Roundtable Emerges as a Top Destination for Online Learning

One Year After Its Launch, Roundtable By the 92nd Street Y, New York Becomes a Go-To Destination for Online Learning
   
Platform Features Live, Interactive Courses in the Arts, History, Literature and More, with Participants Around the Globe

New, Exclusive Collaborations with Cultural Institutions Throughout the Country 

Educators from The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, The Bronx Zoo, The American Shakespeare Center, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and the Santa Fe Opera, Among Others, Expand the Roster of Acclaimed Instructors

Vincent van Gogh’s Arles. Frida Kahlo in America. The novels of Agatha Christie and Octavia Butler. Shakespeare’s first folio. The Beatles and the magic of collaboration — and FDR’s first 100 days. These were just some of the online courses offered by Roundtable by The 92nd Street Y, New York since it was launched in May 2022.

Now, the year-old online learning platform which was modeled after 92NY’s 150-year commitment to lifelong learning, and which features renowned historians, celebrated writers, political pundits and well-known chefs as instructors, has expanded to include courses featuring experts and educators from renowned cultural institutions throughout the country — and on a wide range of topics. Roundtable is unique in the online education space in providing opportunity for in-the-moment discourse with both instructors and other students, although courses are also recorded for on-demand viewing.

New, exclusive collaborations with the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, the American Shakespeare Center, the Santa Fe Opera, the American Civil War Museum, the Stax Museum of American Soul Music, the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Bronx Zoo, and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, among others, add to Roundtable’s rich palette of offerings in the arts, history and politics, literature and the culinary arts.

Roundtable, which was founded with the idea that interactive discussion is essential to learning, will expand even further in June: a new “Coffee with a Curator” series features intimate, curator-led, Tuesday morning sneak peeks into exhibits at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (Boston, MA), the Charles M. Schulz Museum (Santa Rosa, CA), the Musical Instrument Museum (Phoenix, AZ), the Storm King Art Center (NY), London’s Ben Uri Gallery and Museum, The Museum of Arts and Design (NY), as well as the Rubin Museum (NY), among others. That same month, a new “Becoming the Smartest Traveler” series kicks off, with Emmy Award-winning travel expert Peter Greenberg at the center of it. He will touch on all aspects of travel – desirable destinations around the globe and tips on flights, accommodations, packing and solo trips. 

The curators and Greenberg join an esteemed group of Roundtable instructors which includes The New Yorker’s Adam Gopnik, historians Ric Burns and Francis Morrone, art historian Janetta Rebold Benton, food historian Francine Segan – and politics professor Ralph Buultjens. Acclaimed authors, Pulitzer Prize winners and renowned historians have also been instructors – including Colm Tóibín, Tessa Hadley, Russell Shorto, Mary Beard, Merve Emre and Ada Ferrer, among others. 

“Our first year was all about establishing a foothold in the online learning space, and what we found was that the hunger for online learning is insatiable — we had many participants from across the country and around the globe,” said Roundtable CEO Rolando Nunez Baza. “The next frontier is to make inroads with celebrated cultural institutions that are looking to expand their audiences, with intimate experiences. Art lovers around the world have long been fascinated by the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, for example, but if you’re in California and you can’t afford to visit the physical museum in Boston, then an intimate online look at their collection – with one of their curators – is the next best thing. It’s not the same experience, but it’s one that we hope is just as impactful, albeit in a different way.” 

From May 2022 to May 2023, Roundtable presented 350 courses on a wide range of topics featuring 230 experts as instructors. Participants (ages 25-65+) took courses from as far away as New Zealand and France – and from American locales such as El Segundo, California; Medford, Massachusetts; Atlanta, Georgia and Queens, New York. In all, there were 13,000 participants representing 23 countries and 47 states. 

Elizabeth Short, a Georgetown University emerita professor and a Pasadena, California resident, said: “I am still musing over all the wonderful things we learned from Russell Shorto [Dutch History of New York City], and then this weekend there was a big article in The New York Times about collapsing dykes and walls of canals in the old city in Amsterdam.  And it was so easy to visualize and understand after his course, which began with the construction of the city…I can’t believe how much more information I know about my world after these classes.”

In the fall, Roundtable will offer courses in collaboration with Indiana’s Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library. The late great author read at 92NY several times in his career, and he debuted his critically-acclaimed novel Breakfast of Champions on its stage in 1970. “Not even my wife has seen it,” he began that night.