Art & Culture
Art & Culture
Portland Public Library is the City’s cultural center and is the most visited cultural institution in Maine offering print, film, music, and online collections to showcase the arts and creativity.
We offer materials in the arts and humanities, a wide variety of programming in partnership with local cultural organizations, and a place where creative organizations and individuals can share their work with others. We celebrate the broad diversity of our community’s creative expression, and are committed to building awareness and appreciation of the arts around us.
Formerly known as the Brown Bag Lecture Series, our new Literary Lunch Series is held at noon the last Wednesday of each month. We host New England authors with recently-released work in conversation with a literary friend, colleague or critic. Bring your lunch and join us!
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Join Pride@PPL and Pride Portland for a month of LGBTQ programming at the library! Don’t miss our month-long Pride Film Series, the Pride Portland history night showing of Pay it No Mind, Drag Queen Story Time at the Bookmobile during the Pride Festival, and the Many Voices Teen Book Group’s discussion of When the Moon Was Ours!
Learn More »Torres meets Tárrega: Spanish Guitar Music of Francisco Tárrega and contemporaries
Tuesday, July 11th at 1pm in the Lewis Gallery
“What’s so ‘early’ about Early Music?”
Tuesday, July 25th at 1pm in the Rines Auditorium
An Age of Invention: Music of 17th-Century Italy for ‘Cello and Theorbo
Tuesday, August 22nd at 1pm in the Lewis Gallery
Community Concerts are off-site performances by the advanced young musicians who come to the Festival each summer from conservatories and graduate schools all over the world. Concerts feature a variety of traditional classical repertoire and are typically about 45 minutes in length.
The event is free for all to attend.
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The Riverton Knitting group is for adults who enjoy socializing and sharing projects, patterns, and ideas. Meetings every Thursday night, except for the 2nd Thursday of the month, from 6:30-7:30pm at our Riverton Branch, 1600 Forest Ave.
Learn More »Portland Public Library hosts Community Events in conjunction with the 2017 Camden Conference
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Greater Portland’s only writing group dedicated to journal and memoir writing! Journalists will be encouraged to produce creative, reflective writing through the use of autobiographic and historic elements in PPL’s collections: this includes memoirs, archives, journalism, letter correspondence, and the history of writing in material culture.
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In addition to our ever-changing exhibits in the Lewis Gallery, PPL has a notable collection of donated and commissioned art pieces throughout our locations including the dazzling new installation The Feathered Hand by Alison Hildreth in our Main Library Atrium.
Descriptions of many pieces and information about the artists are available on PPL’s Digital Commons.
Shakespeare didn’t write to be read. His plays were meant to be performed. The speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr. were beautifully written, but the experience of reading them cannot compare with the power of King’s delivery.
For more than two decades, PPL has been committed to offering the best of popular feature films, unusual indies, classics, animation, and world cinema, as well as documentaries, performances, and educational and instructional videos.
Learn More »Museum Passes Available
Portland Public Library offers free passes to several local Museums and cultural sites including Portland Museum of Art, Portland Observatory, Southworth Planetarium, and the Maine State Museum. To request a pass for a specific date, with your Library card, call or visit the Lending Desk at any of our locations.