Events
DORIS offers programs, tours, and activities related to our holdings. Join our mailing list to be the first to know about exhibition openings, upcoming events, recent blog posts, and much more.
Note: If you require an auxiliary aid or service in order to attend a DORIS event, please contact the Disability Service Facilitator.
Note: To request language interpretation services, please contact the Language Access Coordinator at least three (3) business days before an event.
Lunch & Learn: Candid New York
Online (Zoom)
Tuesday, April 7 - 1:00-2:00pm
Join the NYC Department of Records & Information Services (DORIS) each month for our virtual Lunch & Learn Series – an intimate conversation with agency staff and special guests focusing on the collections of the Municipal Archives and Library and the history of New York City.
On April 7, Erik Hesselberg, author of Candid New York: The Pioneering Photography of George Bradford Brainerd, will discuss the work of Brooklyn civil engineer and inventor George Bradford Brainerd.
Once hailed the “father of instantaneous photography,” Brainerd devised the first hand-held cameras with more sensitive photographic plates that could capture movement previously seen as a blur. Using this new technology, George Bradford Brainerd documented the daily lives of working-class Brooklynites during the Gilded Age.
Discover how Brainerd’s work laid the foundation for photojournalism and captured a city on the brink of change.
RSVP to join us by clicking here.
Lunch & Learn: Sugar, Cigars & Revolution
Online (Zoom)
Wednesday, April 22 - 1:00-2:00pm
Join the NYC Department of Records & Information Services (DORIS) each month for our virtual Lunch & Learn Series – an intimate conversation with agency staff and special guests focusing on the collections of the Municipal Archives and Library and the history of New York City.
On April 22, Dr. Lisandro Perez, author of Sugar, Cigars, and Revolution: The Making of Cuban New York, will trace the development of the largest community of Latin American origin west of the Mississippi River during the 19th century, New York City’s Cuban community.
Driven by the sugar trade and the fight for Cuban independence, New York became the primary destination for Cuban émigrés seeking an education, commerce, wealth, freedom, or even a safe place to plot a revolution.
Join us as Dr. Perez uses primary sources such as census data and vital records to reconstruct the community, bringing to life the stories of individuals and families that made up the fabric of a little-known immigrant world.
RSVP to join us by clicking here.
Lunch & Learn: The Village Voice
Online (Zoom)
Tuesday, May 19 - 1:00-2:00pm
Join the NYC Department of Records & Information Services (DORIS) each month for our virtual Lunch & Learn Series – an intimate conversation with agency staff and special guests focusing on the collections of the Municipal Archives and Library and the history of New York City.
On Tuesday, May 19, Tricia Romano, the author of The Freaks Came Out to Write: The Definitive History of the Village Voice, the Radical Paper that Changed American Culture, will discuss the symbiotic relationship between New York City and the alternative weekly, the Village Voice, and how this relationship benefited both entities.
First issued in 1955, the Village Voice showcased the city as a hub for artists, poets, musicians, politicians, and activists, inspiring people to move here. The alt-weekly covered topics such as the environment, government corruption, housing, hip-hop, the avant-garde art scene, Off-Broadway, and the AIDS epidemic with gravitas, revolutionizing journalism.
Discover how the Village Voice became not just a local, but also a national and global influence, and how this highly acclaimed oral history came to be.
RSVP to join us by clicking here.
Lunch & Learn: Unleashing Black Power
Online (Zoom)
Tuesday, June 9 - 1:00-2:00pm
Join the NYC Department of Records & Information Services (DORIS) each month for our virtual Lunch & Learn Series – an intimate conversation with agency staff and special guests focusing on the collections of the Municipal Archives and Library and the history of New York City.
On June 9, Dr. Peter D. Blackmer will examine the methods, uses, and impact of state repression using the Municipal Archives’ NYPD Bureau of Special Services & Investigation (BOSSI) Collection. The author of Unleashing Black Power: Grassroots Organizing in Harlem and the Advent of the Long, Hot Summers, Dr. Blackmer, will also explore how archival records can help us understand, analyze, and write more complete and compelling histories of the Black Freedom Movement in New York and beyond.
Unleashing Black Power explores the local dynamics, national connections, and global context of the Black freedom movement in Harlem from 1954 to 1964, illuminating how activists, organizers, and ordinary people mounted their resistance to systemic racism in the Jim Crow North. Peter Blackmer argues that this decade of confrontations between Black communities and white state power caused Harlem residents and activists to seek “new means” for achieving freedom within a city, state, and nation determined to deny them access. Tracing the dual evolution of Black radicalism and white resistance, Unleashing Black Power offers a new framework for analyzing the epochal urban uprisings in the 1960s.
RSVP to join us by clicking here.