50 free things to do in New York City (NYC) on Wednesday, February 16, 2011
All events are free unless otherwise noted.
8:00 am
free, no reservation required
Editor's Pick
Learn about central banking functions that Federal Reserve System performs and see Bank's vault of international ...
more >> 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" Five tours daily on the hour.
10:00 am
free, no reservation required
Park rangers offer an in-depth look at the visitor center and the themes that center around the African ...
more >> Burial Ground National Monument.
Featuring: The Visit, Čurte-Nillas: The (Short) Movie, In This Manner, I Am, Waseteg, How Birds Got ...
more >> Their Song, Little Thunder, Weichafes - 500 Años de Historia: Mito del Diluvio, Mapuche/Weichafes - 500 Years of History: The Mapuche Myth of the Flood, and Wapos Bay: Guardians. Starts at 10:30am, 11:45am, 1:00pm, and 3:00pm.
10:30 am
free, no reservation required
Explore the Cathedral's newly cleaned and restored Nave. Learn about the art, architecture and history ...
more >> of this great sacred space from 1892 to the present.
12:00 pm
free, no reservation required
A lecture by Dr. Srdja Pavlovic (Department of History and Classics, University of Alberta, Edmonton).
Are ...
more >> Montenegrins a distinct nation within a broader South Slavic framework? Are they defenders of Serbdom and Christendom, and the “best of all Serbs”? Are they Serbs who adopted a toponym as their ethnic name? When it comes to answering these questions, Montenegrins have not been of one mind. Last 200 years of Montenegrin history have been informed and influenced by the questions about nationhood and identity.
In his most recent book Balkan Anschluss, Srdja Pavlovic addresses the issue of dual identity in Montenegro in the context of the post-WW I state creation in the region. The lecture is the story about the longevity and ambiguity of multilayered identities in Montenegro, and of the impact contemporary regional politics have on its many manifestations.
12:00 pm
free, no reservation required
Learn about the intricate design of the Park's web of pastoral landscapes and formal romantic vistas.
New York City, NY; NYC
12:00 pm
free, no reservation required
12:30 pm
$10 suggested donation
Explore the Cathedral's newly cleaned and restored Nave. Learn about the art, architecture and history ...
more >> of this great sacred space from 1892 to the present.
2:00 pm
free, no reservation required
A free Stay Well exercise session. Stay Well volunteers cetrified by the NYC's Department for the aging ...
more >> will lead participants in a well-balanced series of exercises for seniors of all ability levels. Please wear loose comfortable clothing. Exercise equipment will be provided. All participants are required to sign a personal medical waiver at the beginning of the class.
Participants: Lee Becker (Professor and Director, James. M. Cox Jr. Center for International Mass Communication ...
more >> Training and Research, University of Georgia), Karin Karelckar (Senior Researcher and Managing Editor Freedom of the Press Index), Anne Nelson (Adjunct Associate Professor, Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs and former Executive Director, Committee to Protect Journalists).
5:00 pm
free, no reservation required
Teen poets, spoken-word artists, emcees, scholars and activists with something to say are invited to ...
more >> share their voices in this open-mic monthly series. Outfitted with youth DJs, this safe, uncensored space provides a platform for free expression. The young and young-at-heart are invited to sneak a peek at the next generation of performing artists.
Celebrate the publication of the acting edition of this wonderful new comedy, currently running Off Broadway! ...
more >> There will be a reading of a few short scenes from the play, which will be followed by a book signing and wine and cheese party with playwright Anthony Wilkinson.
5:30 pm
free, no reservation required
Sandler's book was hailed by The Washington Post as “an intriguing journey into a burgeoning and often ...
more >> contradictory phenomenon.” She has contributed journalism and opinion about culture, politics, and religion to many publications, including The Atlantic, The New Republic, Slate, The Nation, Mother Jones, and The New York Times.
5:30 pm
free, no reservation required
In the 1980s, many artists—women prominent among them—undertook an exploration of the imagery and ...
more >> ideology of the mass media. The Deconstructive Impulse is a survey of their work. One medium that proved especially fruitful for them was the artist’s book. In this event Nancy Princenthal, the book’s editor and contributor, and the acclaimed artists Silvia Kolbowski and Laurie Simmons explore this connection.
6:00 pm
free, no reservation required
A chilling look at the near future presents the story of Offred, a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead, ...
more >> once the United States, an oppressive world where women are no longer allowed to read and are valued only as long as they are viable for reproduction.
6:00 pm
free, no reservation required
A group exhibition featuring painting, photography and sculpture by American artists Tyrome Tripoli, ...
more >> Perry Burns, Sally Egbert, Jeff Muhs, Tapp Francke, Darlene Charneco, Matthew Satz, Sean Brannan and Scott Malbaurn. The exhibition is curated by Beth McNeill.
This exhibition, curated by Stephanie Adamowicz, features the work of Letha Wilson, Carrie Pollack, Jamie ...
more >> Lund, and Jesse Hamerman. Through these artists' work, Adamowicz seeks to explore materiality and distance-specifically obstruction or reflection of surfaces, and physical or psychological barriers.
6:00 pm
free, no reservation required
An evening of jazz and poetry with the Dan Levinson Quartet and poets Ginny MacKenzie and Fran Castan.
New York City, NY; NYC
6:00 pm
free, no reservation required
Traub is Chair of the M.F.A. Program in Photography Video and Related Media at School of Visual Arts ...
more >> in New York City, a department which he founded and developed.
6:00 pm
free, no reservation required
Featuring: Recess, Team Green & Tuscarora Fire Company Picnic, Team Black & Team Red, Local 154 and Borealis, ...
more >> Team White & The Faculty, and Improdome.
6:00 pm
free, no reservation required
Walker received her BFA from the Atlanta College of Art in 1991 and her MFA from the Rhode Island School ...
more >> of Design in 1994. Her survey show, Kara Walker: My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love, premiered at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 2007 and travelled to New York, Paris, Los Angeles, and Houston. She was the U.S. representative to the Sao Paolo Biennial in 2002 and participated in the 52nd Venice Biennale in 2007. She is the recipient of many awards including the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Achievement Award in 1997, the Deutsche Bank Prize in 2000, and the United States Artists Fellowship in 2008. Her work in the collection of the Guggenheim Museum; the Museum of Modern Art, New York City; the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Tate Gallery; the Centro Nazionale per le Arti Contemporanee, Rome; and Deutsche Bank, Frankfurt. She lives and works in New York City.
6:15 pm
free, no reservation required
6:15 pm
free, no reservation required
In mid-twentieth-century South Africa, thousands of black women left rural areas to find work in the ...
more >> households of suburban white families. Many headed to Johannesburg, South Africa's largest city and industrial powerhouse, which was a racially and ethnically divided space. University of Illinois Professor Rebecca Ginsburg explores the ways in
which domestic workers' mobility was severely limited under Apartheid-era legislation and how these women responded and overcame these restrictions. Followed by a Q&A with the
audience.
6:30 pm
free, no reservation required
Life has a way of parceling out both good luck and bad, and for the residents of the duplex on the ironically ...
more >> named Fortune Street, the latter was regrettably the case.
6:30 pm
free, no reservation required
Miller’s most recent book is Examined Lives: What We Can Learn from the Eminent Philosophers. His other ...
more >> books are Flowers in the Dustbin: The Rise of Rock and Roll, 1947–1977; The Passion of Michel Foucault; Democracy Is in the Streets: From Port Huron to the Siege of Chicago; Rousseau: Dreamer of Democracy; and History and Human Existence: From Marx to Merleau-Ponty; and The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock and Roll, which he edited.
Hands on using wireless laptops. Discover free computer tutorials on the web. Search NYPL's Catalog for ...
more >> books, DVDs and eBooks to help you learn computer programs and concepts on your own. Find resources on Word, Excel, Office 2007, the Internet, typing and other topics.
In this popular and candid series that cuts to the heart of world affairs, Clyde Haberman, New York City ...
more >> columnist for the New York Times and veteran foreign correspondent, talks with renowned journalists. Avoiding sound bites and the clichés of studio-bound pundits, Haberman’s more leisurely approach consistently yields thoughtful conversation and insightful observations from many corners of the world. With
Gideon Rose, editor, Foreign Affairs; Peter G. Peterson chair, Council on Foreign Relations.
Intrigued by the romance of his own parents, who met in Washington Square Park, Sabar set off on a far-ranging ...
more >> search for other couples who married after first meeting in one of New York City's iconic public spaces. In these pages, Sabar conjures their big-city love stories in novelistic detail, inviting readers into their surprising, funny and honest romances. Sabar won the National Book Critics Circle Award for his first book, My Father's Paradise.
7:00 pm
free, no reservation required
Tóibín returns to his native shores of Brooklyn for the bulk of these nine pristine stories, all--save ...
more >> one--contemporary tales of lives haunted by loss, whether it's the legacy of a sexually abusive priest in an already complicated love triangle in "The Pearl Fishers," the long-absent gay son who returns to Dublin from New York to attend to his mother's last moments in "One Minus One," or the aching void that greets an academic's return to a family home on the Irish coast in the wistful title story.
The witty, insightful stories in Emma Straub's debut collection, Other People We Married, have already ...
more >> been compared to Ann Beattie and Lorrie Moore. They've even earned praise from Lorrie herself: "In these stories...Straub demonstrates her brilliance, her humor, her sharp observational powers, as well as her lyrical gifts and affection for the world. She is a terrific new talent."
Granta named Jess Row one of the best young American novelists, and Row will be reading from Nobody Ever Gets Lost, his new collection of stories.
7:00 pm
free, no reservation required
An immersive, multilayered video installation that reenacts a controversial text from the Talmud. A tale ...
more >> of two sisters, bound together in symbiotic loyalty that unfolds in both time and three-dimensional space.
7:00 pm
free, no reservation required
A rape at gunpoint while at home is the start. The outcome is Leo's memoir and unrelenting analysis of ...
more >> the complex relationship between sexual violation, police disinterest, and the dynamics of urban neighborhoods.
7:00 pm
free, no reservation required
7:00 pm
free, no reservation required
Editor's Pick
The New York Opera Society presents a concert tribute to Paul Robeson (1898-1976), one of America’s ...
more >> most powerful singers. A 20th-Century Renaissance man, he was internationally renowned as a singer, actor, writer, and political activist. The son of a former slave, Robeson championed the singing of African-American spirituals on the concert stage, and his concert programs ran the gamut from classical arias to folk songs from around the world. His strong beliefs in social justice and the universality of man informed his choice of repertoire as a performer. He and his songs merge into an expression of the dignity and brotherhood of all mankind.
This concert features many of Robeson’s most famous and inspirational songs. There are songs of deliverance, from African-American spirituals to Mendelssohn’s Elijah. There are songs of workmen on the world’s great rivers, such as Robeson’s signature "Ol’ Man River" and the Russian "Song of the Volga Boatmen." There are songs of solidarity, including "All Through the Night," which Robeson sang to express his lifelong friendship with struggling Welsh miners. The concert culminates with his version of Beethoven’s "Ode to Joy," in which the virtues of peace and brotherhood are proclaimed in the voice of Paul Robeson.
7:00 pm
free, no reservation required
The search for her ancestors stretching back to slavery and The Civil War, with Hazel Duke, civil rights ...
more >> activist and former president of the NAACP.
7:00 pm
free, no reservation required
An autobiographical, narrative performance based on a five-month residency the artist Ellie Ga spent ...
more >> on the Tara, a research sailboat frozen into the ice, purposely drifting near the North Pole to gather scientific data. Combining a vast array of documents she created and archived along the way (photographs, videos, annotated sketches, maps, travel logs), Ga superimposes live storytelling, recorded sound, still and moving images, to conjure up the terms and rituals of daily life in the Arctic night while incorporating fragments of one of the rare entertainment forms the artist and the other nine crew members of the expedition managed to create for themselves in their remote, confined habitat: a lecture series.
7:00 pm
free, no reservation required
Editor's Pick
A new Adult Education course that examines the role that religion is playing in contemporary culture. ...
more >> Topics include the rise of fundamentalism, the challenges of a multi-faith society, fear, tolerance, diversity, and a pathway to peace. The course will meet for eight Wednesday evenings, beginning Feb. 16th. You must register in advance so that materials can be ordered.
The former Time magazine editor talks about and shows slides from his book on the actor.
New York City, NY; NYC
7:00 pm
free, no reservation required
Editor's Pick
Let February heat up a few degrees with Infectious Gypsy Swing by Viennese-born Harri Stojka, one of ...
more >> Austria's most outstanding jazz musicians. Known for his immense skills as a guitar player and a lot of blues feeling, this unique artist has musical roots that run deep: He comes from a Roma Gypsy family that surrounded him with rhythm and harmony.
The Edge Effect takes the intuitive, the interactive, ritual, creativity and transforms it into a hilarious, ...
more >> thoughtful artist's fugue. The culmination of a month-long intensive, The Edge Effect Improv Lab brings us face-to-face with, and pushes us beyond, our current limits as artists. Come celebrate the funny, the divine and the bizarre in this improv free-for-all!
8:00 pm
free, no reservation required
Imagine a storyteller who's a mixture of Garrison Kiellor, Jackie Mason, Isaac Bashevis Singer and Spalding ...
more >> Gray. (Sounds like someone who could keep a whole team of shrinks busy!) But whether he's telling stories about growing up in old Williamsburg, or about his days in the yeshiva, or his misadventures as a rabbi in New England—or spinning his interpretations of classic Hassidic tales of the Baal Shem Tov, the Master of the Good Name—Harold "Heshie" Rabinowitz's yarns and musings—his “fumpferings”—will make you laugh, cry, gasp, scratch your head…and wonder why they let people like this walk the street unattended.
Great stand-up comedy show (that has been featured on MTV, and that fills to standing-room only each ...
more >> week). The show is produced by Brendan Fitzgibbons (The Onion, McSweeney's) and Lance Weiss (Carolines on Broadway) with comedians from David Letterman, VH1, MTV, The Onion, and Comedy Central. Free pizza.
When the players are puppet characters, improv comedy takes on a ridiculous new twist that you won't ...
more >> wanna miss! Your friendly neighborhood puppet improv troupe, SkrappBox, presents "This End Up!" - designed to personally tickle every funny bone you got. The diverse line-up of this six-week run of shows features hip-hop musical improv, stand-up, sketch comedy, puppet comedy, dance comedy and of course full-frontal puppet improv comedy by the one and only SkrappBox! Joining SkrappBox this week are Brick (from Magnet Theater), Mr. and Mrs. Brownjack: Lounge Act, and more!
A great way to hear some of the most talented young lions of jazz while enjoying spectacular views of ...
more >> Manhattan.