Join us for a perennial favorite speaker, Harold Holzer, Lincoln Scholar and Daniel Chester French biographer, as he partners with acclaimed Broadway and tv/film actor Rufus Collins (Law & Order, Mozart in the Jungle) for a unique program of readings in prose and poetry.

Perhaps the two most influential writers of the Civil War era were President Abraham Lincoln and poet Walt Whitman. Although they never met, Whitman observed Lincoln in both New York and Washington, and the two regularly exchanged bows and waves in passing. Whitman even worked for a time as a minor functionary in the Lincoln Administration, while volunteering as a wartime nurse to the wounded.  Lincoln and Whitman also influenced each other in profound if subtle ways: Lincoln, in his Whitman-esque approach to writing, and Whitman in his deep understanding of the sacrifices necessary to save the Union—including the death of Lincoln himself. In this new dramatic reading, Lincoln and Whitman speak again—in their own words, as if in the dialogue they never had in life—analyzing each other and  coming to terms with the convulsive Civil War.

If you are a Lincoln buff, this is a not to be missed event!

Photo: Harold Holzer (left) and Rufus Collins presenting "The Making of the Lincoln Memorial" at Chesterwood in 2022