Hear from an author and map designer who has been creating maps of the NYC subway, officially and unofficially, for over forty years!
A new street art hotspot has some unconventional holiday decorations!
From giant menorah lightings to New Year's Day hikes, check out our picks for how to spend the holidays in NYC!
Whether you want to dive into New York City’s jazz scene, film scene, history or marine life, there is an event for you going on this week. As we head into the middle of November, here are our Untapped Picks for things to do this week in New York City:
Photograph Courtesy of The River Project
Help return marine life to the water at the River Project’s Release of the Fishes, a beloved annual event that marks the winter closing of The River Project’s Wetlab. This year, visitors will have a rare opportunity to see Big, the largest oyster found in New York Harbor in some 100 years! Guests can also touch crabs, snails and other native invertebrates, look at plankton under a microscope, and see blue mussels. This is a free family event, with refreshments and raffles, that will take place at the end of the south side of Pier 40 at Houston and West Street in Hudson River Park from 4:00p.m. to 7 p.m.
Join journalist Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! and leading youth activists Brea Baker, Ramon Contreras, and Hebh Jamal at the Museum of the City of New York’s “Activist New York: The Next Generation,” where they will discuss the key mobilizations of our moment—from gun control to immigrant rights—and how they draw on a long history of protest. The discussion will be followed by a reception with a performance by Carnegie Hall’s Future Music Project Ensemble. If you are an Untapped Cities Insider, you can attend this event for free!
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Revisit the 19th century Upper West Side at Landmark West!’s illustrated lecture “Nevermore: The UWS of Edgar Allan Poe with Esther Crain.” Crain skillfully weaves together historical facts, anecdotes, and imagery of the time to paint a picture of Poe’s Manhattan and examine his journey from Greenwich Village to the fields of the Upper West Side. If you are an Untapped Cities Insider, you can attend this event for free!
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Attend a live jazz concert as part of the On Stage at Kingsborough’s Jazz at the Lighthouse series. Blues and the Golden Age of Jazz will feature vocalist Nicole Zuraitis and the Israeli MusicTalks Jazz Quartet who will perform nostalgic blues and jazz standards by such legends as Duke Ellington, Charlie Bird, Miles Davis, and Billie Holiday while you enjoy the music, wine and cheese, and views of the sea from the lighthouse’s floor-to-ceiling windows.
Image courtesy of Rob Fruchtman and Steven Lawrence Rob Fruchtman and Steven Lawrence
Catch a documentary screening at DOC NYC, a weeklong film festival that celebrates the various genres of documentary film, from reportage, memoir, history and more and encourages further boundary pushing and collaboration. One film to look out for is The Cat Rescuers, a documentary about four Brooklyn volunteers who are working to save the hundreds of thousands of feral cats that roam the streets of New York. The Cat Rescuers will screen on November 10th and 15th.
Image Courtesy of the Alice Austen House
Celebrate the art of vintage cameras at Vintage Camera Day at the Alice Austen House. Get your hands on real vintage cameras, learn about your own vintage camera from “Camera Doctor” Eric Mayr, take part in a hands-on demonstration of the platinum-palladium print process, and learn how to improve your own photography skills. This event is free and open to the public!
Be an urban explorer for a day as you venture into the abandoned hospital complex at Ellis Island. Closed off to the public over sixty years ago, this 22-building complex used to be the standard of American healthcare. Now, you can gain access to the site on a Behind-the-Scenes Hard Hat Tour. Explore the off-limits contagious disease wards, morgue, former laundry facility and other spaces, and see pieces of the site specific art installation Unframed by world-renowned artist JR, all while learning the history of the complex and stories of the immigrants who flowed through it.
Behind-the-Scenes Hard Hat Tour of the Abandoned Ellis Island Hospital
Uncover the secrets of Central Park and maybe catch a sighting of the mysterious mandarin duck on Untapped Cities’ Secrets of Central Park walking tour. Learn about the curious origins of the Central Park Zoo, uncover the hidden meaning in Bethesda Terrace’s sculptures and the forbidden love that inspired the park’s most famous statue, see the secret bolt left behind from the creation of Manhattan’s street grid, discover the secret navigational device that keeps pedestrians from getting lost on the park’s winding paths and so much more!
Secrets of Central Park Walking Tour
Test how good your eye sight is with the intricately detailed artworks in the International Print Center New York’s exhibition Edge of Visibility. This exhibit presents over 50 elusive works that are intentionally difficult to see and consequently challenging to reproduce in the medium of printmaking. The pieces range from the 17th century through the present and contain features like laborious micro-engravings, subtle watermarks, and evanescent images printed with UV-reactive inks. ICPNY will be providing magnifying glasses, iPad digital enlargers, and special lighting for enhanced viewing, and to encourage viewers to slow down and uncover the hidden messages within these works.
See artwork that spans Andy Warhol’s entire career at the first retrospective on his work in thirty years. Andy Warhol: From A to B and Back Again opens today at the Whitney Museum. The exhibit features work from his early days as an advertisement illustrator to his experimental films, his iconic movie star screen prints and everything in between. Admission is by timed ticketed entry, so reserve your spot now!
Compare and contrast the film genres of comedy and horror at the Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies program, “Ha! Aaah! The Painful Relationship Between Humor and Horror.” T
he class will be taught by the Emmy-nominated writer of the sitcom ofMork & Mindy,
David Misch. The class will examine horror’s relationship with philosophers’ explanations of comedy, explore the mechanics of both film genres and see how they both exhibit a love for a loss of control, anarchy, the breakdown of rules and conventions and a mordant view of our relationship to pain.Hear from Gary Hack, author and Professor Emeritus of City and Regional Planning at the University of Pennsylvania, at a Skyscraper Seminar Book Talk inside the Skyscraper Museum. Hack’s new book, Site Planning: International Practice, is a summary of his life’s work, and a comprehensive, lavishly illustrated state-of-the-art guide to the subject. Hack will discuss how sustainability can be achieved through the development of sites from small to large, emerging technologies in resource management, and the implications of new mobility technologies on the planning of sites. You must RSVP to this event to programs@skyscraper.org!
Explore renowned choreographer Jerome Robbins’ relationship with New York City at the exhibit V
oice of My City: Jerome Robbins and New York at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center. The exhibit traces Robbins’ life and dances alongside the history of New York, inspiring viewers to see the city as both a muse and a home.
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