Our campus hosts a variety of community events including film screenings, author talks, guest lectures, and music performances that are open to the public.
'Halston': Film Screening and Panel Discussion
January 23 | 7:00 - 9:30 PM
Free, advanced registration required
Arguably the first American celebrity fashion designer, Roy Halston Frowick, known by the single moniker Halston, created the sexy-flowing look that defined the 1970s. Directed by Frédéric Tcheng (Dior and I; Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel) and produced by Roland Ballester (MerPeople), Halston weaves a partially scripted format with rare archival footage and intimate interviews – including Liza Minnelli, Andy Warhol, and Joel Schumacher – to create a textured, behind-the-scenes look at the famed designer’s life and the friction between his artistic talents and business pressures. Following the film screening, we will host a discussion with producer Ballester, Halston’s niece Lesley Frowick, and models Alva Chinn and Karen Bjornson.
Drawing with Light: Creating Community with Movement, Light, & Time
Tuesday, February 8 | 5:00 - 8:00 PM
Free, advance registration required
Lori Hepner, Penn State Laureate for the 2023-24 academic year and professor of integrative arts at Penn State Greater Allegheny, will come to campus for a collaborative, creative experience. Participate in a community art project, take a step back in time with our interactive timeline, explore the boundless creativity and skill of the Philadelphia Pastel Society, savor delicious h'ordeuvres, pick out your favorite flavor of Berkey Creamery Ice Cream, and mingle with other Chester County residents and professionals.
Hepner's movement and light-based digital artmaking project requires no prior skills in either visual art or technology and is intended to bring Penn State communities together to create collaboratively. Join us in this Drawing with Light Workshop to use programmable LED light devices, including wearable LEDs and a 6-foot-tall light stick, that are Hepner’s photographic paintbrushes to visualize movements in real-time projections. Collaboratively created imagery will be used to create public art for display across Penn State.
Mountainfilm on Tour
Wednesday, March 6 | 7:00 - 9:30 PM, doors open at 6:30
Free, advance registration required
Each year, Mountainfilm on Tour travels around the globe featuring a collection of culturally rich, adventure-packed, and enlightening documentary short films selected from the best-loved films from their annual festival in Telluride, Colorado. The films selected for the show will explore themes connected to the Mountainfilm mission to use the power of film, art and ideas to inspire audiences to create a better world. A Mountainfilm presenter will provide insight on the films, filmmakers, and subjects.
Stonewall: The Riot That Built a Community
Tuesday, April 2 | 7:00 - 9:00 PM
Free, advance registration required
Mark Segal was 18 years old on the night of June 28, 1969, when he entered the Stonewall Inn. Raised by the only Jewish family in South Philadelphia’s Wilson Park housing project, Segal was no stranger to being an outsider. He told his parents he was leaving Philly to go to school in New York. In truth, he’d left to find a gay community. Watching an episode of The David Susskind Show years earlier, he’d learned that gay people existed in New York and knew that was where he belonged.
Segal went on to organize some of the earliest American LGBTQ+ organizations; help plan the first pride march in 1970; found the longest running LGBTQ+ weekly newspaper, the Philadelphia Gay News and become one of the most important figures in the alternative gay press. But on that night at Stonewall, he was still a teenager just exulting in the chance to drink and socialize with other LGBTQ+ people at a time when homosexuality was still treated as a psychological affliction by the medical establishment, immoral by most religions, and criminal under law.
Nature's Best Hope with Doug Tallamy
Tuesday, May 7 | 7:00 - 9:00 PM
Free, advance registration required
Recent headlines about global insect declines, the impending extinction of one million species worldwide, and three billion fewer birds in North America are a bleak reality check about how ineffective our current landscape designs have been at sustaining the plants and animals that sustain us. Such losses are not an option if we wish to continue our current standard of living on Planet Earth. The good news is that none of this is inevitable. Doug Tallamy, a professor in the Department of Entomology and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Delaware, will discuss simple steps that each of us can - and must - take to reverse declining biodiversity and will explain why we are nature’s best hope.
Tallamy earned a Ph.D. in entomology from the University of Maryland and an M.S. in entomology from Rutgers University. He currently teaches insect taxonomy, behavioral ecology, and other related subjects. Chief among his research goals is to better understand the many ways insects interact with plants and how such interactions determine the diversity of animal communities. Tallamy won the silver medal from the Garden Writer's Association for his 2007 book Bringing Nature Home, and authored The Living Landscape: Designing for Beauty and Biodiversity in the Home Garden with Rick Darke in 2014. Among his awards are the Garden Club of America Margaret Douglas Medal for Conservation, the Tom Dodd Jr. Award of Excellence in 2013, and the 2018 AHS B.Y. Morrison Communication Award.