48 free things to do in New York City (NYC) on Friday, October 6, 2017
All events are free unless otherwise noted.
This two-day conference will feature a variety of speakers, including the Heilbroner Center's own Julia ...
more >> Ott and New School History faculty Aaron Jakes. The keynote address, "'To make ourselves the masters and possesors of nature': Dutch Capitalism and the World-Ecological Revoluton of the Long Seventeenth Century," will be presented by the luminary Jason W. Moore.
Can populism exist independently of its mediation? And if media are involuntarily complicit in the spread ...
more >> of authoritarian populism specifically, what room do they have for resistance? In considering the role and responsibility of media users, professionals, and scholars in resisting authoritarian populism, this conference calls for an investigation of industries, markets, algorithms, networks, policies, technologies, and practices as they shape politics and media landscapes.
"What is at Stake?" focuses on the intersection of visual culture and the complex and contradictory notions ...
more >> of community. “Community” is a potent, yet overused word, meaning dramatically different things to different people. Similarly, it can be hard to see the extent to which visual culture—the media, images, art, and memes around us—is the way we know our “communities,” and how that visual work might play a creative and productive role in social change. There will be conversations with artists, community organizers, cultural organizations, and public agencies, as well as with fellow participants, about how visual culture defines or redefines who’s included or excluded from “community,” and what are the hard questions cultural institutions, service providers, teachers, and artists need to ask themselves in the work that is sometimes referred to as social practice, social documentary, civic engagement, or simply community-based work. Confirmed speakers, facilitators, and participating organizations include: Nicholas Mirzoeff, Mindy Fullilove, Ruth Sergel, Stephanie Dinkins, Chinatown Art Brigade, The Point, the NYC Commission on Human Rights, the Laundromat Project, Erin Barnett, Kristen Lubben, Danielle Jackson, Quito Ziegler, Bayeté Ross Smith, MTL Collective, and Gabrielle Bendiner-Viani.
This is a 3-hour tour that begins with a walk over the Brooklyn Bridge, an icon of New York City for ...
more >> over 125 years, with spectacular views of Manhattan and Brooklyn. The tour then moves on to a stroll of Brooklyn Heights, America’s and New York City’s first suburb. The tour then explores the neighborhood DUMBO before ending at the Fulton Ferry landing.
The 3-hour walking and subway tour covers the Financial District including Wall Street and the World ...
more >> Trade Center, SoHo, Little Italy and Chinatown. These are neighborhoods that simply can’t be fully appreciated from a bus. There will be one or two opportunities to sample tasty treats.
It is here, as much as anywhere, where American history started. It's where the first US Congress assembled ...
more >> and produced the Bill of Rights and where President George Washington took his first oath of office. It's here where the world's most important stock exchange and one of the most famous bridges stand. And it is here where an unspeakable tragedy took place and where a rebirth is underway.
Join a Manhattan Street Art Tour and experience the Lower East Side - SoHo, NoHo, Nolita and Little Italy. ...
more >> The Lower East Side of Manhattan is a playground for street artists, Soho is known to be one of NYC first permit Joint Live-Work Quarters for artists and the area received landmark designation in 1973. Noho and Nolita’s street art is either hidden in courtyards or on the more prominent street art facades. Learn about the history of the art of many famous and unknown artist.
Are you a Bridge buff? Put your game face on and show off your best plays. Join the fun and meet new ...
more >> friends! All players welcome!
10:00 am
free, no reservation required
Don't have enough time to take all of the tours? Prefer to experience Manhattan with a smaller group, ...
more >> but a private booking is out of reach? Then consider our All-in-One New York Tour. This tour utilizes your feet and the New York City Subway to transport you from Lower Manhattan, the birthplace of New York, through Wall St and the Financial District, the World Trade Center, Greenwich Village, SoHo, Chinatown, Little Italy, Chelsea Market and the Highline Park.
This conference brings together scholars of French literature, music, and history, alongside sound artists ...
more >> from France and the Francophone world, to explore the place of sound in sensation/making sense. Talks and roundtables are organized around a series of performances which include a concert featuring compositions of Michaël Levinas, a performance at the Park Avenue Armory of Boulez’s Répons by IRCAM’s Ensemble Intercontemporain, and the innovative production by Roland Auzet of Bertrand-Marie Koltes’s play In the Solitude of the Cotton Fields. Levinas; the director of IRCAM, Frank Madlener; and Auzet will participate in discussions around their work.
10:30 am
free, no reservation required
12:00 pm
free, no reservation required
Test your coordination and dexterity with free juggling lessons in the park. All skill levels are welcome ...
more >> to join in the fun. Equipment is provided.
12:00 pm
free, no reservation required
The keyboard works of Bach offered in 30-minute meditations. Bach at Noon concerts takes place Tuesdays ...
more >> through Fridays, from September 12, 2017 to May 23, 2018.
12:20 pm
free, no reservation required
Discover architecture and social history of Grand Central neighborhood; learn secrets of Whispering Gallery ...
more >> in Grand Central Terminal; gaze upon hubcaps and roadsters on side of Chrysler Building; discover favorite Midtown Manhattan hangout of Mercury, Hercules, and Minerva; learn why Pershing Square isn’t really square; visit original Lincoln Memorial by Daniel Chester French. Award-winning tour led by urban explorer, historian, and storyteller Justin Ferate. This tour takes place every Friday.
12:30 pm
free, no reservation required
Drawing from an elaborate installation of acoustic instruments—pendelstrings, hardwood and granite ...
more >> stone rows, viola, voice, soprano timpani, cymbals and a variety of tube, metal and snare drums—dancer Limpe Fuchs will transform her Prismatic Park stage into a sanctuary for sound. Through a series of spontaneous improvisations and studied compositions, interactive demonstrations of her instruments and scheduled workshops for players both trained and untrained, her presence will foster a fertile web of feedback between different people and musicians in contact with their own instruments or with hers.
1:00 pm
free, no reservation required
Blanche Wiesen Cook to discuss the final volume of the biographer’s trilogy on Eleanor Roosevelt, focusing ...
more >> on the legacy of her political activism in NYC.
Program: Franz Schubert Sonata in a minor “Arpeggione” D. 821 Maurice Ravel Sonatine Claude Debussy ...
more >> Sonata for Cello and Piano, L. 135 A concert by Harvey Wu (piano) and Alec Hon (cello)
Beginner lessons with masters from Manhattan Fencing Center. Take a stab at the modern sport of fencing. ...
more >> No prior experience needed and equipment is provided. Must be 16 or older to participate.
New York City is a mecca for graffiti and street art, making it a very attractive playground for artists ...
more >> from around the world. Bushwick, in a working class district on the north side of Brooklyn adjacent to Williamsburg, has been attracting artists for some time now. The neighborhood has a fair collection of art studios and galleries, but it’s Bushwick’s industrial landscape that’s attracting the street artist. If you came looking for 1960′s Greenwich Village, you’ll find something brewing in Bushwick. Tour takes place Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays.
Greenwich Village is among Manhattan's most desirable and expensive residential neighborhoods. It's history, ...
more >> however, betrays it's monied status. The Village, with it's quiet, shaded streets, lined with lovely brick and brownstone townhouses, was once the incubating ground of artistic, social and political movements that have helped shape US history. From the Beats to the Folk Movement, from workers rights to gay rights, the Village has often been the center of it all.
Although world famous, Harlem may be New York's best kept secret with some of the city's best architecture, ...
more >> 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.
Rockefeller Center is one of the most popular public spaces and tourist attractions in New York City. ...
more >> This depression-era commercial complex takes up over three full city blocks and is rich with history, public art, and art-deco architecture. Built by business mogul John D. Rockefeller Jr. with his own money, he instructed his team of designers and architects to build the most beautiful commercial complex of it’s kind in the world. That vision resulted in what is still one of NYC’s greatest treasures and gave rise to some of NYC’s favorite traditions including the Radio City Christmas Spectacular featuring the famous dance team the Rockettes and the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree.
The symposium addresses key ancient Black Sea myths that retain a stable presence in the Western cultural ...
more >> imagination—Prometheus, Medea and the Argonauts, Iphigenia, Odysseus—and aims to explore their life in the lands where these myths initially emerged. It targets especially the little-studied political mobilization of these myths in the construction of modern national, regional, and pan-European identities for various communities around the Black Sea.
3:00 pm
free, no reservation required
Drawing from an elaborate installation of acoustic instruments—pendelstrings, hardwood and granite ...
more >> stone rows, viola, voice, soprano timpani, cymbals and a variety of tube, metal and snare drums—dancer Limpe Fuchs will transform her Prismatic Park stage into a sanctuary for sound. Through a series of spontaneous improvisations and studied compositions, interactive demonstrations of her instruments and scheduled workshops for players both trained and untrained, her presence will foster a fertile web of feedback between different people and musicians in contact with their own instruments or with hers. Workshop limited to 10.
An exhibition of prints that challenge, resist, revolt and defy! Featuring work by a diverse group of ...
more >> artists with various backgrounds, points of view, and ideologies with at least one thing in common: a need to challenge ideas, stereotypes and social issues of today. This exhibition showcases how printmaking continues to be an exceptional vehicle to share, protest, and critique contemporary culture.
5:00 pm
free, no reservation required
A Night of Refugee Voices will celebrate the voices of members of the refugee community and help bring ...
more >> the refugee crisis into focus. The keynote speech will be delivered by Valentino Achak Deng, a refugee from South Sudan who immigrated to the US under the Lost Boys of Sudan program, the subject of Dave Egger’s book What is the What, and the founder of the Valentino Achak Deng Foundation. Also, members of the refugee community from Iran, Somalia and more would share their unique stories and discuss ways for individuals to take action in response to the current refugee crisis. Food and wine will be served.
Featuring Julie Buntin, Gabe Habash, Jaroslav Kalfarr, Matthew Lansburgh and Kanishk Tharoor. Julie ...
more >> Buntin is the author of Marlena (Henry Holt, 2017). Gabe Habash is the author of Stephen Florida (Coffee House Press, 2017). Jaroslav Kalfar is the author of Spaceman in Bohemia (Little, Brown and Company, 2017). Matthew Lansburgh's collection of linked stories is Outside Is the Ocean, winner of the Iowa Short Fiction Award and published by Iowa University Press. Kanishk Tharoor is the author of Swimmer Among the Stars: Stories (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017).
5:00 pm
free, no reservation required
Traditional German “beer hall” celebration and entertainment. The Polka Brothers, a four man band ...
more >> of hipster polka lovers perform a unique mix of classic polka favorites, covers of pop and rock songs with a polka spin, as well as original tune.
5:00 pm
free, no reservation required
The area around the High Line Park was a vital business district of New York City, supplying fresh fruits, ...
more >> French Cheeses and Russian caviar as well as fresh meats to City markets. The hustle and bustle of the streets induced the City to elevate the railroad trains delivering goods to the commercial buildings. When interstate truck traffic made the railway outdated, it fell into ruin, only to be regenerated as a park.
A powerful documentary that exposes the direct connection between the long history of U.S. intervention ...
more >> in Latin America and the immigration crisis we face today. 90 min.
Welcome to Miss Qiunzella Thiskwin Penniquiqul Thistle Crumpet’s Camp for Hardcore Lady Types. The ...
more >> five scouts of Roanoke cabin—Jo, April, Molly, Mal, and Ripley—love their summers at camp. They get to hang out with their best friends, earn Lumberjane scout badges, annoy their no-nonsense counselor Jen . . . and go on supernatural adventures.
6:30 pm
free, no reservation required
Editor's Pick
This volume gives us the city on a whole new scale, as skyscrapers jostle for prominence and the ambitions ...
more >> of the wealthy compete with those of immigrants, radicals, and Harlem’s African Americans. Wallace, founder of the Gotham Center, speaks with Sam Roberts, urban affairs correspondent for The New York Times.
Professor Monika Pietrzak-Franger explores the tensions between invisibility and visibility as characteristic ...
more >> of the late nineteenth century representation of syphilis. The talk will also focus on the power dynamics underlying various acts of syphilis recognition. When, and under what circumstances, could one view the disease? Who was allowed to see it? What was the justification behind these acts of evocation? How was the spectacle of syphilis framed and what political considerations accompanied the display of the disease?
In a conservative society, a woman forces herself into a marriage of convenience, only to discover that ...
more >> her true passion lies with her past lover – a passion that drags her down like a river – bringing together a marriage between Love and Death. The College of Performing Arts' School of Drama Directing Festival presents this play by Federico García Lorca, translated by Caridad Svich, directed by Andrés López-Alicea.
An illuminating work of documentary theater, The Tar Sands Songbook asks us to reconsider our unseen ...
more >> relationships with oil. Creator Tanya Kalmanovitch knows these relationships all too well. Born in Fort McMurray, Canada, near the site of the Athabasca Oil Sands, the world’s largest bitumen reservoir, she made her decision to become a musician as a teenager because “it had nothing to do with oil.” Fort McMurray has since become a flashpoint of international clashes over energy, the environment, and the economy. Written in collaboration with director Cecilia Rubino, Kalmanovitch's polyphonic piece weaves together a chorus of actors' voices with an original, improvised score. The words of indigenous activists, engineers, heavy equipment operators, elders, oil patch workers, scientists, and those of her own family fuel discussions of our past and the powerful forces that shape our future. Run time is 75 minutes with no intermission.
An evening of disability culture poetry, new perspectives on space and desire, queer perspectives on ...
more >> love, pain and difference. Stephanie Heit will read and perform from her poetry collection, The Color She Gave Gravity (The Operating System, 2017), which takes us inside a dance inside an imaginary city inside sculpted spaces inside the insomniac body inside sister grief inside she. The poems emerge from a landscape of somatic engagement and from experiences of psychiatric systems and multiple hospitalizations. Petra Kuppers will read and perform from her poetry collection, PearlStitch (Spuyten Duyvil, 2016), on disability culture activism, feminist poetics history, love and transformation. The poems emerge from encounters in tango dances, activist camps, concert halls, and healing hot spring visits. Lynne DeSilva-Johnson will read and perform poetry and sound experimentation, from recent hybrid zine Progeny Restoration Corporation and forthcoming collaborative chapbook, Body Oddy Oddy, among other works. The poems emerge from the bioprecarious landscape of C-PTSD in the non binary body c.2017 in these fractured states.
7:00 pm
free, no reservation required
Editor's Pick
Florence Price (1883-1953) was the first African-American woman whose music was performed by major symphony ...
more >> orchestras. In 1933 the famous Chicago Symphony performed her 'Symphony in E minor' at the World's Fair. She also composed over 50 songs which were sung by the great Marian Anderson. 57 min. Followed by a reception.
Editor's Pick
With: Aminda Asher, cello, Hannah Min, violin, and Sophie X. Zhang, piano The performance is followed ...
more >> by a meet-the-artist reception.
An hour-long pre-concert discussion led by musicologists and scholars as they discuss the Hudson’s ...
more >> music and legacy, taking an in-depth look at their contributions to the genre. This discussion looks at the music and career jazz luminaries: drummer Jack DeJohnette, bassist Larry Grenadier, keyboardist John Medeski and guitarist John Scofield of the new supergroup Hudson.
7:00 pm
free, no reservation required
Including authors Gregory Edwards (Civil War Generals McLellan and Lee: The First Two Years of the War) ...
more >> and Joseph Rose (Grant Under Fire: An Expose of Generalship and Character in the American Civil War).
7:00 pm
free, no reservation required
Heart and Brain: Body Language continues the adventures of the loveably conflicted sentimental Heart ...
more >> and rational Brain, as well as other bodily inhabitants like Gallbladder, Muscle, and Tongue.
7:00 pm
free, no reservation required
With its shrieking sirens, honking horns, and prattling pedestrians, New York City can be an assaulting ...
more >> auditory experience. However, New York has also produced other kinds of sounds. Under the direction of faculty member Rebecca Steinberg on trumpet, the trio includes colleague pianist Sara Sherman and guest artist violinist Ann Marie Bermont in a program of works for piano and trumpet by some of the city's most gifted musical residents such as George Gershwin, Aaron Copland, Edward MacDowell, and Eric Ewazen.
7:00 pm
free, no reservation required
Tactus -- Margaret Kampmeier, Artistic Director -- will perform contemporary chamber music. The program ...
more >> features a Sound Painting led by Todd Reynolds, and music of Susan Botti, Lukas Foss, Guillaume Connesson and Alfred Schnittke. Pre-concert talk at 7pm. Concert starts at 7:30pm.
7:00 pm
free, no reservation required
Editor's Pick
Get into the transcendent rhythmic flow-state of Doctrine of Signatures. Glen Velez and his charismatic ...
more >> ensemble of virtuosos go deep into the spiritual power of synchronized rhythm. This revolutionary composition was originally composed in the 1980’s as a continuation of an earlier piece called Internal Combustion. The legendary composer John Cage attended a performance of Doctrine and was so inspired that he created a solo piece for Glen In 1989. Doctrine is an evolving piece designed to show off the surprising melodic qualities and healing potential of single-headed frame drums, a drum with 5000 years of history. The composition is based on an energetic process of rhythmic cueing by a lead drummer, a role in this special performance played by the composer. The drummers create an ultra-flow-marathon coordinating mind-body-spirit — all limbs synchronized to ecstatic vocal signals, continuous pulsations while stepping in shifting time cycles. Glen Velez is a 4-time Grammy Award-winning master drummer, composer, Percussive Arts Society Hall of Fame inductee and founding father of the modern frame drum movement. Glen Velez Handance Ensemble was founded in the 1980’s to present music inspired by his 40 years of research into the 5000 year history of the frame drum. Handance Ensemble features the illustrious multi-percussionists: Shane Shanahan, Yousif Sheronick, Glen Fittin and rhythm vocalist Loire Cotler. Featuring: Glen Velez Handance Ensemble: Glen Velez, Shane Shanahan, Yousif Sheronick, Glen Fittin, and Loire Cotler with special guest renowned artist Mark Kostabi, who will create a live painting A brief pre-concert talk with Glen Velez will begin at 7:30PM.
7:30 pm
free, no reservation required
The ghosts of Greenwich Village are too numerous and interesting to meet in just one evening! Due to ...
more >> popular demand, they are offering a new tour, “Ghosts of the East Village,” as a companion tour to one of their biggest crowd-pleasers, Ghosts of the West Village.
7:30 pm
Free plus subway...
Editor's Pick
Presenting The Pedro Project: an intimate evening of songs from & inspired by the films of Pedro Almodóvar. ...
more >> Featuring vocalist Kate Chaston, with Adam Fisher on cello and Ethan Mann on guitar.
Editor's Pick
It’s 2013, Obama has just been re-elected, and The Republican Party finally realizes it has a problem ...
more >> with race. In an attempt to win the 2016 presidential election, the GOP backs a candidate who is a mixture of every race on earth. Christopher Chen's wild and surreal comedy skewers all political parties to the point it becomes indiscernible of what is satire – and what is today’s frightening reality. This production is part of The College of Performing Arts' School of Drama New Visions Directing Festival.