“Don’t We Never Learn?”

2018 marks both The Academy for the Love of Learning’s 20th anniversary as an established organization, as well as the centennial of the birth of the 20th-century musical giant Leonard Bernstein. The Academy shares a deep history with Leonard Bernstein, and ultimately was birthed from an intense collaboration between Bernstein and Academy President Aaron Stern during the final decade of Bernstein’s life.

To celebrate both Bernstein and the Academy’s notable anniversaries, we will be holding a series of special events throughout the year, in addition to our regular programming. The first will be held on the evening of April 29th. It will feature a screening of Bernstein’s short opera Trouble in Tahiti, followed by a conversation focused on how this masterpiece relates directly to today’s times. Central to our inquiry will be both the question that most occupied Bernstein in the last decade of his life, “Don’t we never learn?”, and Stern’s deep conviction that indeed we do learn: we transform, and become better at being human.

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