Weekend Sneak Peek: Lower East Side Arts & Culture Open House
Comments Off on Weekend Sneak Peek: Lower East Side Arts & Culture Open HouseOver 270 destinations are part of Open House New York Weekend on October 18-20. Our 2024 festival guide includes three listings for Lower East Side Arts & Culture Open House, a festival within our festival.
On October 19, thanks to our friends at FABnyc, 20 cultural organizations across the Lower East Side will open their doors to the public for the annual “Lower Eat Side Arts & Culture Open House.” Given the size of the neighborhood and the diversity of organizations that call it home, the 20 destinations are grouped into geographic nodes. (That said, visitors are welcome at all 20 sites—regardless of where you start your explorations!) Each of the organizations will welcome visitors throughout the day; no tickets required.
The East 4th Street Hub at the Lower East Side Arts & Culture Open House includes:
- Bond Street Theatre (1pm-5pm): Join free stilt walking lessons and unique photo opportunities with the tricycle Le Velo Rouge, and view Bond Street’s international works through a pop-up gallery.
- The Clemente (12pm-4pm): Learn about The Clemente’s year-round programming. A Puerto Rican/Latino cultural institution that has demonstrated a broad-minded cultural vision and a collaborative philosophy.
- Creative Time (12pm-4pm at CTHQ at 59 E 4th Street Floor 6): Learn about Creative Time’s 50 year history commissioning and presenting public art projects in NYC that have come to mark important moments in political and social movements at their gathering space CTHQ.
- FABnyc (1-5pm at 70 E 4th Street): Featuring live music, family-friendly arts activities, and building tours. FABnyc is a team of artists and organizers working to preserve, sustain, and grow the cultural vibrancy of the Lower East Side.
- IATI Theater (2-4pm at 64 E 4th Street): A Latinx led cutting-edge performing arts company, IATI produces original, exciting, exploratory, and poignant works.
- La MaMa ETC (12-4pm at 66 E 4th Street): Take a tour of the La MaMa Archive. Established in the 1970’s, La MaMa Archive collects, preserves, and exhibits records of historical value relating to La MaMa and the Off-Off Broadway movement.
- New York Theatre Workshop (1-5pm at 79 E 4th Street): Ask staff members about community programs and take a tour through the theatre and administrative building. NYTW is committed to the development of innovative theatre. They offer many opportunities for artists to exhibit and produce work.
- WOW Café Theatre (2pm-6pm at 59-61 E 4th Street #4): A volunteer, collectively run performance space for women and/or trans and/or non-binary artists. Browse archival collections, view performances by WOW artists, and learn about WOW’s rich history since 1980!
The South Sites of the Lower East Side Arts & Culture Open House include:
- Abrons Arts Center (12-4pm at 466 Grand Street): Learn about the history of Abrons’s theater and arts center spaces, and join a community workshop led by their Arts Education Team.
- Artists Alliance Inc. (12-6pm at Cuchifritos Gallery + Project Space, inside Essex Market at 88 Essex Street): Featuring tours of their latest exhibition. A response to the ever-expanding interference of the digital world, Lau Wai’s W.A.I. The Cast of the Invisible prods at the line between one’s virtual and physical existence in the era of Artificial Intelligence (AI).
- Dorill Initiative (1-5pm at 80 Pitt Street, Room 5): Join Dorill’s Young Citizen Artists in their Saturday Arts Program to catalyze their creative spirit. Dorill is an arts and culture institution committed to helping At-Promise Youth tap into their limitless potential and creative power to galvanize communities and ignite social change.
- International Center of Photography (10:30am-6:30pm at 84 Ludlow Street): In celebration of the institution’s 50th anniversary, ICP opens its doors for a day of robust programming highlighting neighborhood partners and ICP’s photo community of faculty and alumni. Plus, free admission to We are Here: Scenes from the Street.
- New Museum of Contemporary Art (1pm, 2pm, and 3pm at 235 Bowery): New Then, New Now: Neighborhood Tour, a 30-minute neighborhood tour led by Museum staff. Stroll through SoHo and the Lower East Side to learn about the Museum’s history.
- The Performance Project @ University Settlement (1-4pm at 184 Eldridge Street): As the first settlement house in the United States, University Settlement has supported the Lower East Side community since 1886. Visitors will see their performance space Speyer Hall, and select classrooms and their gym built in 1904.
- Think!Chinatown (12-4pm at 1 Pike Street): On View: Making or Faking Chinatown? Representing People, Place and Culture, a thought-provoking urban planning-focused exhibition exploring the unresolved debate of cultural representation in Chinatown’s built environment through extensive research, photographs from Chinatowns across North America, and artwork by artist John Lee.
The North Sites of the Lower East Side Arts & Culture Open House include:
- Loisaida Inc (12-4pm at 710 E 9th Street): Featuring Ecolibrium: Empowering Community for Sustainable Energy Equity. Ecolibrium, an initiative by Loisaida, Inc., integrates community activism, technology, and capacity building to foster educational excellence, expand career opportunities in the green economy, and create a sustainable pathway for community ownership and long-term well-being.
- Lower Eastside Girls Club (12-4pm at 402 E 8th Street): Explore the LES Girls Club’s permanent art collection and learn about their free programs! The Girls Club connects young women and gender-expansive youth of color to healthy and successful futures through free, innovative year-round programming and mentoring.
- Performance Space New York (12-6pm at 150 1st Ave): Experience PSNY’s Open Room, transformed by Black Quantum Futurism into a sanctuary prioritizing community-based work that uplifts temporal autonomy, play, experimentation, spatial reclamation, and collective visioning.
- Swiss Institute (12-8pm at 38 St Marks Place): Featuring guided walking tours and SI’s latest exhibition Energies, inspired by the E 11th St windmill project. The exhibition includes influential historic artworks alongside contemporary positions and new commissions that address ecological affordances and effects, social formations, and political arrangements attached to energy past and present.
- Ukrainian Museum (12-2pm at 222 E 6th Street): Visit the Ukrainian Museum and discover more about the Ukrainian community in New York at its very heart – the historic Ukrainian Village neighborhood. Learn more about Ukrainian culture, traditions, history, and art. Stand with Ukraine!
The Lower East Side Arts & Culture Open House is organized annually by FABnyc, a team of artists and organizers working to preserve, sustain, and grow the cultural vibrancy of the Lower East Side neighborhood. FABnyc was founded in 2001 by a coalition of cultural and community nonprofits on East 4th Street to save their homes. Today our commitment to sustaining the cultural character and diversity of the community extends across the LES: from 14th Street to Canal, from Bowery to the East River.
FABnyc works in partnership with the community – bringing artists and arts strategies to fight physical and cultural displacement, build collective power and collaboration, increase equity and access to cultural resources and public space, and support local resiliency and community health.
More information on all 20 Lower East Side Arts & Culture Open House sites can be found at www.fabnyc.org. The Lower East Side Arts & Culture Open House is organized annually to coincide with the citywide OHNY Weekend.
