legacy

    Poetry Center, Stony Brook University 100 Nicolls Road (Humanities Building, Room 2001), Stony Brook, NY, United States

    To kick off National Poetry Month in 2019, join us at Stony Brook University for a poetry reading and discussion examining Walt Whitman’s influence on the poetry and culture of the Americas. Stony Brook University professors and award-winning poets Rowan Ricardo Phillips and Cornelius Eady will address Whitman’s impact in the U.S. and Caribbean, and [...]

  • Carol of Words: Walt Whitman in Song

    Academy of Vocal Arts 1920 Spruce St., Philadelphia, PA, United States

    To celebrate the bicentennial of Walt Whitman’s birth and his lasting contribution to American letters and song, Lyric Fest presents two concerts with distinct programming of Whitman songs in Philadelphia. Presented in two parts, Lyric Fest premieres of 10 new works alongside extant settings of Whitman with each concert featuring a quartet of singers, a [...]

  • “Starting from Paumanok”: Whitman, Long Island, The World

    Poetry Center, Stony Brook University 100 Nicolls Road (Humanities Building, Room 2001), Stony Brook, NY, United States

    "Starting from Paumanok: Whitman, Long Island, The World" is a half-day symposium at Stony Brook University that will explore Walt Whitman’s impact on literature, music, and the visual arts. Topics will include “Whitman’s Poetic Legacy,” “Whitman’s New York,” and “Whitman and the Civil War.” The event will culminate with a lecture and performance featuring 2018 [...]

  • “Crossing” Performance and Lecture by Matt Aucoin

    Staller Center for the Arts, Stony Brook University 100 Nicolls Rd., Recital Hall, Stony Brook, NY, United States

    This lecture and performance features 2018 MacArthur Fellow Matthew Aucoin, composer and writer of the original opera Crossing, based on Whitman’s Civil War writings.  The opera was performed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 2017 and by the Los Angeles Opera in 2018. This lecture-performance will offer a rare opportunity for audiences in the [...]