58 free events take place on Thursday, April 3 in New York City.
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The quality and quantity of free events, free things to do that happen in New York City every day of the year is truly amazing.
So don't miss the opportunities that only New York provides: stop wondering what to do; start taking advantage of free events to go to, free things to do in NYC today!
58 free things to do in New York City (NYC) on Thursday, April 3, 2014
Idina Menzel rose to prominence when she originated the role of Maureen Johnson in the hit Broadway musical Rent. In 2004, she won the Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical for originating the role of Elphaba in the blockbuster musical Wicked. She is the voice of Elsa the Snow Queen in the 2013 Disney animated film Frozen, which is the highest grossing animated film of all time, and for which she sang the Academy Award-winning song "Let It Go." Menzel is the only Tony Award-winning actress to ever reach the top 10.
Attendees are advised to arrive early.
Learn about central banking functions that Federal Reserve System performs and see Bank's vault of international monetary gold on bedrock of Manhattan Island, five stories below street level. Learn why Federal Reserve has "Federal" in its name, while it's a private bank, not Federal at all. Congressman Ron Paul considers the Federal Reserve "both corrupt and unconstitutional"
Tour times: 10:00 a.m., 1:00 p.m., 2:00 p.m.
Arguably the world's most valuable, busiest and most crowded pieces of real estate, Midtown Manhattan is what most visitors think of when they think of New York City. Home to some of the city's most iconic architecture, from Gothic to Post-Modern and from Beaux-Arts to Art Deco (lots of Art Deco). it's not difficult to understand why. But just behind the massive facades, lie facinating histories just waiting to be unveiled.
You've seen the iconic skyscrapers, attended a Broadway show, visited Lady Liberty and relaxed in Central Park. Looking for a little more of the Big Apple? Maybe it's time to visit some of Manhattan's oldest and most enchanting historic districts. Take a relaxing stroll through SoHo, Little Italy and Chinatown.
Explore the Cathedral's newly cleaned and restored Nave. Learn about the art, architecture and history of this great sacred space from 1892 to the present.
On this east-west walk you will see some of the Park's most well-known landmarks, including Conservatory Water, Bethesda Terrace, the Lake, and Strawberry Fields. Route involves a few stairs. 90 minutes.
Test your coordination and dexterity with free juggling lessons in the park. All skill levels are welcome to join in the fun. Equipment is provided. Lessons are weather permitting. You'll be surprised that Alex and Jordan can often be found outside tossing pins in the snow!
An international conference that aims to bring together scholars of the United States, Latin America, and the Caribbean to explore the multidirectional processes, reciprocal impacts, and global dimensions of inter-American economic relations.
This new quilt show celebrates Grand Central Terminal through fiber art. Last year, The City Quilter, a Manhattan-based fabric store, partnered with American Patchwork & Quilting for a national quilt-making contest of landmark proportions. Thirty finalists from that competition will be displayed.
Representatives from The City Quilter will lead a casual, free lunch-time tour of the exhibition.
Explore the Cathedral's newly cleaned and restored Nave. Learn about the art, architecture and history of this great sacred space from 1892 to the present.
The symposium brings together feminist scholars and activists from the U.S. civil rights movement and the African anti-colonial movement to discuss the similarities and divergences between the two movements as well as the possibility for progressive social and ideological change in the contemporary moment.
The beloved comedian Charlie Hill (1951-2013) plays an Anishinaabe trickster extraordinaire who knows how to fund his latest project, a chain of “pinch-bean” coffeehouses to be built on reservations around the world.
35 min.
Start times: 1pm, 3pm, 5:30pm.
The questions enlivening Shakespeare's sonnets have excited and challenged readers and critics ever since these extraordinary poems were written. For example, why did someone whom we think of today primarily as a playwright compose non-dramatic poetry? Why did he choose the sonnet for much of that poetry, and how did he adapt that familiar form? What - if anything - do these poems tell us about Shakespeare himself, especially about the controversial debates surrounding his own sexuality? And why are the poems themselves so haunting? This presentation will include both the sonnets written independently of the plays and those incorporated within some of Shakespeare's drama. With Heather Dubrow.
Program:
Haydn’s Op. 20
Mozart’s Adagio and Fugue
Diderot String Quartet performs two quartets that illustrate a connection between Mozart and Haydn’s work.
Performers: Adriane Post, violin; Johanna Novom, violin; Kyle Miller, viola; Paul Dwyer, cello.
Although world famous, Harlem may be New York's best kept secret with some of the city's best architecture, food, music and people. Harlem's history is also one of the city's most dramatic, having gone through many ethnic, cultural and socioeconomic changes over the past roughly 400 years, which have resulted in a diverse array of places of worship, theaters, homes and eating establishments.
Many people think of the New York City subway as one of the largest, most efficient, if not the cleanest mass transit systems in the world. Few, however, think of it as the largest and longest art gallery on the planet. Well, they don't know what they are missing. This lively walking AND subway riding tour visits over a dozen subway stations to experience a selection of these striking often whimsical works that go largely unnoticed by the general public.
Join this climate controlled subway and walking art tour. Along the way you'll learn about and become expert at navigating the (in)famous NYC subway system. There's also the invaluable opportunity to confer about your other sightseeing plans with the acclaimed Bronx born, vastly experienced licensed NYC tour guide, Darryl Reilly.
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, Carey Mulligan.
Nick Carraway, a Midwesterner now living on Long Island, finds himself fascinated by the mysterious past and lavish lifestyle of his neighbor, Jay Gatsby.
143 min.
The continuing relevance of feminism is evident to anyone who is paying attention. But is not unreasonable to ask whether today feminist theory has abandoned its historic aim of making sense of women’s experiences and giving expression to women’s voices. In some of its most prominent contemporary guises – those most closely associated with post-structuralism and its aftermath – feminist theory veers toward getting lost in theorizing that by its own lights lacks the authority to do justice to women’s lives. In yet other familiar guises – those most closely associated with the projects of analytic philosophy – feminist theory slides into quasi-scientific investigations that antecedently abandon the project of exploring women’s experiences.
The premise of this conference is that feminist theory stands in need of a revival. A central unifying theme of the individual talks – which engage with a wide range of figures and debates in philosophy, political theory and literary studies – is that a good place to look for resources is in the tradition of thought about language, strongly associated with the writings of thinkers such as Wittgenstein, Austin and Cavell, that is sometimes referred to as ordinary language philosophy.
Andreas Lamo, Flute, and Jacob Wellman, Bassoon 4:00 PM
Benjamin Zannoni, Viola 6:00 PM
Sonatenabend 6:00 PM
First-Year Songbook 8:00 PM
Samuel Miller, Jazz Drums 8:00 PM
From the artist: "I am an architect, sculptor, landscaper, avid collector and recycler. Reclaiming weathered and rusted scrap materials, found objects and unusual artifacts, I identify their history, character and spirit, as I adapt and repurpose them as works of art."
From the artist: "Recently I have been making paintings based on games, toys and other forms of entertainment that reflect the universal human desire for amusement, diversion, and stimulation. These seem a proper subject for trompe l'oeil paintings, which by their very nature are intended to divert and entrance us with their illusionism and by the questions they raise - in a playful way - about perception and reality."
Since the 1970s, Los Angeles-based artist Raymond Pettibon has been metabolizing America - its history, literature, sports, religion, politics, and sexuality - in a barrage of drawings and paintings in a style born of comic books and the “do-it-yourself” aesthetic of Southern California punk rock album-covers, concert flyers, and fanzines. Limning a dizzying array of topics with his distinctive combinations of image and text, Pettibon has created a vocabulary of symbols that reappear consistently if enigmatically across his oeuvre.
This lecture offers a fresh assessment of museum collections, of the museum object, of the museum as method, of the capacity of the museum to empower not only the anthropology of art, but anthropology, conceived ambitiously as a project of social and cultural understanding.
Presented by Nicholas Thomas (Director of the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, and Professor of Historical Anthropology at the University of Cambridge).
Known as America's first suburb, Brooklyn Heights is truly a gem. Travel and Leisure named it one of America's top 10 most beautiful neighborhoods, and its beauty is rivaled only by its place in American history. These quaint, tree-lined streets have been the sites of Revolutionary War battles, abolitionist activism and have inspired numerous novelists. Visit a stop on the Underground Railroad, or the home of Truman Capote, where he penned Breakfast at Tiffany's and where Jackie Robinson signed with the Dodgers.
The show is a collaborative project by Iselin Kleiva, Tonje Bøe Birkeland and Elin Rødseth. The works relate to the field of biography: investigations in becoming - or getting - closer to others. The artists have similar working methods: they are all collectors.
Known for his sociopolitical-themed installation work, Norton's recent series grapples with the evanescence of aging and the presence of the elderly in modern-day society.
Craig Norton's work is in the collections of the deYoung Fine Art Museum in San Francisco, CA; Holocaust Museum in St. Louis, MO; Richard Harris in Illinois; Mark Parker CEO of NIKE; among others. Norton was the recipient of the Fountainhead Residency in 2010.
This year marks the 40th anniversary of the opening of Elie Tahari’s first Madison Avenue boutique. He launched his wholesale career, spanning Africa, South America and Asia with the $2 tube top. Then it was dresses and halters, nights at Studio 54 and a $500 million a year empire. He came to America with $100, slept on park benches, yet Upper East Side elegance ultimately defined his brand.
Excorrigia | The Scourge peers into a vision of the future. It is set in Arnold’s imagined reality where human kind’s obsessive drive to dominate and innovate has lead to the reset of civilization.
A third solo exhibition by American painter Dona Nelson, a participant in the 2014 Whitney Biennial. With an impressive group of newly produced, large scale works, Nelson once again confirms her position as a vibrant, tough, and visually and materially inventive artist – a continued influence in the discussion around current painting practices.
Major canvasses from each decade trace the trajectory of his life’s work over more than 50 years of painting. Archetypal works from the 1950s and 1960s exemplify the artist’s romantic vision of abstract expressionism.
For the past 20 years, James Austin Murray has worked through many different approaches in his art - from tightly rendered graphite cityscapes to pure white abstraction, works on paper, metal, canvas and board, flat and multi-dimensional. It is through these various incarnations that he has settled upon a pure black palette driven by an automatic and deftly intuitive hand.
Lecturer Roger Friedland is Professor of Religious Studies and Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara and Visiting Professor of Accounting and Control, HEC, Paris.
The Upright Citizens Brigade opened their first theatre in New York in 1999. Since then the company has launched the careers of many of comedy's most beloved and acclaimed writers and performers. UCB will offer a selection of signature sketches, plus an improv set inspired by the current exhibition “Ladies and Gentlemen…The Beatles!”
This illustrated lecture traces the author's great-grandmother's roots from India to Guyana. She excavates the repressed history of some quarter of a million female coolies, the name the British gave to the million indentured laborers, who were recruited for sugar plantations worldwide after slavery ended.
Readings and conversation on writing and debt by contributors to the New York–based literary magazine n+1. This event is hosted by founding editor Keith Gessen.
Janet Biggs is an American artist, known primarily for her work in video, photography and performance. She lives and works in Brooklyn. She has captured such events as speeding motorcycles on the Bonneville Salt Flats, Olympic synchronized swimmers in their attempts to defy gravity, kayaks performing a synchronized ballet in Arctic waters, sulfur miners inside an active volcano, and a camel caravan crossing the Taklamakan desert of Western China.
Wolitzer's The Interestings: A Novelis about six friends in an ever-changing New York City. Silver's novel, Mary Coin, is inspired by Dorothea Lange's Migrant Mother photograph.
The Kaiser's soldiers called them the Harlem Hellfighters; this is their real-life story. Max Brooks, best-selling author of World War Z, presents the saga of these World War I heroes in graphic novel form. Signing to follow.
The provocative Italian filmmaker Elio Petri’s most internationally acclaimed work is this remarkable, visceral, Oscar-winning thriller. Petri maintains a tricky balance between absurdity and realism in telling the Kafkaesque tale of a Roman police inspector investigating a heinous crime—which he himself committed.
112 min.
The screening will be followed by a panel discussion with:
- Kim Hendrickson, The Criterion Collection
- David Forgacs, NYU
- Antonio Monda, NYU
- Stefano Albertini, NYU
Braunschlag is an 8-episode television series of the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation written and directed by David Schalko. This is a screening of the first two episodes with David Schalko, who will also lead a discussion about the series. The scene of the action is the fictional town of Braunschlag, situated in the forest district on the border with the Czech Republic. With English subtitles.
Live project Neotantrik (Demdike Stare’s Sean Canty and Andy Votel) collaborates for the first time with American electronic music pioneer Suzanne Ciani in an evening that’s sure to be full of sonic surprises. Recently hailed a “Synthesizer Queen” by the Los Angeles Times, Ciani has played a pivotal role in the development of electronic music in the U.S., composing for Atari, pinball machines, commercials, and at Stanford University's Artificial Intelligence Lab. Polish synthesizer-and-drums duo Pietnastka opens the concert with its densely woven and unique sound-tapestries.
Deirdre O'Donohue is a member of the piano faculty in the Department of Music and Performing Arts Professions and is also on the college and preparatory faculty of Manhattan School of Music. She has performed solo and chamber recitals in Austria, the Netherlands, Italy, Canada and the United States. Active as an adjudicator in the United States and Canada, she has also given numerous masterclasses and lecture/demonstrations at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, Finland, the Shanghai Conservatory, the Poona Music Society in Poona, India, the Rotterdam Conservatory, the World Piano Pedagogy Conference and at various other institutions throughout the United States and Canada.
New York is a skyscraper city and there is no better time to view Manhattan’s icons than after the sun sets and the lights go on. Fueled by competition and a dash of audacity, New York City is still producing one of mankind’s most remarkable skyline.
NOTE: THIS TOUR SPENDS MUCH TIME INDOORS OR IN SUBWAYS AND GREAT FOR ALL WEATHER CONDITIONS.
Audio::Visual transports you to an asymmetrical universe, full of sounds and images that capture the essence of the individual experience. Beatmaker, Katakresis, and filmmaker, Anthony Sylvester, invite you to watch their interpretations of nature's vast and diverse idiosyncrasies with exciting beats and expansive visuals. Re-experience reality in Audio::Visual.