OCTOBER 2025
 
Falling for the arts
 
 Start your autumn off right with fun, cozy arts and culture
programming at the Main Library!
 
Read on and jot your favorites on your calendar. 
 
 
The Fall Concert Series Continues!
 
 
Fall Concert Series: Gamelan Raga Kusuma 
Saturday, October 18, 2:00pm
Main Library

Gamelan Raga Kusuma will perform traditional Javanese court music with visiting artist Dr. Peni Candra Rini. Dr. Rini is a renowned Javanese singer, composer, and faculty member at the Indonesian Institute of the Arts. The Kronos Quartet described her as “one of the world’s greatest singers.” She is a master of several traditional forms and is regarded as one of Indonesia’s most daring young composers, one of only a handful of female composers in the majority Muslim nation.
First Fridays
 
 
 
Join us on 10/3 at 6:00pm for the opening of exhibits from Emily Vaughan Brown and F-22 Photo Group. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Emily Vaughan Brown
10/3 - 11/4,  9am - close
Main Library - Dooley Foyer, Second Floor Gallery
 
 "In this series I explore myself as a dog. Being open to baser instincts, seeking comfort and pleasure. Always leaning towards freedom, joy, and human companionship. I have always admired a dog's ability to maintain complex relationships with people and yet at the same time being so unrestrained it is almost comedic. The Dog Knows is about the wisdom that emerges in the relationships between humans and animals. In our animal counterparts we are able to explore our ego and psyche on a deeper and unrefined level: detached from the confines, expectations and rules of society we absorb since infancy. Dogs have always been my favorite subject matter. Probably since before I could speak. Returning to this subject matter in a more elevated or advanced way is meditative and deeply introspective, the center of the spiral. Not only are dogs the most fun to paint because they are complex and beautiful but they represent myself, my ‘pool of unknown/secret desire’, (a phrase I found myself repeating throughout this series in my journal) as well as instinctive fears, alternate realities, fantasies and all of human psychology. Really what this series is about is about learning how to have fun making art again. If dogs are fun then I will paint them. Because this is how an art practice will become most sustainable, most ingrained into our lives. If you want to have fun making art again you have to make everything else boring."
 

F-22 Photo Group 

10/3 - 11/4, 9am - close
Main Library - Gellman Room
 
"We are a small group of seasoned photographers with over three hundred years of combined experience. Each of us has been published locally, nationally, or worldwide, and own numerous personal recognitions from a lifetime of photography experience."
 
 More Arts & Culture Programming
Slow Sundays with Hard Light Cinema
Sunday, 10/5, 2:00pm
Main Library - Auditorium

Veteran Taiwanese slow cinema director Tsai Ming-liang, known for his quiet, unflinching observations of interpersonal alienation and malaise, in in peak form with his sophomore classic Vive L'Amour. The film follows salesman Hsiao-kang and real estate agent May Lin, whose listless lives begin to intersect in strange ways when Hsiao-kang steals a key to a luxury apartment May Lin has listed for sale. 
Puzzle Night!
Tuesday, 10/28, 6pm
Main Library - Gellman Room

Love to puzzle? Make some new friends at our monthly puzzle night! Bring a puzzle to swap then sip tea and chat while working on your new find.
 
Kanopy Pick of the Month
Meshes of the Afternoon (1943)
Dir. Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid
 
"This avant-garde classic, made in collaboration with husband Alexander Hammid, is an important piece of feminist filmmaking. Of the film, with its subjective camera movement, jump cuts, and visual repetition, Deren wrote, '[it] is concerned with the inner realities of the individual and the way in which the subconscious will develop, interpret and elaborate an apparently simple and causal occurrence into a critical emotional experience.' Here in its original version, it is presented intentionally silent."
 


Richmond Public Library
101 East Franklin Street, Richmond, Virginia 23219
(804) 646-7223

https://rvalibrary.org/