Events

This new exhibit will explore how 19th-century Americans developed a new appreciation for green space and wildlife, and ensured their memorialization in a newly established public space: the rural cemetery.

An immersive experience that asks what we leave behind when we’re gone. Attendees explore a storage unit full of decades of memories and cryptic secrets, belonging to a woman who has recently died. NPR calls The Nest “Surreal, heartbreaking, and beautiful. It is art you can walk through.”

Visit Recompose, the human composting facility where the new, sustainable process got its start.

Deciding what should be done with our own bodies or that of a loved one after death can be difficult decisions with sometimes significant ethical implications. Deciding what to do, what you would like to be done, and what others should be permitted to do, raises a number of ethical questions – at this event, we would like to offer a space to explore and discuss some of these.

The Victorian era was known for its morbid sentimentality. An art form particular to this age which expressed this zeitgeist perfectly was ornamental hairwork. Displaying wall art and jewelry made from a loved one’s hair indicated the desire to hold on to a human relic of a deceased relative or friend. Today’s workshop will focus on twisted hair and wire work most often seen in Victorian hairwork shadow boxes and commonly referred to as “gimp” work, as well as “palette” work.

A hands-on workshop exploring the intersection of art and death.

The Funeral Consumers Alliance’s Biennial Conference, focusing on addressing indigent burial, and funeral poverty at the end-of-life.

Learn how to write obituaries that celebrate overlooked contributions, tell untold stories, and shine a light on the full humanity of the people we love and admire… including your own.

The workshop will explore how we decide the place of our death.

This talk will how explore how AI,and technology more broadly, is transforming the possibilities of communication at the end of life and the extent to which AI is radically shifting how we understand what it means to be dead.

This class–based on the the new book Memento Mori: The Art of Contemplating Death to Live a Better Life—will lead you on a twelve-week program to befriend death in your own way.

A conference exploring global, cultural and ethical contexts of the death, dying and grief experience among dying persons, family members, healthcare providers and within support circles and systems.

In this in-person program, participants will learn through hands-on practice, and introducing important resources for community death care.

Participants will learn how to decipher and understand cemetery symbolism in a graveyard near you, whether it’s an atmospheric colonial churchyard or a Victorian landscape filled with soaring angels. With a focus on the United States and Europe, we will explore some of the most common cemetery symbols, what they mean, and where they come from.