Summer in the city is a great time to tour NYC by boat or foot, and take advantage of an eclectic collection of talks and programming. For July we're especially looking forward to talks on the long fight against equality in America, the story of a Continental Army veteran who was born a woman, how Moby-Dick went from abject failure to the Great American Novel, plus an immersive film with an improvised soundtrack by an electronic music pioneer and a botanic garden soundbath.
Photo credit: Tsuneo Koga.
Wednesday, July 1: Catch a night of music, film, and food celebrating the premiere of Bloodlines, a new documentary. A screening traces the arc of a music project that uses cultural exchange and personal history as a springboard for new sounds. National Sawdust.
Thursday, July 2: Send some shivers down your spine on a walk exploring Lower Manhattan's centuries-long legacy of burial grounds, executions, epidemics, public unrest, and forgotten dead. Join Purefinder New York for an early-evening-into-dusk tour through the city’s oldest streets.
Friday, July 3: Grab a seat for Stand Up, Sit Down at Caveat, where host Sarah Ross interrogates performers about their sets and how the bits were created.
Saturday, July 4: Enter a room where it happened as Fraunces Tavern Museum hosts an open house to celebrate July 4th, along with an It Happened Here program noting The Passing of Three Presidents on Independence Days past.
Sunday, July 5: Ferry over to Governors Island for Obie Award-winning, itinerant performance series CATCH and an unruly evening considering the complexities of American history and this moment.
Monday, July 6: Take a big bite of Uyghur cuisine and culture at a talk, hands-on cooking demo, and meal.
Engraving by George Graham, from a drawing by William Beastall, in turn based on a painting by Joseph Stone.
Tuesday, July 7: Enlist in America's Revolutionary Secret as award-winning author Jen Manion gives a virtual recounting of Continental Army private Robert Shurtliff, born Deborah Sampson. The New York Historical.
Wednesday, July 8: Explore unexpected overlaps between art, perception, and math at Seeing Is Deceiving—The Geometry of Visual Illusion, a Museum of Mathematics presentation.
Rockwell Kent.
Thursday, July 9: Seek out the white whale with educator and literary scholar Horst Rosenberg. He leads The Wisdom Bar in a lecture/conversation on Melville, Moby-Dick, and how a commercial and critical failure went on to become “The Great American Novel.”
Friday, July 10: Settle into a screening of Aparisyon (Apparition), set in a Philippine cloister in 1971, as part of the Asia Society and Museum series "Desire & Solitude: The Cinema of Isabel Sandoval;" a Q&A with the filmmaker follows.
Saturday, July 11: Join The High Line for a talk on the movements of culture, art, and religious coexistence along the Silk Road, followed by a guided meditation, in conjunction with art installation The Light That Shines Through the Universe.
Sunday, July 12: Travel back in time to a Borscht Belt apex at a 92nd Street Y screening and conversation around the 2025 documentary We Met At Grossinger's.
Monday, July 13: Examine what it means to observe transformation with artist Siri Kaur, sharing her forthcoming book Sistermoon, which includes three decades of photographing her youngest sister, Simran. Rizzoli Bookstore.
Tuesday, July 14: Hook up with the perimeters of modern dating with Alyssa Shelasky, in conversation on her new book Sex Diaries: Real-life Stories of Non-Monogamy and Polyamory. Books Are Magic (Brooklyn Heights).
Wednesday, July 15: Light out for the paperback release of I Want to Burn This Place Down, essayist Maris Kreizman's look at her disillusionment with American institutions and what it's like to become radicalized in your 40s. The Strand.
Thursday, July 16: Look again at the idea that all men are created equal with Columbia historian Kim Phillips-Fein and her new Country of Lords: Neo-Aristocrats, Social Darwinists, Tech Utopians, and the Long Fight against Equality in America. Center for Brooklyn History.
Friday, July 17: Foresee your future with NYC-based lunar guide and tarot reader Yesbelt Fernandez, offering tarot readings in a historic Morgan Library & Museum space, in conjunction with new exhibition Tarot! Renaissance Symbols, Modern Visions.
Saturday, July 18: Break from city streets for a trip to verdant hills as The Art Deco Society of New York hosts a special-access trolley tour of the landmark Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx.
Sunday, July 19: Enrich yourself in urban palaces as The Municipal Art Society of New York conducts a tour through adaptive reuse, Carnegie Hill — Where Gilded Age Mansions Became Schools and Museums.
Monday, July 20: Find peace in nature at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden as Attacca Quartet performs a Forever Green Soundbath along the Cherry Esplanade.
Tuesday, July 21: Revisit '80s New York through the eyes of two-time Pulitzer winner Colson Whitehead as he shares his new novel Cool Machine at McNally Jackson Books at BKLYN STUDIOS.
Wednesday, July 22: Correct some misperceptions about spotted hyenas—actually matriarchal, and as intelligent as chimpanzees—on a night of readings and performances celebrating Sean Kennerly's Memoir of a Hyena. P.I.T in Williamsburg.
Thursday, July 23: Saunter over to the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts for a screening and talk around the documentary About Face: Disrupting Ballet, looking at an effort to challenge Asian stereotypes and the growing pains of creative evolution.
Friday, July 24: Stroll halls that have hosted the likes of Rube Goldberg and Norman Rockwell on an insider tour of the 125-year-old Society of Illustrators.
George Hayward, Col. Roger Morris’ House, lithograph, 1854.
Saturday, July 25: Raise a glass as the Morris-Jumel Mansion returns after hours to its roots as an 18th-century tavern, complete with food, drink, and music.
Sunday, July 26: Cruise with the National Lighthouse Museum on a boat tour through Hell’s Gate to Long Island Sound, with lighthouse lore shared along the way.
Monday, July 27: Praise be to Lectures on Tap and a talk by public philosopher Alexandra Stamson, who looks at the ways gender, authority, and reproductive politics in Margaret Atwood's Gilead mirror forces at work in society today.
Tuesday, July 28: Trace back the colorful history of Madison Square Park on a tour that illuminates the era through The Gilded Age, Before, & Beyond.
Wednesday, July 29: Go on a deep dive of port infrastructure with Bethann Rooney, Director of the Port Department at the Port Authority, and an Open House New York sunset boat tour.
Suzanne Ciani. Photo: Karel Chladek. Courtesy the artist.
Thursday, July 30: Immerse yourself in The Shed's film-based installation Lightscape, by artist Doug Aitken, with a soundtrack by electronic music pioneer Suzanne Ciani, improvising on her legendary Buchla synthesizer.
Friday, July 31: Lend an ear for an excursion through the intimacy of eavesdropping; artist/composer Whitney George leads a Think Olio session that's "part lecture, part listening session, and part cultural séance."