Culture & Humanities Events
The Hopkins Bloomberg Center is a vital cultural hub that offers a wide variety of free, public arts programming from film screenings and author talks to panels and performances. Featuring leading scholars from across the University’s divisions and today’s cultural luminaries, past events have included in-depth conversations with leading authors and thinkers such as New York Times White House Correspondent Katie Rogers and chief of staff to former First Lady Laura Bush, Anita McBride; documentary film screenings with Oscar-nominated director Raoul Peck; and theatrical readings from acclaimed film and stage actors including David Strathairn and Elizabeth Marvel.
Learn more about our variety of events at the intersection of the arts and public policy below.
Programming
Film Screenings
The Hopkins Bloomberg Center organizes free public, world-premiere and early screenings of documentary films and talkbacks with today’s leading filmmakers. The Center has also hosted programming from international film festivals such as DC/DOX, celebrating the best in contemporary documentary storytelling. Past programs showcased new work from Oscar-nominated director Raoul Peck and award-winning documentarian Bernadette Wegenstein.
Book Talks
The Hopkins Bloomberg Center hosts conversations with acclaimed nonfiction authors and journalists. Authors & Insights is a series of in-depth conversations with some of today’s most compelling authors and thinkers exploring the issues that matter most in our world, such as inequality, economic mobility, modern power and politics, and more. Authors have included New York Times White House correspondent Katie Rogers; Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalist and author David Leonhardt; New York Times opinion columnist Carlos Lozada; and Eliot A. Cohen, a JHU professor and former State Department official.
Culture Panels
Bringing humanities to the National Mall, the Hopkins Bloomberg Center convenes a variety of lectures and talks at the intersection of arts and public policy. The Krieger School of Arts & Sciences offers programs that explore the issues that matter most in our world, investigating the narratives that illuminate our shared experiences, make sense of our differences, and reveal the complexities of our past.
Notable events have included a fireside chat on the role of museums and libraries in a democratic society with Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution Lonnie G. Bunch III, Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden, and Archivist of the United States Colleen Shogan.
Arts & Democracy Events
In addition to the Peabody Performance Series, the Hopkins Bloomberg Center hosts a variety of other programs that marry the arts with cross-disciplinary areas of the University’s expertise to creatively reflect and interpret our society.
Notable events have included readings and presentations from Theater of War Productions—in which dramatic readings of classic plays serve as a framework for engaging communities in discussions about critical contemporary subjects—with public health experts from Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics and leading film and stage actors David Strathairn, Keith David, Lois Smith, and Elizabeth Marvel.
