Richard Candee, curator of the exhibit "Treasures of the Athenaeum, Part IV: Renewal, Growth and a Public Research Library, 1980 - 2017" will give a gallery talk.

Historic Portsmouth Chamber Music Series presents The Omer String Quartet. Returning to Portsmouth this year, The Omer String Quartet will perform Bartok's Quartet Number 3. The Group prepared this piece for the June Borciani Competition in Italy. In this shortest of Bartok's quartets, played without pause, the composer ventures into more harmonically adventurous worlds, while as always integrating Hungarian folk music into his idioms and the speech patterns that give his music an improvisatory and conversational quality. The program will also include the Schumann quartet that the composer presented to his wife Clara on her 23rd birthday, Opus 41, No. 1, a work which though virtuosic and challenging to musicians, is full of lyricism and love.

$20 suggested donation; $75 series subscription; series Patron seating $250 per person/$500 per couple.

Pontine Theatre, "Pretty Halcyon Days: On The Beach with Ogden Nash"

Ogden Nash, Portsmouth Athenaeum Proprietor, spent his summers on Little Boar's Head in North Hampton, NH. Pontine Theatre's Co-Artistic Directors, Marguerite Mathews and Greg Gathers, explore the ways in which Nash's life on the New Hampshire seashore influenced his poems, giving insight into the man, his character and his ideas about family, society and nature.

Greg Gathers holds a BFA from the Cleveland Institute of Art. He has been designing and constructing Pontine's sets, costumes and props since 1982.

Marguerite Matthews, Founder of the Pontine Theatre, earned a theater degree in Communications from Michigan State University. She studied with Etienne Decroux at L'Ecole du Mime Corporeal in Paris, France, and with Thomas Leabhart at the University of Arkansas and Valley Studio.

Free to Athenaeum members; $10 general admission.

The "Secrets & Treasures: 200 Years at the Portsmouth Athenaeum: lecture series is sponsored by UBS Financial Services.

Reservations are requested, since space is limited.
Call (603)431-2538 for reservations.

Author Mike Dater will give talk and book signing for his book "Mr. Obama Goes to Washington, And Then What Happened, Mommy?".