Frieze Lecture Series

America@250: A Quartet of Response s to a Quarter of a Millennium

The Frieze Lectures, a free public lecture series created to celebrate the oldest library in Illinois founded under its Local Library Act of 1872, continues for its 29th year, from October 22 to November 12.

This year’s Frieze Lectures will consider the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence through four very different lenses.

All presentations begin at 2:00 p.m. at the downtown location of the Rock Island Public Library, 401 19th Street. All are open to the public, free of charge.

The 2026 series

October 22 - Dr John Hildreth: Snapshots of American Music

October 29 - Dr Eric Stewart: Deism and its Influence on America's Founders

November 5 - Dr Jane Simonsen: What Happened Here in 1776?

November 12 - Dr Meg Gillette: 250 Years of Book Banning

The Frieze Lecture Series was created by the late Ruth Evelyn Katz, a longtime library board member and 1938 graduate of Augustana College, to celebrate the library's 125th anniversary in 1998. The name comes from the architectural feature around the top of the historic Frederick Weyerhaeuser-funded building. The authors whose names are carved into the sandstone are Homer, Longfellow, Emerson, Virgil, Hugo, Shakespeare, Goethe, Burns, Hawthorne, Tegner, and Bancroft. Though not well known today, the names of Tegner, a Swedish poet, and Bancroft, a naval historian, would have been familiar to 1903 residents.