There is no way to build community more powerfully than by starting an open dialogue, and no institution more equipped to do so than a public library, according to Nan Geschke. She knows that lesson first-hand. When Geschke and her husband—Adobe Systems co-founder Chuck Geschke—moved to Nantucket 33 years ago, they were looking for a new community. Nan, a former librarian, joined the board of the Atheneum, and soon after founded a lecture series that bears her name.

“The Atheneum has this long history of being a forum for enlightened speakers of the day, like Ralph Waldo Emerson, Frederick Douglass, Lucretia Mott and others at the time, but [by 1992], that had fallen off because there was no money to get it started,” Nan said of the years leading up to the first Geschke Series lecture. That first year, she and her husband matched a $500,000 federal grant for the program, and the Geschke Series was born.

For two decades, the series has become the Atheneum’s biggest program of the year, bringing in politicians, journalists, executives, activists and thought leaders from around the globe for empowering and insightful lectures every summer. “The Geschke Series is foundational programming at the core of what we do and who we are,” Atheneum Executive Director Leslie Malcolm said. “The series directly reflects our mission, which, in part, promises to transform lives with resources and experiences that support lifelong learning.”

So far this year, the Geschke Series has welcomed political theorist and Harvard professor Danielle Allen, as well as Massachusetts Institute of Technology computer science professor Randall Davis and physician and award-winning poet Jeremy Nobel. This August, the Atheneum is bringing in American diplomat Richard Haass for a lecture on foreign politics in the Trump administration, and Princeton University sociology professor Paul Starr for a conversation on the growing distrust of science in medicine. Both talks will be held at the Great Harbor Yacht Club.

Over the years, the series has seen the likes of bestselling author David McCullough, longtime CBS News anchor Katie Couric, late NBC News anchor Tim Russert, CBS’ Lesley Stahl, author and GE CEO Jack Welch and presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin. One year, Chuck Geschke even participated in a panel discussion on computer technology in the 21st century.

“In the early days, we used to have the talks at the high school, because there was so much interest, and we had very large crowds for these talks because there weren’t talks by every other organization,” Nan said. “They were very well attended.”

“As time went on, almost every organization [on Nantucket] started to bring in speakers, including the Dreamland, the NHA, Maria Mitchell, the golf clubs—you name it, they all had speakers,” she added. Last year, the Geschke Series took a hiatus for the second time in its history, following a break for COVID-19 in 2020. Nan was approached about the pause by a trustee on the Atheneum board.

“She said, ‘How do you feel about bringing back the Geschke?’” Nan remembered. “I said, 'Well, I have to get the buy-in from all the board members.’” Over the course of the summer, she met with nearly every trustee of the Atheneum. “They all wanted to bring back the series,” she said.

“It was our mission, going back to the grant that we received [20 years ago] from the National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities,” Nan said. “They thought it was important enough to give us this grant to reinstall the lecture series.” Malcolm agreed. “In my mind, the series never went away,” she said. “COVID and staff changes may have altered the schedule for a brief period, but the tradition is a throughline that goes back to our very beginning in 1834, and I would never want to let it go.”