By Ethan Wolff
Don't let a polar vortex keep you away from New York's stimulating programming this month. We're looking forward to The Met Cloisters after hours, Cornel West on Hegel, and a debunking of Pizza Rat.
Sunday, February 1. Witness a lecture and performance around Anna Sokolow and the Roots of Anti-Fascist Modern Dance, focused on Sokolow's 1937 Slaughter of the Innocents. Museum of Jewish Heritage.
Monday, February 2. Hear a “spiritual memoir told slant” as The Church of St. Ignatius Loyola hosts Fr. James Martin, author of Work in Progress: Confessions of a Busboy, Dishwasher, Caddy, Usher, Factory Worker, Bank Teller, Corporate Tool, and Priest.
Tuesday, February 3. Delve into an enduring Manhattan mystery as The Netherland Club of New York hosts The Ship Beneath Ground Zero: Unlocking the Mystery of the Tyger, with new revelations about a 1613 ship burning.
Wednesday, February 4. Graze your way into the Lunar New Year with a lively presentation and curated tastings around Chinese ingredients and their auspicious seasonal meanings. Museum of Chinese in America.
Thursday, February 5. Go inside an unseen battle between right and left with journalist Christopher Mathias and his new To Catch a Fascist: The Fight to Expose the Radical Right. Brooklyn Heights Library.
Friday, February 6. Take some time to play, or at least contemplate it, at an interactive talk that blends ideas, stories, and guided experiments. The Lighthouse—Think Olio hosts Did We Forget How to Play? The Power of Social Imagination in Adult Life.
Saturday, February 7. Move from play to The Rules of the Game, one of the greatest films ever made. It's screening at the Morgan Library & Museum, in conjunction with the exhibition Renoir Drawings, highlighting the filmmaker's father.
Sunday, February 8. Explore the hidden remains of the original Penn Station and look at the area's next developments with an urban planner as the New York Adventure Club spends an afternoon Exploring New York Penn Station: Gilded Age Remnants to Moynihan Train Hall.
Monday, February 9. Hop on over to McNally Jackson Seaport for a conversation with acclaimed author Anne Fadiman as she shares her new book of essays Frog, covering everything from a deceased amphibian to Samuel Taylor Coleridge's fraught relationship with his son Hartley.
Tuesday, February 10. Get the gloss on the innovative metalwork that swept through Art Deco design in the 1920s. The Art Deco Society of New York hosts at the Dominican Academy, with the chance to admire the latter's 1921 design up close.
Wednesday, February 11. Rise up for a conversation with public intellectual Cornel West as he speaks with critical theorist Bernard E. Harcourt at the next Columbia University convening of the Hegel 13/13 series.
Thursday, February 12. Enjoy The Met Cloisters after hours with curator chats, activities, and period music in a special evening devoted to medieval love and desire.
Friday, February 13. Gain a greater understanding of the authoritarian realm as the New York Military Affairs Symposium presents St. John’s professor William Nester and Joseph Stalin and the Art of Tyranny: Understanding Tyrants and those Realms of Human Nature that Make Them Possible.
Photo: Maria Guțu.
Saturday, February 14. Try some Moldovan plăcinte pastry and check out a gallery exhibition of the work of photographer Maria Guțu at Leica Store and Gallery New York.
Sunday, February 15. Celebrate Valentine's Weekend with the Museum at Eldridge Street and a walking tour that looks back at romancing New Yorkers a century ago through Love & Courtship on the Lower East Side.
Monday, February 16. Avoid a case of the Mondays with a program by the Grammy-winning Akropolis Reed Quintet that includes the New York Premiere of Harriet Steinke’s lush and atmospheric Mass. Music Mondays at Advent Lutheran Church.
Tuesday, February 17. Foray out with the Urban Park Rangers for a rare chance to explore a forgotten part of the city. Ferry service provides access to the Hart Island Black History Month Tour; lottery registration is open February 4th-5th.
Wednesday, February 18. Bite into a National Arts Club conversation with Marion Nestle, co-founder of NYU’s pioneering food studies program, who will cut through the disinformation and corporate misdirection that plague our food choices.
Thursday, February 19. Rally for an all-too-timely talk by award-winning historian Jack Kelly on his new book, Tom Paine's War: The Words That Rallied a Nation and the Founder for Our Time. The New York Society Library.
Friday, February 20. Examine the relationship between business, law, and society with Fordham professor Atinuke Adediran, author of the forthcoming Disclosureland: How Corporate Words Constrain Racial Progress. Graduate Center, CUNY.
Saturday, February 21. Lend an ear to guest artist Alexandria Eregbu, performing the newly commissioned sound work Blue Magic, attuning audience members to “deep time and ancestral memory.” American Folk Art Museum.
Sunday, February 22. Pay attention to Cotton King and A.I. God, a lecture-performance unlocking hidden industry ties. The event is the launch of Attensity!, a new Strother School of Radical Attention (SoRA) series.
Monument to Balzac photographed by Edward Steichen, 1911.
Monday, February 23. Visualize the unconscious through an ancient lens as the Institute For Study of The Ancient World explores The Egyptian Body and the Idea of the Unconscious at the End of the Nineteenth Century.
Tuesday, February 24. Follow a revisionist path to understanding Chinese history as Frank Dikötter shares his new Red Dawn Over China: How Communism Conquered a Quarter of Humanity. Asia Society and Museum.
Wednesday, February 25. Explore a world of design, old and new, with the World Monuments Fund and architect Brinda Somaya. The Cooper Union.
Thursday, February 26. Learn the real science behind our rodent neighbors with a pair of experts: Pizza Rat Debunked at the New York Transit Museum.
John Vasquez Mejías (b. 1972). The Puerto Rican War: A Woodcut Novelette Second printing (no. 54/1000). New York: John Vasquez Mejías, 2020.
Friday, February 27. Indulge in "the city's most cerebral happy hour" at a special evening celebrating the latest Stephen A. Schwarzman Building exhibition, ¡Wepa! Puerto Ricans in the World of Comics.
Saturday, February 28. Decode the science of love and attraction with relationship scientist Dr. Marisa T. Cohen, one of three presentations at the next Nerd Nite at Caveat.
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