Renowned and prolific documentarian of subjects as diverse as baseball, mental illness, Vietnam, civil rights, and most recently, the American buffalo, Ken Burns will be the featured speaker at the Annual Brendan Gill Lecture on Friday, February 9, at 8 pm at Sarah Lawrence's Reisinger Auditorium. The country’s foremost chronicler of the American experience in its many manifestations, including through important historical figures such as Roosevelt, Jackie Robinson, Susan B. Anthony, and Mark Twain, he will be interviewed by local luminary David Westin, a television anchor for Bloomberg TV.
This free lecture is open to the public and presented each year by The Bronxville Historical Conservancy as a gift to the community. A reception with the speaker will follow the presentation.
Registration will be open to the public on January 4 by emailing events@b-h-c.org.
Burns joins an illustrious roster of previous Gill speakers, including Mo Rocca, Jill Lepore, Douglas Brinkley, David Rubenstein, the late Cokie Roberts, Jon Meacham, and Michael Beschloss, among others.
Mr. Burns’s films have been honored with dozens of major awards, including sixteen Emmy Awards, two Grammy Awards, and two Oscar nominations. In 2008, at the News & Documentary Emmy Awards, Burns was honored by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences with a Lifetime Achievement Award. In November of 2022, he was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame. Other awards include three from the Organization of American Historians in recognition of outstanding programming on television, or in documentary film, and he has received 30 honorary degrees. In his films, books, and lectures he helps us understand where we’ve been, where we may go from here, and even what America means. Future film projects include: Leonardo da Vinci, The American Revolution, Emancipation to Exodus, and LBJ & the Great Society, among others.