Summer has finally arrived and New York City and the arts are heating up. Inspiring visual art is drawing them in from Harlem to the Bowery. Dance swirls around Brooklyn, Lincoln Center, Chelsea and Lower Manhattan. While a famous DJ spins music in Crown Heights and jazz get’s down in Midtown. Here are a few of the many events happening in the city that never sleeps guaranteed to keep you Out and About.
Alberto Giacometti (1901–1966) at the Solomon R. Guggenhiem Museum thru September 12, 2018, a preeminent artist of the twentieth century who investigated the human figure for more than forty years. This comprehensive exhibition, a collaboration with the Fondation Giacometti in Paris, examines anew the artist’s practice and his unmistakable aesthetic vocabulary. Featuring important works in bronze and in oil, as well as plaster sculptures and drawings never before seen in this country, the exhibition aims to provide a deeper understanding of this artist, whose intensive focus on the human condition continues to provoke and inspire new generations.
The Face Of Dynasty: Royal Crests From Western Cameroon at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (through Sept. 3). In the African wing, a show of just four commanding wooden crowns constitutes a blockbuster in its own right. These massive wooden crests — in the form of stylized human faces with vast vertical brows — served as markers of royal power among the Bamileke peoples of the Cameroonian grasslands, and the Met’s recent acquisition of an 18th-century specimen is joined here by three later examples, each featuring sharply protruding cheeks, broadly smiling mouths and brows incised with involute geometric patterns. Ritual objects like these were decisive for the development of Western modernist painting, and a Cameroonian crest was even shown at MoMA in the 1930s, as a “sculpture” divorced from ethnography. But these crests had legal and diplomatic significance as well as aesthetic appeal, and their anonymous African creators had a political understanding of art not so far from our own.
Flash: Photographs by Harold Edgerton from the Whitney’s Collection (Whitney Museum of American Art 99 Gansevoort Street). This exhibition explores the work of Harold Edgerton (1903–1990), a pioneering figure in the history of 20th century American photography. An engineer and photographer, Edgerton developed flash technology in the 1930s that allowed him to photograph objects and events moving faster than the eye can perceive. Combining technical insight and an aesthetic sensibility, Edgerton’s photographs give unprecedented clarity to the physical world and reveal the magic of everyday life.
Firelei Báez: Joy Out of Fire at the Studio Museum Harlem (144 West 125th Street) continues the artist’s longstanding interest in representations of women, particularly Afro-Caribbean/Afro-Latina women in visual culture and history. In this exhibition, Báez features women whose legacies are preserved and maintained by the archives of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, reimagining them in conversation through imaginative portraits that incorporate materials such as reproductions of archival photographs, notes, diaries, letters, and manuscripts.


American Ballet Theatre returns to the Met for eight weeks with a repertoire that includes three works by artist in residence Alexei Ratmansky: Firebird (May 21–26, sharing a bill with Wayne McGregor’s world premiere Afterite), Harlequinade (June 4–9) and a reprise of last year’s Whipped Cream (July 2–7). Other offerings include the full-length ballets Giselle (May 14–20), La Bayadère (May 29–June 2), Romeo and Juliet (June 11–16), Swan Lake (June 18–23) and Don Quixote (June 25–30).
River to River Festival: The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s free, wide-flung celebration of the arts has many exciting offerings in 2018. The noon time performance take place at various locations. Participating artists also include Jace Clayton, Enrico D. Wey, It’s Showtime NYC!, Naomi Goldberg Haas, Laura Nova and Elia Alba. Festival ends June 24.
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom: It’s been three years since theme park and luxury resort Jurassic World was destroyed by dinosaurs out of containment. Isla Nublar now sits abandoned by humans while the surviving dinosaurs fend for themselves in the jungles. Arriving on the unstable island as lava begins raining down, their expedition uncovers a conspiracy that could return our entire planet to a perilous order not seen since prehistoric times.
The King: Forty years after the death of Elvis Presley, two-time Sundance Grand Jury winner Eugene Jarecki’s new film takes the King’s 1963 Rolls-Royce on a musical road trip across America. From Memphis to New York, Las Vegas, and beyond, the journey traces the rise and fall of Elvis as a metaphor for the country he left behind. In this groundbreaking film, Jarecki paints a visionary portrait of the state of the American Dream and a penetrating look at how the hell we got here. A diverse cast of Americans, both famous and non, join the journey.
Uncle Drew: After draining his life savings to enter a team in the Rucker Classic street ball tournament in Harlem, Dax (Lil Rel Howery) is dealt a series of unfortunate setbacks, including losing his team to his longtime rival (Nick Kroll). Desperate to win the tournament and the cash prize, Dax stumbles upon the man, the myth, the legend Uncle Drew (NBA All-Star Kyrie Irving) and convinces him to return to the court one more time. The two men embark on a road trip to round up Drew’s old basketball squad (Shaquille O’Neal, Chris Webber, Reggie Miller, Nate Robinson, and Lisa Leslie) and prove that a group of septuagenarians can still win the big one.
FrankieFridays- The Full Moon Party this Friday June 29 at The Happiness Lounge, 1458 St. Johns Place (bet. Utica Avenue and Rochester Avenue, Brooklyn), presents legendary DJ Frankie Paradise spinning House Soulful Classic every Friday. Come out and celebrate Jeffrey Smith aka Mr. Photo Ops birthday bash with drinks specials and dancing; or enjoy more intimate moments on the outdoor patio. Doors open at 10pm for more info call 347-307-2825.
Chita Rivera will perform two performances at the 92nd Street Y (1395 Lexington Avenue) on June 25 at 2pm and 7:30pm. Rivera came to New York in the early 1950s, and the rest is razzle-dazzle history: starring roles in the original casts of West Side Story, Bye Bye Birdie and Chicago; 10 Tony nominations (including two wins); the 2002 Kennedy Center Honors. She’s often called a legend, but she’s very much real.
Branford Marsalis / Roger Guenveur Smith present Frederick Douglass Now at the Bric Celebrates Brooklyn Festival June 29 at 7:30pm. Two sets from Grammy Award-winning saxophonist Branford Marsalis, will bookend Roger Guenveur Smith’s one man show, Frederick Douglass Now, which incorporates elements of slam poetry and rap.
The Iceman Cometh at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre 242 W. 45th Street.Two-time Academy Award winner and Tony Award winner Denzel Washington returns to Broadway in one of the signal roles in the American theatre in Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh, for 14 weeks only through July 1.
The Peculiar Patriot, written and performed by Liza Jessie Peterson at the National Black Theater June 11 through 29, confronts the complex and critical issue of mass incarceration. With more than 2.5 million people behind bars, America is the world’s leading prison superpower. The play follows protagonist Betsy LaQuanda Ross, a self-proclaimed peculiar patriot, as she makes regular visits to penitentiaries to boost the morale of her incarcerated friends and family, navigating love between barbed wire.
Alan Cumming: Legal Immigrant- the bright-eyed, bouncy-kneed Scottish stage-and-screen actor plays fast and louche with the cabaret format, sprinkling naughty words into long comic stories and putting a completely fresh interpretive spin on familiar songs. He became an American citizen in 2008, and his latest set explores his immigrant experience. With typical mischief, he performs the set nightly at the ultraswank Cafe Carlyle, then hightails it downtown for a far more affordable midnight show at Joe’s Pub now thru June 30.
Aloha Nights– Head to the New York Botanical Garden for an evening of tropical delights. Take an after-hours look at the garden’s new exhibit, Georgia O’Keeffe: Visions of Hawai‘i, learn how to hula, watch lei-making demos, explore installations by Hawaiian-Chinese sculptor Mark Chai, listen to live music and fuel it all with a poke bowl and a cup (or two) of Passiflora Punch. Now through Saturday August 18 2018.
The NYC Pride March takes place Sunday, June 24, 2018 at 12pm. The parade begins at 6th St and Seventh Ave and travels down Seventh Ave before going across Christopher St and W 8th St and moving up Fifth Ave. The march will disperse at 29th St and Fifth Ave. Show up early for a good view, since there is a record-breaking turnout predicted.