Mortal Matters

Free and open to all , Grief is deeply rooted in our shared human story. But mortality isn't just a human experience; it's woven into the fabric of the universe itself, where stars are born and die, and galaxies collide and dissolve. What happens on Earth happens in the cosmos, too. Mortal Matters is an invitation to sit with that truth. Through talks, workshops, and guided tours, we're weaving together three ways of understanding life's end: the practice, the science, and the story. End-of-life and funeral professionals share what they know from the front lines of loss. Astrophysicists, cultural anthropologists, and forensic experts bring the evidence, from black holes to mourning rituals to the anatomy of corpses. Artists and authors share their creative energies, giving form to how we imagine and talk about endings. Mortal Matters offers a rare chance to engage mortality on Earth and beyond it. Read the program in: English | Spanish | Chinese Get Tickets FRIDAY SCHEDULE Grief Karaoke Time(s): 06:00–09:00pm Location: Historic Chapel Grief doesn't need to be silent to be sacred. Artist Leigh Davis leads an evening of Grief Karaoke, inviting all to gather in the Cemetery to sing, listen, dance, or make a raucous mess together. Karaoke gives voice to feelings that don’t always have somewhere to go. Here, grief can be loud, tender, funny, messy, and shared. Choose a song, join in from the audience, or simply be there as we make space for whatever comes up. Sign-ups will take place in front of the Historic Chapel, first come, first served. All are invited to look and listen. Rest in Pace: Twilight Edition Time(s): 06:30–07:30pm Location: Meet at the Gothic Arch A good walk is made great with good company. On this leisurely walking tour, we'll take in the views, get to know one another, and uncover stories of scientists and inventors laid to rest at Green-Wood. It's less about the exercise and more about the company. Your guide is Mary Pat Klein, a Green-Wood program lead who knows every twist and turn of these 478 acres, and has the stories to prove it! What the Body Remembers Time(s): 06:30–07:30pm Location: The Green-House Atrium The body as memory, evidence, and archive. Artist Janine Antoni, forensic anthropologist Angelique Corthals, and Joanna Ebenstein, founder and creative director of Morbid Anatomy, for a conversation about what loss leaves behind in the body. For decades, Antoni has used the body as both material and a vessel for memory, exploring how experience can be carried, transformed, and made visible. Corthals approaches the body from another perspective: as evidence, reading the physical traces a life can leave long after death. Ebenstein, author of Memento Mori: The Art of Contemplating Death to Live a Better Life, brings her own longstanding inquiry into death, remembrance, and our relationship to mortality. Together, they’ll consider what the body holds onto, what it lets go, and how memory and loss can continue to take shape within us. Married to the End of Things Time(s): 06:30–07:30pm Location: Modern Chapel Everything that ends, converges . Astrophysicist Matteo Cantiello spends his days with stars, studying how they're born, live, and eventually go out in a blaze that seeds the universe with the stuff of new stars, planets, and us. Death doula Maria Di Paolo is grounded here on Earth, guiding families through the final chapter of a loved one's life. They happen to be married, which might make for interesting dinner table conversation. Joining them is architect, deathcare innovator, and their dear friend, Jordanna Ibghy, founder of Urth Ritual (coffins and urns made from mushroom mycelium). In this talk and the following discussion, the three will trade notes on what a dying star and a dying person actually have in common, and what it's like to build a life and create community when they study endings for a living, from opposite ends of the universe. What Survives Time(s): 08:00–09:00pm Location: The Green-House Atrium What gets carried forward changes along the way. Artists Laura Anderson Barbata, Cinthya Santos Briones, and Mary Ting come together to consider how knowledge is carried through ritual, storytelling, and embodied experience. Drawing from their own creative practices, oral histories, and work rooted in collective care, they’ll explore how memory survives across migration, displacement, and cultural transformation, and how traditions are preserved, adapted, and reshaped along the way. Mortal Matters in the Milky Way Time(s): 08:00–09:00pm Location: Modern Chapel Your life, measured against the life of a galaxy. Before you can understand your own mortality, it helps to understand the mortality of something much bigger. This session traces the birth, life, and eventual death of the Milky Way, beginning at the start of the Universe and reaching all the way to its future merger with the Andromeda galaxy. Astronomer Kathryn Johnston, who has spent over thirty years studying how…