Warner Free Lectures was founded in 1891 by Henry Warner with an endowment of $10,000 to provide:

...free public lectures of an educational bearing, and thus increase the educational advantages of the Town...

The young and the old, the learned and the uneducated, can enjoy good lectures, and receive from them knowledge, ideas, and improvement....

The lectures shall avoid partisan politics and religious sectarianism, and it is the intention of the undersigned that they shall be delivered, as far as practicable, by eminent or able lecturers and scholars, upon scientific, literary, biographical, historical, patriotic, national, educational, and moral subjects, including also travels, questions of government and society, and whatever may interest the people...

The Lecture series has been governed by an elected board of six town residents for over 130 years. Lectures have included topics as diverse as the building of luxury catamarans to the lifestyle of indigenous Greenlandic Inuit.