Booking and details
Dates Sun, Aug 25, 2024
Venue Folger Library
Join the Folger as we kick off our 2024–2025 season, Whose Democracy? which challenges perceptions and ignites conversations about power and civic participation.
Explore political highlights from our current exhibitions, tour the galleries with Takoma Park poet laureate Taylor Johnson, enjoy readings from OB Hardison Poetry Series Manager and acclaimed poet Teri Ellen Cross Davis, hear from Folger leadership about how we are activating our season theme across the institution, and more
Schedule of events:
All Day
- Gallery Guides in the Exhibition Halls who will highlight items from the Folger Shakespeare Library and the special exhibition Imprints in Time related to our season’s theme
- Costume display of past productions in the Elizabethan-style theatre highlighting rulers from Shakespeare’s plays
- Dress-up box in the Great Hall, allowing visitors of all ages to see how they look in crowns, robes, and other royal regalia
‘a more perfect Union’ with Poet and OB Hardison Poetry Manager Teri Ellen Cross Davis
12–12:30pm in the Reading Room
Join poet Cross Davis in the Folger Reading Room as she shares her own work, an exploration of motherhood, pop culture, and more as a contemporary poet living, writing, and mothering in the U.S.
Institute Fellow Spotlight: Poetry Promenade with Taylor Johnson
2–2:30pm in the Shakespeare and Stuart and Mimi Rose Exhibition Halls
Poet Laureate of Takoma Park and 2024– 2025 Folger Institute Whose Democracy? Fellow Taylor Johnson shares his series of American Song poems while taking listeners on a journey through the Folger’s exhibition spaces to visit the collection pieces that inspired him.
Please note space is limited; this is a moving reading and will require traversing through the exhibition spaces.
“Whose Democracy?”: A Yearlong Exploration of Power and Participation at the Folger
3–4pm in The Reading Room
Departmental leaders from Programming and Performance, Collections, and the Folger Institute offer a preview into the upcoming Whose Democracy? season and explore power and politics from the early modern world to today.
Program Participants
Dr. Patricia Akhimie
View full biography
Karen Ann Daniels
Karen Ann Daniels is the Director of Programming/Artistic Director of Folger Theatre. A native San Diegan, she is an accomplished actor, director, playwright, vocalist, musician, and community organizer. Prior to joining the Folger, she was director of the Mobile Unit at The Public Theater in NYC, producing tours around all five boroughs of NYC bringing the tools of theater to incarcerated community through Mobile Unit In Corrections (MUiC).
Teri Cross Davis
Greg Prickman
Eric Weinmann Librarian, Director of Collections
(202) 544-4600
Greg Prickman was appointed the Eric Weinmann Librarian and Director of Collections in July 2018. Previously he was head of Special Collections at the University of Iowa Libraries. Prickman came to the University of Iowa Libraries in 2006, working as a special collections librarian and then as the assistant head of Special Collections and University Archives before becoming the head of Special Collections in 2011.