Often Overlooked: Six Secret Places for Great NYC Events
By Troy Segal
When it comes to lectures, dialogues or discussions, certain NYC venues immediately come to mind: the 92nd Street Y, for example, or the Metropolitan Museum of Art. But there are other places offering exciting activities that are not as well known, perhaps due to their location, or their recent arrival on the talk-circuit scene. Here are half-a-dozen sites — obscure no more — to start registering on your radar, along with some of their upcoming events.
Perhaps its old name, the Museum of Television and Radio, was more evocative. But the Paley Center for Media, in the middle of Midtown, is not only a TV buff’s delight — housing vast archives of vintage programs — but a force for exploring the impact and influence of communications of all sorts. To that end, it’s hosting an appearance by the legendary group Crosby, Stills & Nash, whose memories of the 1970s are boosted by historic performance footage, on July 7.
L to R: Young, Crosby, Nash and Stills in 1970.
Right in the heart of Chelsea lies the 10-year-old Rubin Museum of Art, celebrating the countries and regions surrounding the Himalayas (India, Tibet, Southeast Asia). Its art exhibits are complemented by cultural activities and talks — such as a July 9 demonstration/lecture of the health benefits of Tibetan yantra yoga, whose positions are displayed in murals in one of the museum galleries.
While founded as a grad-student research institute of Bard College, the Bard Graduate Center on the Upper East Side offers exhibits and events for the general public — anyone fascinated by aspects of the decorative arts, design, and material culture. On July 17, in conjunction with an Andean textiles show, there’s a reception and gallery talk, “Chronicles of the Chuspas”, focusing on a pair of woven coca bags by the last descendants of the Incas.
In the summer of 2010, a veteran sports agent founded the Bergino Baseball Clubhouse, dedicated the Great American Pastime. Along with mounting art exhibits and selling custom balls and other memorabilia, the East Village spot offers readings, book signings and happenings, like a live storytelling competition, with each tale evoking the theme of “Baseball As Good Medicine”, on July 17.
Bet you didn’t know that the New York Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center contains a subterranean theatre — the Bruno Walter Auditorium. The pleasant-looking, professionally equipped space is the site of revues and other presentations, including — on August 7 — a dialogue on the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, between the co-authors of a new tome on the influential regional theatre.
While the clothing designers of tomorrow get their training at the Fashion Institute of Technology, lovers of vintage clothing can swoon over the rotating shows at The Museum at FIT, tucked into a corner of the school’s campus on the edge of the Garment District. One of the museum’s curators talks about intimate things — literally — in an August 13 gallery tour of the exhibit Exposed: A History of Lingerie.