Picture artists working in their studios, musicians and street performers appearing out of nowhere,, poets reciting to passers-by, kids enjoying puppetry and music, DJs spinning in the streets, and inventive art installations everywhere. The now multi-disciplinary Dumbo Arts Festival will attract 150,000 visitors to Brooklyn’s DUMBO ‘hood from Sept 24–26 and includes over 150 studios, 35 galleries, 40 arts organizations and a host of family-friendly venues. The festival strives to be accessible and sophisticated, to reflect New York’s creative community, to show some grit and some polish, and to be smart, creative and high quality.
Few artifacts tell the stories of individual New Yorkers—especially women—quite like clothing and jewelry. Feast your eyes on the fashions donned by some of the city’s most influential female movers and shakers in Notorious & Notable: 20th Century Women of Style, now through Jan 3 at the Museum of the City of New York. This show is about celebrity in its many forms—something that 80 featured New York women (including burlesque hottie Gypsy Rose Lee, dancer Isadora Duncan and political firebrand Bella Abzug) rarely shied away from.
Presented in collaboration with the New-York Historical Society, El Museo del Barrio opens Nueva York (1613-1945) on Sept 17. This exhibit that reveals the powerful role Latinos and Spanish-speaking countries have played across four centuries to help shape New York into the most culturally vibrant city in the world. Art works, documents, printed books, artifacts, an installation by Puerto Rican artist Antonio Martorell, and a documentary by Ric Burns all serve as testaments to this dynamic history.
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