free things to do in New York City
Free events for Thursday, 10/13/22
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Free Events, Free Things to Do in New York City!  Read More

Are you looking for free things to do in New York City (NYC) on October 13, 2022?

54 free events take place on Thursday, October 13 in New York City. Don't miss the opportunities that only New York provides! Exciting, high quality, unique and off the beaten path free events and free things to do take place in New York today, tonight, tomorrow and each day of the year, any time of the day: whether it's a weekday or a weekend, day or night, morning or evening or afternoon, December or July, April or November! These events will take your breath away!

New York City (NYC) never ceases to amaze you with quantity and quality of its free culture and free entertainment. Check out October 13 and see for yourself. Summer or Winter, Spring or Fall! Just click on any day of the calendar above and you'll find most inspiring and entertaining free events to go to and free things to do on each day of October . Don't miss the opportunities that only New York provides!

Some events take place all year long: same day of the week, same time there are there for you to take advantage of. One of the oldest free weekly events in Manhattan is Dixieland Jazz with the Gotham Jazzmen, which happen at noon every Tuesday. Another example of an event that you can attend all year round on weekdays is Federal Reserve Bank Tour, which takes place every week day at 1 pm (but advanced reservations are required). You can take at least 13 free tours every day of the year, except the New Year Day, July 4th, and the Christmas Day. If you are classical music afficionado, you can spend whole day in New York going from one free classical concert to another. If you love theater, then New York gives you an option to attend plays and musicals free of charge, or at deep discount. You just need to have information about it. And we are here to make that information available to you.
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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!

54 free things to do in New York City (NYC) on Thursday, October 13, 2022

All events are free unless otherwise noted.

Editor's Picks

free events nyc NY Philharmonic musicians playing works by Mozart and Schubert
free events nyc American Democracy in Crisis: Perspectives from Tocqueville, Douglass, Wells, Dewey and Arendt
free events nyc Iran #3037: Political Sexual Violence Under the Dictatorship
free events nyc When Women Lead: What They Achieve, Why They Succeed, and How We Can Learn from Them
free events nyc Listen: The Stages and Studios That Shaped American Music
free events nyc A Gem of a Chamber Troupe
More Editor's Picks for 10/13/22
        

Workshop | Pick Up Pickleball


An exciting fusion of badminton and tennis, pickleball has been proven to strengthen muscles, boost cardiovascular health, and enhance brain function. BPCA is proudly working with NYC Pickleball to offer beginner pickleball classes to the community. All equipment will be provided.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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9:00 am
Free

Tour | 13 Tours, All City Neighborhoods, Any Time Of The Day, Choose One Tour Or Many


These free tours take place at various times during the day, all day long. You can make reservations for as many tours as your schedule allows. SoHo, Little Italy and Chinatown Brooklyn Bridge, Brooklyn Heights + DUMBO 3 Hour Lower Manhattan Harlem Chelsea and the High Line 6 Hour Downtown Combined Greenwich Village Central Park Lower Manhattan Midtown Manhattan Grand Central Terminal Graffiti and Street Art Tours World Trade Center
   New York City, NY; NYC
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10:00 am
Free

Discussion | Politics of Gender in Work and Innovation in India and China (online)


Drawing on ethnographic research of design practices in post-liberalization India, Prof. Lilly Irani traces how designers target everyday acts of social reproduction as sites of intervention and valorization through design intervention. She makes the case with stories of water cooling, contrasting devalued water cooling practices characterized as jugaad or workaround with proper, branded products recognizable as innovation. Prof. Yige Dong draws on a case study of Zhengzhou, a city located in China’s heartland that has transformed from a major textile mill town in the socialist period to the world largest iPhone manufacturing center in the last decade. Extending the analytical focus from the factory shop floor to the space of social reproduction, this talk discusses how dynamics in the realm of gender and care work has constituted the processes of political economy and shaped the outcomes of China’s industrial development.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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10:00 am
Free

Fair | Street Fair


Free fun for the whole family, including arts, crafts, antiques, plants, entertainment, games, and more.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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10:00 am
Free

Tour | Tour of New York City Hall


One of the oldest continuously used City Halls in the nation that still houses its original governmental functions, New York's City Hall is considered one of the finest architectural achievements of its period. Constructed from 1803 to 1812, the building was an early expression of the City's cosmopolitanism. City Hall is a designated New York City landmark, and its rotunda is a designated interior landmark as well.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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10:00 am
Free

Discussion | African Climate and Energy in the Media (online)


This moderated panel discussion will explore approaches to reliably relating Africa climate change stories in the news media. The news media plays a vital role in elevating the public’s understanding of climate risks, energy crises, and emerging opportunities to embrace new solutions. But this poses a huge set of challenges for journalists: How do they make complex stories relatable? How do they capture attention without resorting to tired narratives about African vulnerability? How do they tackle Africa’s changing role in global climate politics? And what changes based on the audience they’re targeting?
   New York City, NY; NYC
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12:00 pm
Free

Conference | Alternative Artistic Trajectories into (Post-)Communist Europe (online)


This one-day conference at the Albertinum, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden brings together international scholars to present and debate revisionist accounts of Cold War artistic exchange. With the aim of disrupting the East-to-West “defection” narrative of the post-war art worlds and revealing a more porous Iron Curtain, participants will explore the reasons why artists operating in Western contexts chose to enter the Communist space, and the unexpected outcomes of these subversive journeys. The conference will be held in English.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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12:00 pm
Free

Talk | Brazilian Presidential Election 2022: Trends and Major Aspects


Dr. Murillo de Aragão will address the progress of the presidential elections and their trends towards the second round, electoral platforms, Brazil-United States relations, reforms, human rights and environment, among other topics.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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12:00 pm
Free

Classical Music | NY Philharmonic musicians playing works by Mozart and Schubert


Program Mozart (1756 - 1791) Trio in E-flat major, Kegelstatt, K.498 Schubert (1797 - 1828) Piano Quintet, Trout About the Program The German word Kegelstatt means "a place where skittles are played", akin to a duckpin bowling alley. This clarinet-viola-piano trio was first played in 1786 -- the clarinet was still a relatively new instrument in Mozart's time, and this trio, along with Mozart's Clarinet Quintet and Clarinet Concerto, helped increase the instrument's popularity. No composer before Mozart had written for this combination of instruments ever before. The Piano Quintet, Trout was composed in 1819, when Schubert was 22 years old. However, it was not published until 1829, a year after his death. The piece is known as Trout because the fourth movement is a set of variations on Schubert's earlier Lied Die Forelle (The Trout). The quintet was written for Sylvester Paumgartner, a wealthy music patron and amateur cellist from Steyr, Upper Austria, who also suggested that Schubert include a set of variations on the Lied. Sets of variations on melodies from his Lieder are found in four other works by Schubert: the Death and the Maiden Quartet, the "Trockne Blumen" (dried flowers) Variations for Flute and Piano, the Wanderer Fantasy, and the Fantasia for Violin and Piano in C major.
   New York City, NY; NYC
12:00 pm
Free

Lecture | Yesterday's Tomorrows: Identity and Space Technology in Post-Soviet Societies (online)


When considering the Russian aggression against Ukraine and expansion into its territory, the space legacy of the Soviet Union in Eurasia may not be the first thing that comes to mind. However, Nelly Bekus has argued that for states like Kazakhstan the ability to adopt and adapt the technical achievements and artifacts of that era have been an important means of establishing new national identities in the wake of the USSR.  In this talk, Dr. Bekus will discuss her studies of the cultivation of post-Soviet identities as a form of post-coloniality and the role that technoscientific enterprises like space exploration and travel have played in those efforts. She will also consider the impact of the expansionist actions of Russia, its expressed intentions to withdraw from established international relations involving space, and how those affect the geopolitics and identities of post-Soviet nations which have invested in using space for political purposes.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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12:00 pm
Free

Classical Music | Bach at Noon


Take a momentary respite from a busy day to enjoy a selection of organ works by Johann Sebastian Bach in an intimate venue.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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12:20 pm
Free

Lesson | Learn how to create a storyboard for your very own comic book


Are you a lover of comics and cartoons? Have you ever wanted to create your own comic book? Learn how in a beginner-friendly, stress-free art class. In this comics and cartooning art workshop, you will learn how to create a basic storyline and transform it into a comic strip, with artistic instruction on how to plan and create the story's visuals so that your unique story is told through comics art.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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1:00 pm
Free

Classical Music | Mozart and His Contemporaries: Sonatas for Piano and Violin (in-person and online)


Yi-Heng Yang, pianoforte, and Aisslinn Nosky, violin, join forces to explore the world of Mozart's piano/violin sonatas as well as some lesser-known yet remarkable composers who were active in his musical world.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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1:15 pm
Free

Book Discussion | Love Brought Me Through The Holocaust: A Daughter's Memories (online)


Judith Koeppel Steel was born in Berlin, Germany at the beginning of World War II. Her family escaped Germany in 1939 aboard the MS St. Louis, only to be turned away by both Cuba and the United States and sent back to Europe. Her family disembarked in Belgium, and were later imprisoned in Gurs concentration camp. Judith's father arranged for her to be hidden by a French Catholic family for the rest of the war. In 1946, Judith came to New York where she was adopted by her aunt and uncle. Ultimately, she was ordained as a Cantor. Join the Museum for a Stories Survive program in which Judith will discuss her story, as told in her book Love Brought Me Through The Holocaust: A Daughter's Memories.    
   New York City, NY; NYC
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2:00 pm
Free

City Walk | Guided Historical Tour of the Columbia University Campus


Learn more about the history, architecture, and sculpture of Columbia and the Morningside Heights campus. Whether you're an amateur New York City historian or visiting campus for the first time, you will leave the tour knowing more about our storied past.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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3:00 pm
Free

Lecture | The Silver Waterfall. How America Won the War in the Pacific at Midway (online)


With: Steven McGregor, Lecturer at INSTEP, Wake Forest University
   New York City, NY; NYC
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3:00 pm
Free

Book Discussion | Mott Street: A Chinese American Family's Story of Exclusion and Homecoming (online)


Ava Chin will address the challenges faced in writing her forthcoming memoir – challenges which included the impact of the Chinese Exclusion laws on four generations of her family in NYC’s Chinatown, and the task of how to thread a narrative together where the historical scope includes many eras and generations. How does one write a nonfiction book when the official record is a kind of fiction, heavily biased against one's subjects, or simply nonexistent due to negligence, discrimination, or a combination of both? How does the author weave nearly five decades of research into a single narrative? What are the criteria for inclusions and exclusions?
   New York City, NY; NYC
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4:00 pm
Free

Lecture | A Politics of Radical Care: Writing Women into the History of the Egyptian Human Rights Movement (in-person and online)


Human Rights are a key theme in international history and international law, with the Arab world being studied mostly in relation to the trajectories that led the postcolonial states to ratify the major HR international conventions, and to the global growth of the human rights movements in the 1980s and the 1990s. In the mainstream literature, Arab women are either absent or represented as violated and vulnerable subjects, individuals in need of protection and “international solidarity”. Even the history of the human rights movements across the Arab world is written along male-centred genealogies, and women’s voices tend to be silenced. This talk argues for the importance of writing a women’s history of the human rights movement in Egypt, showing that woman political activists were not only closely working with men to build the movement, but they were also bringing a specific feminist theoretical contribution to it. Speaker Lucia Sorbera is Senior Lecturer and Chair of the Department of Arabic Language and Cultures at the University of Sydney, which is built on land stolen from the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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4:00 pm
Free

Gallery Talk | Afterlives: Greek Funerary Monuments in Modern Perspective


H. Alan Shapiro, scholar and author of Art and Cult under the Tyrants in Athens and Myth into Art: Poet and Painter in Classical Greece, discusses a selection of sculptures and vase paintings ranging in date from the eighth to the third century BCE featured in renowned author Paul Zanker’s recent book, Afterlives: Ancient Greek Funerary Monuments .
   New York City, NY; NYC
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4:00 pm
Free

Symposium | American Democracy in Crisis: Perspectives from Tocqueville, Douglass, Wells, Dewey and Arendt


PRESENTATIONS: "Alexis de Tocqueville on democracy and its culture" Jeffrey Goldfarb "Frederick Douglass, abolition, civil war, and democracy" Juliet Hooker, Brown University "Ida B. Wells, race, gender, and the struggle for voting rights" Paula Giddings, Smith College "John Dewey, the prospects for democracy in war, peace, and Depression" Deva Woodly "Hannah Arendt, insurrection and constitutionalism" James Miller, The New School ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION "What does democracy mean today in the US?" With James Miller, Paula Giddings, Juliet Hooker, Deva Woodly, Jeffrey Goldfarb
   New York City, NY; NYC
4:30 pm
Free

Birdwatching | Park Birding Tour


Spot a wonderful diversity of birds that visit the park during migratory season with guided tours by NYC Audubon. Located in the heart of Midtown, our park is a hotspot for avian visitors and birders alike. Past sightings include warblers, tanagers, vireos, thrushes, and even a Chuck-will’s-widow.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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5:00 pm
Free

Book Discussion | Builders, Housewives and the Construction of Modern Athens (in-person and online)


To celebrate the third edition of Ioanna Theocharopoulou’s book, this is a wide-ranging discussion about the relevance of this modern city, its architecture, and ancient history. Architectural historians have tended to disparage the lack of formal planning and the apparent homogeneity of Athen’s “box-like” concrete buildings. By casting Athens as a uniquely local mode of informal urbanism, a phenomenon that, in a broader sense, is found around the world and particularly in the “developing” world, Theocharopoulou’s book offers a critical re-evaluation of the city as a successful adaptation to circumstance, enriching our understanding of urbanism as a truly collective design activity. Builders, Housewives and the Construction of Modern Athens advocates for an architectural history that allows access to the conceptual worlds and the imaginations of builders and inhabitants. This approach departs from a focus on structures designed exclusively by architects and planners, to explore processes—financial, cultural, and material—that rely on self-organization and community. These improvisations and adaptations, which succeeded in producing a dense and vibrant city, can, in turn, help us imagine how to create more sustainable and livable urban models today.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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6:00 pm
Free

Opening Reception | Eric Aho: Threshold


In this new series of paintings, Eric Aho explores the various “threshold” spaces between water, earth, sky, and our own physical presence in the landscape. Developed over the past two years and drawn from the artist’s explorations of forests and wetlands, Aho reconstructs and reinvents his observations, composing a visual language of natural forms, feelings, and remembrances.  The borders where natural elements meet are disrupted by Aho’s intricate mark-making. Recognizable space is clarified towards the top of many of the paintings, where stark pine trees cut across open patches of sky. Moving towards the bottom of his canvases, closer to the artist’s vantage point, forms become fluid and colors grow more vivid, even fantastical. Critic Andrew Shea writes, “Aho allows the eye to wander, and his collection of smaller glimpses propose a teeming whole, accumulating and collapsing along with the precarious landscapes they depict.” 
   New York City, NY; NYC
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6:00 pm
Free

Screening | Iran #3037: Political Sexual Violence Under the Dictatorship


Iran #3037 was a clandestine center of detention and torture under the brutal regime of General Augusto Pinochet. Referred to as The Sexy Blindfold (La Venda Sexy) or the Discotheque, it was known for sexual violation and abuse. Today it is a site of protest as activists call for the house to be transformed into a feminist memorial site. Iran #3037 powerfully dramatizes the situation of the family living in the house today and the struggle surrounding the site. The drama had a long run in Chile, playing in the National Theater of Chile as part of a "Theater in Emergency" cycle. While the play deals with the past, it hit a chord with the public as it seemed to dramatize the police violence surrounding the recent social uprising (estallido social) as well. This is the film's first screening in the United States. It will be followed by a conversation with the director, Patricia Artes Ibanez. The film is subtitled in English.
   New York City, NY; NYC
6:00 pm
Free

Screening | Iran #3037: Political Sexual Violence Under The Dictatorship


Iran #3037 powerfully dramatizes the situation of the family living in the house known as Iran #3037, the once-clandestine center of detention and torture under the brutal regime of General Augusto Pinochet. Referred to as The Sexy Blindfold (La Venda Sexy) or the Discotheque, it was known for sexual violation and abuse. Today it is a site of protest as activists call for the house to be transformed into a feminist memorial site. This will be the first film screening of Iran #3037 in the United States, and will be followed by a conversation with the director, Patricia Artes Ibanez. The film is subtitled in English. Patricia Artes Ibanez is a Chilean researcher and feminist theater director. She holds a Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Studies in Thought, Culture and Society from the University of Valparaiso. She has co-authored an anthology of 20th-century women's playwrights, Evidencias, las otras dramaturgias (Evidence: the Other Playwrights). Event guests and visitors must provide ID and proof of up-to-date vaccination, including a booster when eligible; a negative result from a PCR test taken within three days before arrival; or a negative result from a rapid test taken the same day. Masks must be worn at all times
   New York City, NY; NYC
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6:00 pm
Free

Opening Reception | Joy: Photography Exhibition


Twenty diverse artists of the Art Justice Cohort present an exhibition about the feelings that drive people to change the world. It is a visual journey through the power of joy and love which underlies acts of protest as well as the real, everyday lives of people of color.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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6:00 pm
Free

Book Discussion | Listen: The Stages and Studios That Shaped American Music


Author Rhona Bitner in conversation with Natalie Bell and Jon Hammer followed by a signing and an audio experience curated from artists featured in the book, an extraordinary archive of the most iconic sites on the American musical landscape. Prompted by the closing of New York's famed CBGB, Rhona Bitner embarked on a thirteen-year journey to photograph 403 venues across twenty-six states and eighty-nine cities--the studios, concert halls, arenas, high schools, bars, ballrooms, prisons, and fields where the most memorable songs were inspired, recorded, performed, and listened to. Close to 300 of those photographs are included in this book.
   New York City, NY; NYC
6:00 pm
Free

Gallery Talk | Social_East: Searching for Identity, Finding Nylon and Blue Jeans: Curator's Tour


An image-based, speculative exhibition that brings the past into conversation with the present. Through the use of archival images from the University of Pecs, Communication and Media Studies Department's Media Lab, curators Doris Domoszlai-Lantner and Petra Egri merge the fashion and dress culture of Hungary's socialist past with contemporary, globally prolific social media, to ask: What if social media existed during the socialist Kadar era? What images would users share, and what captions and hashtags would they write for them?
   New York City, NY; NYC
6:00 pm
Free

Opening Reception | Spray Painterly 2: Group Exhibition


Featuring: Ana Barriga, Andre, Chito, Diego, Jonathan Edelhuber, and  UFO907.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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6:00 pm
Free

Movie in a Park | The Wizard of Oz (1939): Classic Oscar-Winning Musical with Judy Garland


Young Dorothy Gale and her dog are swept away by a tornado from their Kansas farm to the magical land of Oz, and embark on a quest with three new friends to see the Wizard, who can return her to her home and fulfill the others' wishes. Directors: Victor Fleming Stars: Judy Garland, Frank Morgan, Ray Bolger 102 min.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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6:00 pm
Free

Book Discussion | When Women Lead: What They Achieve, Why They Succeed, and How We Can Learn from Them


A groundbreaking, deeply reported work from CNBC's Julia Boorstin that reveals the key commonalities and characteristics that help top female leaders thrive as they innovate, grow businesses, and navigate crises--an essential resource for anyone in the workplace.
   New York City, NY; NYC
6:00 pm
Free

Lecture | Architectural History is Migrant History: Construction Labor and Cantera Stone in Mexico and the US (in-person and online)


This lecture tracks the development over the last fifty years of a binational construction industry that has emerged around the excavation (in Mexico), transportation, distribution, and installation (in the U.S.) of cantera stone. Cantera literally means “quarry,” but the Spanish word is used in Mexico to describe a specific brittle rock used to build colonial churches and civic infrastructure. More recently, a network of Mexican quarrymen, stonemasons, homebuilders, architects, and businessmen have refined a cantera market that caters to a Mexican and Mexican American clientele in the American Southwest. Speaker Sarah Lopez, a built environment historian and migration scholar, is an associate professor at the Stuart Weitzman School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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6:00 pm
Free

Discussion | In the Wilds of Brooklyn: 2 Cartoonists in Conversation (online)


A Newsweek article published in 1943 characterized the artist Morris Hirshfield as an old man who lived, “way out in… the Wilds of Brooklyn.” In this program, Ben Katchor and Roz Chast will take this primitivizing and elitist observation as a starting point to reflect on Hirshfield’s story as a Jewish European immigrant who worked his way up the trade to become a tailor, then a successful business-owner, and later a celebrated self-taught painter in New York City. A cartoonist at The New Yorker, Chast translates the mundane in semi-confessional “clunky” comics, confronting New Yorkers’ anxieties with both humor and compassion. In his signature black-and-white pen-and-wash drawings, the graphic-novelist Katchor revives bygone architecture, activities and characters to offer a historical, yet multidimensional, portrait of the city. Both natives of Brooklyn, these two extraordinary storytellers will take us into an exquisite journey where everyday urban experience is turned into insightful art. This program will chronicle for us moments, places and themes that compose New York City’s fabric and identity, while contributing to a better understanding of Hirshfield’s life and work as a Brooklyn-based Jewish artist.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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6:00 pm
Free

Dance Performance | NYC DADA DO Performance Salon


Enjoy the second of two evenings of performance and poetry by leading NYC maverick artists and writers. Join 23 artists as they put on a contemporary dada performance and poetry. Costumes encouraged. Come as you aren't. Part II of this event takes place on Thursday, October 13th, at 6 pm. Dada was an art movement formed during World War I in Zurich in negative reaction to the horrors and folly of war. The art, poetry and performance produced by dada artists is often satirical and nonsensical in nature.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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6:00 pm
Free

Discussion | The Making of a Novel (online)


A discussion with MFA alumni Erin Swan, Margaux Weisman, and Nidhi Pugalia as they sit down with Helen Schulman to discuss the creation of novels. 
   New York City, NY; NYC
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6:00 pm
Free

Author Reading | City of Refugees: The Story of Three Newcomers Who Breathed Life into a Dying American Town


Susan Hartman's intimate portrait of newcomers revitalizing a fading industrial town illuminates the larger canvas of refugee life in 21st century America. Many Americans imagine refugees as threatening outsiders who will steal jobs or be a drain on the economy. But across the country, refugees are rebuilding and maintaining the American Dream. Hartman shows how an influx of refugees helped revive Utica, New York, an old upstate manufacturing town that was nearly destroyed by depopulation and arson.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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6:30 pm
Free

Book Discussion | Houses to Die In and Other Essays on Art


The undead of contemporary painting, avant-garde populism, photography courting stupidity, fraught networking, synthetic atmospheres, displaced abstractions, and the mediation of pain: these are among the subjects treated in this collection of essays by art historian and critic Ina Blom. Drawing on Blom's familiarity with the contemporary art scene as well as the archives of twentieth-century avant-garde art, these texts share a pull towards artistic projects that are not redemptive or exemplary but that rather convey a sense of—often unheroic—trouble. Leaning into ambivalence as a methodology of criticism, Blom takes a particular interest in the detours, doubts, and difficulties that run alongside avant-garde art’s more constructively hopeful desires for transformative innovation and change.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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6:30 pm
Free

Book Discussion | Path Lit by Lightning: The Life of Jim Thorpe


Jim Thorpe rose to world fame as a mythic talent who excelled at every sport. He won gold medals in the decathlon and pentathlon at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics, was an All-American football player at the Carlisle Indian School, the star of the first class of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and played major league baseball for John McGraw's New York Giants. Even in a golden age of sports celebrities, he was one of a kind. But despite his colossal skills, Thorpe's life was a struggle against the odds. As a member of the Sac and Fox Nation, he encountered duplicitous authorities who turned away from him when their reputations were at risk. At Carlisle, he dealt with the racist assimilationist philosophy "Kill the Indian, Save the Man." His gold medals were unfairly rescinded because he had played minor league baseball. His later life was troubled by alcohol, broken marriages, and financial distress. He roamed from state to state and took bit parts in Hollywood, but even the film of his own life failed to improve his fortunes. But for all his travails, Thorpe did not succumb. The man survived, complications and all, and so did the myth. Author David Maraniss is an associate editor at The Washington Post and a distinguished visiting professor at Vanderbilt University.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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6:30 pm
Free

Poetry Reading | Whaddyacall the Wind?: Poetry of the Street


Annie Rachele Lanzillotto is a Bronx-born poet, performance artist, author, playwright, actor, director, songwriter, activist, cantastoria, whose stage presence has been called riveting and volcanic. Her work is inspired by the cacophonous opera of pushcart peddler street cries, the roots of theater in the agora, and the solo cantastoria in the piazza. She incorporates and puts metaphoric spins on iconic urban objects: the blue street corner mailbox, Spaldeens, the parking meter, traffic lights, block ice, casts of sewer caps.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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6:30 pm
Free

Discussion | Intoxicating the Archive: Preserving Narcotic Heritage


This event critically explores how the memories and struggles of people who use drugs and those of other marginalized and/or activist groups in history are represented in archives, museums, and collective memory at large. While often being invisible at first, drug cultures have left traces in many archives and collections. However, finding and uncovering the often hidden history of drugs and the people who used them can be challenging. Whose memories are being recorded and whose voices are lost? Focusing on archival initiatives in the Netherlands, Germany, and the US, we discuss how archive-making and politics can help preserve the material and immaterial heritage of narcotic use and the conflicts of the people involved. How can these experiences of stigma, persecution, and activism be adequately preserved, prioritized, and remembered? How can archivists, historians, and community members participate in effective and useful ways to document local histories and build archival collections? In what ways can we create new historical sources by encouraging the use of oral history and digital storytelling?
   New York City, NY; NYC
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6:30 pm
Free

Reading | 2021-2022 Emerging Writer Fellows Reading (online)


The Center for Fiction / Susan Kamil 2021-2022 Emerging Writer Fellows come together to conclude their cohort year and share their works in progress, hosted by Randy Winston, Writing Programs Manager. The 2021-2022 fellows are Joshua Borja, Gina Chung, Caleb Gayle, Senny George, Jared Jackson, Jen Lue, Mary Wang, Katie Yee, and Na Zhong.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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7:00 pm
Free

Film | Antarctica: Ice and Sky (2015): Documentary on Climate Change


Tells the story of French glaciologist Claude Lorius, who found his life’s calling at age 23 on a scientific expedition to the Antarctic and became one of the first scientists to call attention to anthropogenic climate change. Antarctica: Ice and Sky is an epic tale, in which science and adventure meet. The film assembles decades of dramatic archival footage of the early days of scientific exploration in sub-zero temperatures in the polar regions, including Lorius’s pioneering work to develop an ice corer that would eventually extract ice cores thousands of meters below the frozen surface to look hundreds of thousands of years back into the history of the climate. One of Lorius’s most significant discoveries—made when he placed some ancient ice in celebratory glasses of whiskey—was that the ice contained air from the era in which it was formed.  Director: Luc Jacquet 89 min. In French with English subtitles
   New York City, NY; NYC
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7:00 pm
Free

Performance | Farkas in America: A One-Woman Show


Austrian actor and cabaret performer Karl Farkas was born in 1893 in Vienna. Apart from his career as an actor, he pursued a career as film director in Vienna, before having to flee the country in 1938 and eventually settling in New York. He performed in several cafes for exiles, gave talks and played in cabarets. Later on, he made some guest appearances in operettas and directed. In 1946, Karl Farkas returned to Vienna and was active creatively until his death in 1971. With this one-woman show, Austrian artist Johanna Beisteiner will bring you closer to the artworks of the deceased comedian. Her program focuses on recounting the life of Karl Farkas as a refugee in the USA (1938-46). The program includes several transdisciplinary artistic performances by the artist. Such as a satirical poem in English by Corinna Kahnke and Michelle Eley inspired by Farkas' German poetry, Viennese songs to texts by Farkas, a flamenco choreography by Maria-Luisa Rizo, traditional Jewish music. Last but not least a screening of the short jazz film Boogie Woogie Dream (USA 1944) with Lena Horne and Pete Ammons with a script by Farkas will round off the evening.
   New York City, NY; NYC
7:00 pm
Free

Book Discussion | Spectacles and Specters: A Performative Theory of Political Trials


Basak Ertur's book draws on theories of performativity to conceptualize the entanglements of law and political violence, offering a radical departure from accounts that consider political trials as instrumental in exercising or containing political violence. Legal scholar Ertür argues instead that making sense of the often incalculable interpenetrations of law, politics, and violence in trials requires shifting the focus away from law’s instrumentality to its performativity.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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7:00 pm
Free

Book Discussion | The Future is Disabled: Prophecies, Love Notes, and Mourning Songs (online)


Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha’s highly anticipated collection of essays. She asks, “What if disability justice and disabled wisdom are crucial to creating a future in which it’s possible to survive fascism, climate change, and pandemics, and to bring about liberation?”  This is an evening centering disability justice, care and mutual aid, community, and disabled art as a source of radical joy.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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7:00 pm
Free

Book Discussion | The Laws of Creativity: Unlock Your Originality and Awaken Your Creative Genius


Award-winning creator, designer, and entrepreneur Joey Cofone demystifies the creative process by uncovering the thinking and science behind it, empowering the reader with practical, actionable steps toward creative excellence.
   New York City, NY; NYC
7:00 pm
$5

Book Discussion | The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million (in-person and online)


Fifteen years after the release of the National Book Critics Circle Award and the National Jewish Book Award winner, The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million is now being reissued. The updated book contains new material developed in conjunction with Ken Burns's new 3-part documentary, The U.S. and the Holocaust, which features Daniel Mendelsohn and the story of his family. The Lost is a modern classic of post-memory literature and a riveting exploration of the Holocaust by a descendent of its victims. Mendelsohn spent five years in a dozen countries on four continents with his brother Matt (an award-winning photojournalist whose photographs appear throughout the book) searching for an answer to the question he had first asked as a boy: What really happened to his great-uncle Shmiel and his family during the Holocaust? Spoken of only in hushed murmurs or incomprehensible Yiddish phrases, Mendelsohn later discovered a bundle of letters written by Shmiel in 1939 and vowed to solve this family puzzle.
   New York City, NY; NYC
7:00 pm
Free

Book Discussion | This Place | That Place: An Unnamed War (online)


Nandita Dinesh's book is a formally ambitious political and literary novel that centers on two unnamed characters from opposing sides of an unnamed war. During a wedding under curfew, a “Deprogrammer” and “Protest Designer” grapple with the ways in which the war between their homelands pervades the unexplored and undeniable attraction between them. Interwoven documents of past correspondences unpack the protagonists’ history, their admiration for the other's work, and how each sees hope — in the other, because of the other — for their respective Places.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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7:00 pm
Free

Dance Performance | A Gem of a Chamber Troupe


New York Theatre Ballet was founded in 1978 by artistic director Diana Byer. A small, beautifully trained and rehearsed chamber ballet troupe, it has been hailed by The New York Times as "an invaluable company" and one critic wrote "if it did not already exist it would have to be created." Enjoy this special performance of repertory works.
   New York City, NY; NYC
7:00 pm
Free

Discussion | Song Cycles: Composers in Conversation


With composers Tamar-kali, Tanyaradzwa Tawengwa/Nzou Mambano, and Yaz Lancaster. Learn more about the new works that the composers have written, to be premiered as part of the 'Song Cycles' project at Harlem Stage. Moderated by Harlem Stage Artistic Director and CEO, Pat Cruz and Beth Morrison Projects' President and Creative Producer, Beth Morrison.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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7:00 pm
Free

Film | Werner Herzog's Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2010): Capturing the Oldest Known Drawings (online through Oct.16)


Herzog gains exclusive access to film inside the Chauvet caves of Southern France, capturing the oldest known pictorial creations of humankind in their astonishing natural setting. Director: Werner Herzog 89 min. In French with English subtitles
   New York City, NY; NYC
7:00 pm
Free

Play | Fefu and Her Friends: 8 Women at a Country Home


Hailed as game-changing, provocative, and genius, María Irene Fornés’s Fefu and Her Friends is one of the most influential—and invisible—plays of the 20th century. Cuban-American Fornés’s rapturous comedy-drama allows the audience to be a fly on many walls in this unconventional tale of eight women gathering at a New England country home in 1935. Featuring BFA students.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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7:30 pm
Free

Classical Music | Philharmonia Orchestra Performs Britten, C.P.E. Bach, Hindemith


Philharmonia Orchestra; Earl Lee, conductor; Marcos Ruiz, flute The program will include works by Unsuk Chin, C.P.E. Bach, Paul Hindemith, and Benjamin Britten Masks must be worn.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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7:30 pm
Free

Discussion | Author Julia Alvarez in Conversation (online)


A special discussion about family, language, and identity, featuring How the García Girls Lost Their Accents author Julia Alvarez in conversation with editor and noted journalist Concepción de León. The event begins with a special reading by Sandra Cisneros of Alvarez’s essay, "My English."
   New York City, NY; NYC
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8:00 pm
Free
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Concert | Christmas Concert

Regular Price: $55
CFT Member Price: $0.00

Classical Music | Works by Mozart, Dvorak and More

Regular Price: $50
CFT Member Price: $0.00
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