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February 15, 2025, 10:30 am – 12:00 pm
Book: The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell
Exhibition: Portraits in the Speed’s permanent collection
In February, we will explore literary and visual portraits, portraits of marriage and power through The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell and an exploration of portraits in the Speed’s permanent collection.
The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell | Goodreads
Florence, the 1550s. Lucrezia, third daughter of the grand duke, is comfortable with her obscure place in the palazzo: free to wonder at its treasures, observe its clandestine workings, and devote herself to her own artistic pursuits. But when her older sister dies on the eve of her wedding to the ruler of Ferrara, Modena and Reggio, Lucrezia is thrust unwittingly into the limelight: the duke is quick to request her hand in marriage, and her father just as quick to accept on her behalf. Having barely left girlhood behind, Lucrezia must now enter an unfamiliar court whose customs are opaque and where her arrival is not universally welcomed. Perhaps most mystifying of all is her new husband himself, Alfonso. Is he the playful sophisticate he appeared to be before their wedding, the aesthete happiest in the company of artists and musicians, or the ruthless politician before whom even his formidable sisters seem to tremble? As Lucrezia sits in constricting finery for a painting intended to preserve her image for centuries to come, one thing becomes worryingly clear. In the court’s eyes, she has one duty: to provide the heir who will shore up the future of the Ferranese dynasty. Until then, for all of her rank and nobility, the new duchess’s future hangs entirely in the balance.
April 19, 10:30 am – 12:00 pm
Book: Save Me the Waltz by Zelda Fitzgerald
Exhibition: Brilliant Exiles: American Women in Paris, 1900-1939 – (March 29 – June 22, 2025), among other creative women, the exhibition features the authors: Edna St. Vincent Millay, Sylvia Beach, Gertrude Stein, May Sarton, Kay Boyle, and Anaïs Nin
Save Me the Waltz by Zelda Fitzgerald | Goodreads
One of the great literary curios of the 20th century, Save Me the Waltz is the first and only novel by Zelda Fitzgerald. During the years when her husband F. Scott Fitzgerald was working on Tender is the Night—which many critics consider his masterpiece—Zelda Fitzgerald was preparing her own story. The novel strangely parallels events from her husband’s life, throwing a fascinating light on Scott Fitzgerald and his work. In its own right, it is a vivid and moving story—centered upon the confessional of a famous glamour girl of the affluent 1920s and an aspiring ballerina—that captures the spirit of an era.
June 21, 10:30 am – 12:00 pm
Book: Chasing Me to My Grave: An Artist’s Memoir of the Jim Crow South by the late Winfred Rembert as told to Erin I. Kelly
Exhibition: Louisville’s Black Avant-Garde: Gloucester Caliman Coxe (June 19, 2025 – September 7, 2025)
Chasing Me to My Grave: An Artist’s Memoir of the Jim Crow South by Winfred Rembert | Goodreads
Winfred Rembert grew up as a field hand on a Georgia plantation. He embraced the Civil Rights Movement, endured political violence, survived a lynching, and spent seven years in prison on a chain gang. Years later, seeking a fresh start at the age of 52, he discovered his gift and vision as an artist, and using leather tooling skills he learned in prison, started etching and painting scenes from his youth.
Rembert’s work has been exhibited at museums and galleries across the country, profiled in the New York Times and more, and honored by Bryan Stevenson’s Equal Justice Initiative. In Chasing Me to My Grave, he relates his life in prose and paintings—vivid, confrontational, revelatory, complex scenes from the cotton fields and chain gangs of the segregated south to the churches and night clubs of the urban north. This is also the story of finding epic love, and with it the courage to revisit a past that begs to remain buried, as told to Tufts philosopher Erin I. Kelly.
August 16, 10:30 am – 12:00 pm
Book: The Complete Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
Poetry Exhibition: The Adele and Leonard Leight Glass Art Award – Victoria Ahmadizadeh Melendez (August 7 – October 19, 2025)
Persepolis is the story of Satrapi’s unforgettable childhood and coming of age within a large and loving family in Tehran during the Islamic Revolution; of the contradictions between private and public life in a country plagued by political upheaval; of her high school years in Vienna facing the trials of adolescence far from her family; of her homecoming—both sweet and terrible; and, finally, of her self-imposed exile from her beloved homeland. It is the chronicle of a girlhood and adolescence at once outrageous and familiar, a young life entwined with the history of her country yet filled with the universal trials and joys of growing up.
October 18, 10:30 am – 12:00 pm
Book: The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Exhibition: Current Speed: Vian Sora, Otherworlds (October 1, 2025 – January 18, 2026)
As an indigenous scientist and author of Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer harvests serviceberries alongside the birds, she considers the ethic of reciprocity that lies at the heart of the gift economy. How, she asks, can we learn from indigenous wisdom and the plant world to reimagine what we value most? Our economy is rooted in scarcity, competition, and the hoarding of resources, and we have surrendered our values to a system that actively harms what we love.
Meanwhile, the serviceberry’s relationship with the natural world is an embodiment of reciprocity, interconnectedness, and gratitude. The tree distributes its wealth—its abundance of sweet, juicy berries—to meet the needs of its natural community. And this distribution ensures its own survival. As Kimmerer explains, “Serviceberries show us another model, one based upon reciprocity, where wealth comes from the quality of your relationships, not from the illusion of self-sufficiency.
December 20, 10:30 am – 12:00 pm
Book: My Father’s Paradise: A Son’s Search for His Family’s Past by Ariel Sabar
Exhibition: Otherworldly Journeys – The Fantastical Worlds of Bosch and Bruegel
(October 17, 2025 – February 1, 2026)
In a remote corner of the world, forgotten for nearly three thousand years, lived an enclave of Kurdish Jews so isolated that they still spoke Aramaic, the language of Jesus. Mostly illiterate, they were self-made mystics and gifted storytellers and humble peddlers who dwelt in harmony with their Muslim and Christian neighbors in the mountains of northern Iraq. To these descendants of the Lost Tribes of Israel, Yona Sabar was born.
Yona’s son Ariel grew up in Los Angeles, where Yona had become an esteemed professor, dedicating his career to preserving his people’s traditions. Ariel wanted nothing to do with his father’s strange immigrant heritage—until he had a son of his own. Ariel Sabar brings to life the ancient town of Zakho, discovering his family’s place in the sweeping saga of Middle-Eastern history. This powerful book is an improbable story of tolerance and hope set in what today is the very center of the world’s attention.