Alliance for the Arts Winter Activities
The Alliance for the Arts serves the entire cultural community through research and advocacy and serves the public through cultural guides and calendars. See below for information on arts and cultural events in New York City this winter season.
Bronx
Béatrice Coron: The Secret Life of Cities
www.lehman.edu/gallery
Through Dec 15
Young children and teenagers alike will appreciate these handmade, large-scale paper cutouts of urban environments that teem with life, with silhouettes filling every street, window and doorway. Coron is a contemporary American book artist.
The Bronx African-American Experience and Morrisania Memories http://www.bronxhistoricalsociety.org/
Through Dec 31
The Bronx County Historical Society uses exhibits at the Valentine-Varian House to focus on the larger history of the Bronx. This two-part exhibition provides an overview of Bronx African-American history from the 17th century to the present, plus a closer look at the Morrisania neighborhood within the Bronx from the 1940s to the 1960s.
Bronx Museum of the Arts www.bronxmuseum.org
Quisqueya Hernandez
Through Jan 27
This exhibition offers young people a unique portrayal of Caribbean urban life that pokes fun at cultural clichés. The show features 25 conceptual sculptures, installations, drawings, photographs, videos and light/sound works from the career of this contemporary Cuban-Dominican artist known for the irony in her work.
Wave Hill www.wavehill.org
Ornamental Instincts
Through Feb 10
Families can celebrate the holidays from a creative angle in this exhibition that features seasonal and site-specific artworks. The pieces are inspired by the natural world, and include works by contemporary artists Siona Benjamin, Cristina de Gennaro, Nancy Friedemann and Skowmon Hastanan, among others.
New York Botanical Garden www.nybg.org
Gardens ‘Round the World
Through Aug 28
Children learn all about growing food through crafts and activities in gardens which were created and maintained by community volunteers. The activities also include weekend cooking projects using homegrown produce, in the Ruth Rea Howell Family Garden.
Brooklyn
Brooklyn Museum www.brooklynmuseum.org
Arty Facts
Saturdays & Sundays
The museum's popular weekly program invites young children and their parents to explore the ongoing and current exhibitions such as Infinite Island: Contemporary Caribbean Art and Brushed with Light: American Landscape Watercolors. After seeing the shows, families make their own paintings. This program begins in the Rubin Lobby. Each day features a different program.
Puppetworks www.puppetworks.org
The Prince and the Magic Flute
Through Dec 23
Adapted from Mozart’s opera, this fantasy set in ancient Egypt recounts the humorous adventures of a prince and a bird-catcher in their attempts to rescue a princess.
Brooklyn Public Library www.brooklynpubliclibrary.org
Cabinet of Curiosities
Through Dec 31
This exhibition features curious and bizarre artworks of taxidermy taken from the collection of experimental taxidermist Takeshi Yamada's Museum of World Wonders in Coney Island. Visitors will encounter carnivorous plants and mushrooms, monsters of the Arctic Sea and many other rare marine animals. The exhibition is a menagerie of fantastical creatures such as the Canadian hairy trout, carnivorous snails, three-foot-long alligator clams and sea elephants.
Shadow Box Theatre http://www.shadowboxtheatre.org
Holiday Storybook Theater: Stories that Sing!
Through Jan 6
Children are welcome to sing along with a storyteller and musician in these holiday mini-musicals with puppets: Lumpy Bumpy Pumpkin (Oct 11-31 weekdays & Sun Oct 28); Tobias Turkey (Nov 7-21 weekdays & Sun Nov 18); Big Annie (Dec 10-12 & 16-21, weekdays & Sun, Dec 16); and The Firefly Star (Dec 13 -14 & Jan 3-6, weekdays & Sun, Jan 6). At the Brooklyn Music School Playhouse (126 St. Felix Street, between Hanson Place and Lafayette Avenue).
Brooklyn Historical Society http://www.brooklynhistory.org/
Lost in Translation: South Brooklyn, Williamsburg and Coney Island
Through April 27
In this show of photographs, visitors will find pictures of Brooklyn by local high school students. The works shown are meant to reflect the style of early 20th-century Brooklyn-based photographer Eugene Armbruster
Manhattan
New York City Ballet, New York State Theater www.nycballet.com
The Nutcracker
Through Dec 30
George Balanchine's classic version of this favorite ushers in the Christmas season with toy soldiers marching past a one-ton Christmas tree, mischief-making mice and waltzing snowflakes.
Metropolitan Museum of Art www.metmuseum.org
Annual Christmas Tree and Neapolitan Baroque Creche
Through Jan 6
An 18th-century Nativity scene is artfully arranged alongside a tall tree decorated with angels, all framed by the baroque eighteenth-century Spanish choir screen from the Cathedral of Valladolid.
New York Transit Museum Annex at Grand Central Terminal mta.info/mta/museum/index.html
GRAND CENTRAL HOLIDAY TRAIN SHOW
Through Jan 13
This annual holiday event features a miniature train that makes its way through a detailed scale model of New York City and heads for the North Pole. In the New York Transit Museum Annex (just off the Main Concourse in the Shuttle Passage), Grand Central Terminal.
New-York Historical Society www.nyhistory.org
FRENCH FOUNDING FATHER: LAFAYETTE’S RETURN TO WASHINGTON’S AMERICA
Through Aug 10
The historical society’s Interpretive Gallery Experiences introduce young people to its changing exhibitions by combining activities with a gallery experience. Activities include group discussions, creative response and peer teaching. In this exhibition, paintings, sculptures, prints and memorabilia chronicle the journey that the French military officer and Revolutionary ally, the Marquis de Lafayette (1757–1834) made through America in 1824.
Jewish Children's Museum www.jcm.museum
WINTER VACATION CELEBRATION DAYS
Dec 24–Dec 27
Families are invited to create works of art in the museum’s activity center, tour the children's exhibition and hunt for holiday artifacts.
Queens:
Godwin-Ternbach Museum at Queens College www.qc.edu/godwin_ternbach
SPIRIT AND POWER IN AFRICAN ART
Through Dec 15
Families can explore African culture in this exhibition of more than 100 objects from the 18th to the 20th centuries. The masks, figures, ritual objects and tools on display are made of wood, copper alloy, brass, bronze and ivory from all over Africa, including the nations of Mali, Ghana, the Ivory Coast, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Nigeria and Zaire.
Queens Museum of Art www.queensmuseum.org
YUE MINJUN AND THE SYMBOLIC SMILE
Through Jan 6
Parents and children can discover colorful and playful aspects of art in this exhibition. Chinese artist Yue Minjun sports a wide grin in his iconic, laughing self-portraits. His bronze and polychrome sculptures, paintings and drawings portray exuberance and optimism, and are superimposed over various social and political backdrops.
P.S.1 www.ps1.org
SENSO UNICO: A SHOW OF EIGHT CONTEMPORARY ITALIAN ARTISTS
Through Jan 7
This wide-ranging exhibition presents a vivid panorama of recent and influential contemporary Italian art, including painting, sculpture, video, photography and installations by artists such as Micol Assaël, Pierpaolo Campanini, Gianni Caravaggio, Alice Cattaneo and others.
New York Hall of Science http://www.nyscience.org/
CYBERCHASE—THE CHASE IS ON
Through Jan 21
Based on the PBS series Cyberchase, the exhibit invites children to join the CyberSquad on an adventure to thwart Hacker, the show's villain, by using their math and reasoning skills.
Museum of the Moving Image www.movingimage.us
SILLY SYMPHONIES
Dec 15, 2007-Jan 1, 2008
This celebration of Walt Disney's animated musicals features screenings of all 75 of the Silly Symphonies cartoons, including Donald Duck’s 1934 debut in The Wise Hen.
Museum of the Moving Image www.movingimage.us
SILLY SYMPHONIES
Dec 15, 2007-Jan 1, 2008
This celebration of Walt Disney's animated musicals features screenings of all 75 of the Silly Symphonies cartoons, including Donald Duck’s 1934 debut in The Wise Hen.
Staten Island:
Alice Austen House Museum www.aliceausten.org
ETIQUETTE CLASS
Ongoing
Young ladies and gentlemen learn to make introductions, common courtesies, telephone etiquette and how to set a table in this workshop on the fine art of manners.
Staten Island Children’s Museum - Snug Harbor Cultural Center www.snug-harbor.org
BUGS AND OTHER INSECTS
Ongoing
This exhibition provides a look inside the lives of insects, as young bug-lovers walk through a human-sized ant hill, visit the Arthropod Zoo, and watch butterflies being born.
Staten Island Museum www.statenislandmuseum.org
THIS WAS OUR PARADIES: SPANISH CAMP 1929–TODAY
Through March 31
This exhibition recounts the story of a summer bungalow community in Staten Island as it flourished and then finally was demolished to make room for another development, all told through oral history, vintage photos, artifacts and a photo essay by contemporary American photographer Michael Falco.
Blue Heron Park www.nycparks.org
BEGINNING BIRDING
Dec 2, 9 & 30
Park rangers who are bird experts lead these early morning walks to teach the art of bird watching, and to add sightings to everyone’s lists.