In 1903, Frederick Ayer and his wife Ellen Banning Ayer led a comfortable life at their Tiffany-designed mansion on Commonwealth Avenue. Preservation Advisor Jeanne Pelletier lifts the curtain on the unseen portions of the Ayer Mansion, giving a glimpse into servants’ lives using:

• an extraordinary 400-page inventory
• surviving architectural clues, and
• the annual census.

The reception starts at 6:30 p.m., and the presentation begins at 7 p.m. Tickets are $10, but space is limited. RSVP is required.

This event is sponsored by the Ayer Mansion.

Phillis Wheatley arrived in Boston in 1761 in what is now Chinatown. Purchased as a slave, ten years later she was an internationally famous poet.

At this event, Barbara Lewis, director of University of Massachusetts Boston's Trotter Institute, explores Phillis Wheatley's world.

Bring your camera on a search for unique features in Boston's Parks, led by a photography instructor. Select photos will be highlighted in a Boston City Hall photo gallery.  

This workshop will take place at Jamaica Pond Park in Jamaica Plain. To RSVP for this workshop, please email Mavick Afonso at mavrick.afonso@boston.gov.

Bring your camera on a search for unique features in Boston's Parks, led by a photography instructor. Select photos will be highlighted in a Boston City Hall photo gallery.  

To RSVP for this workshop, please email Mavick Afonso at mavrick.afonso@boston.gov. 

ABOUT NORTHERN STAIR PROJECTION

In Northern Stair Projection, composer, and percussionist Eli Keszler presents a sprawling installation, video projection, and live performance within Boston City Hall. The work uses long strands of piano wire to transmit recordings made of the exterior, public spaces of Boston into the enormous interior space of this iconic, Brutalist structure. The wires will run hundreds of feet upward from the floor, terminating at various levels of height in the building. Video of the exterior spaces surrounding City Hall will be projected through the wires onto the space's vast concrete walls. The work takes inspiration from the intent of City Hall's architects, Gerhard Kallmann and Michael McKinnell, to connect the public and governmental spaces, and to create a project which embodies their idea. The work will also feature a live performance by Eli Keszler in dialog with the sounds of the installation, which will be active for one night only, Friday, November 18, from 7 - 9 p.m.

ABOUT ELI KESZLER

ELI KESZLER is a Boston-born artist, composer, and percussionist. His compositions and visual works examine the limits of instrumentation, notation, and space in its institutional, musical and public form.

Keszler's sound installations, music and visual work have appeared at Lincoln Center, MIT List Center, Victoria & Albert Museum, Sculpture Center, The Kitchen, South London Gallery, Carpenter Center for The Visual Arts (Harvard), Luma-Foundation, Tectonics Festival (Harpa Hall) Reykjavik, Centraal Museum in Utrecht, Boston Center for the Arts, Barbican-St. Lukes, 3S Arts, and Greater New York at MoMA PS1. His writing and work has appeared in Bomb Magazine, The New York Times, Wire Magazine, Frieze and Modern Painters. He has released solo records for ESP-Disk, Pan and REL Records. He has received commissions from the Icelandic Symphony Orchestra, ICE Ensemble and SO Percussion amongst others. Keszler is a graduate of the New England Conservatory and is a 2016 New York Foundation for The Arts Fellow. He currently lives in Brooklyn.

His latest record, Last Signs of Speed, will be released on November 17 on Empty Editions from the Empty Gallery in Hong Kong and will be available at the concert.