America's birthday draws closer, bringing insightful programming around the Revolutionary era and its echoes 250 years later. This May in NYC we're looking forward to takes on suffragists, polarization in America's founding moment, and a walk through Hamilton and Washington's New York on the very streets where it happened. We've also got an eye on the past (a Sappho intensive, Rafael, Golden Age Hollywood) and on the future (new horizons in architecture, storytelling, and the battle against Big Tech).
Friday, May 1. Watch activism curdle into conflicts over "identity, power, and the future of American democracy" at a Mabou Mines screening and discussion of the new documentary Homegrown.
Photo credit: Anja Schültz.
Saturday, May 2. Listen as Talestri, Queen of the Amazons, and Berenice, Princess of Egypt, are reawakened by GRAMMY-nominated soprano Lauren Snouffer in the performance New Woman at the Kaufman Music Center.
Sunday, May 3. Enjoy a brainy gathering as the taste of science festival presents its annual SciComm Block Party at Caveat.
Monday, May 4. Immerse yourself in the suffragist story at a Great Performances screening of the Tony-winning Broadway musical Suffs, followed by a panel discussion and a live performance reunion of the original cast. The Town Hall.
Tuesday, May 5. Sing the body electric, or perhaps decry it, as P&T Knitwear hosts author Manoush Zomorodi and her book Body Electric: The Hidden Health Costs of the Digital Age and New Science to Reclaim Your Well-Being.
Wednesday, May 6. Leash your best canine friend for the dog-friendly lecture What Exactly IS a Dog Show? A Brief History at The AKC Museum of the Dog.
Thursday, May 7. Follow the decades-long fight for Ground Zero rescuers with John Feal, who shares his forthcoming book I Will Follow You Anywhere: The True Story of the 9/11 Responders Who Took on Congress. National September 11 Memorial & Museum.
Friday, May 8. Join an upcoming session of the Next Frontiers Symposium for insight into the overlooked bio-treasure that is the collective wisdom of the Earth's animals. Home Studios.
Saturday, May 9. Book yourself some time to visit the International Center of Photography (ICP), where its fifth annual Photobook Fest welcomes over 75 photobook publishers to the museum and school.
Sunday, May 10. Congregate around a Dialogues on Divinity discussion with the Cathedral of St. John the Divine's Very Rev. Winnie Varghese and Imam Khalid Latif, Executive Director and Chaplain for the Islamic Center at NYU.
Monday, May 11. Ponder Power Without Impunity: War Crimes and Illegal Orders as The New York Historical hosts a timely discussion of where true accountability lies.
Tuesday, May 12. Seek out self-taught artists with an American Folk Art Museum virtual tour of current exhibition Self-Made: A Century of Inventing Artists, covering singular creatives from the early 20th century to today.
Wednesday, May 13. Wander (virtually) down the NYC Revolutionary Trail, a multimedia walking tour in Lower Manhattan, with the creators of the new smartphone app. They'll share their findings ahead of America 250 at a live Graduate Center, CUNY taping of Person Place Thing with Randy Cohen.
Thursday, May 14. Conjure up some time to head to Williamsburg and a Lectures on Tap look at "Harry Houdini vs. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle" and the beautiful medium that severed their friendship.
Franz Xaver Habermann (1721-1796), The Triumphal Entry of Royal Troops into New York. ( L'Entré Triumphale de Troupes Royales a Nouvelle Yorck). Print. Collection of the Museum of the City of New York. 29.100.2024.
Friday, May 15. Look back at previous times of American political division with the Museum of the City of New York and a panel discussion of A Divided City: Revolutionary-Era New York and the Politics of Polarization.
Saturday, May 16. Hike back through time with Fraunces Tavern Museum and a morning tour of historic locations critical to the lives and partnership of Alexander Hamilton and George Washington.
Alba Madonna, by Raphael, created c. 1511.
Sunday, May 17. Picture yourself getting the inside gloss on the once-in-a-lifetime Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition Raphael: Sublime Poetry with a distinguished panel of scholars.
Monday, May 18. Understand the way tech giants "manipulate attention, extract wealth, and deepen inequality" with Tim Wu and a New York Society Library presentation on his The Age of Extraction: How Tech Platforms Conquered the Economy and Threaten Our Future Prosperity.
Tuesday, May 19. Explore a lost world as Temple Emanu-El hosts an online session on the loss of a vibrant multicultural medieval community at Crisis and Creativity: Spanish Jews Confront Inquisition and Expulsion.
Wednesday, May 20. Peer into the evolving influences of AI and machine vision as MAP (Metropolitan Architecture Practice) co-founders Katherine Lambert, AIA, and Christiane Robbins mark the release of the firm's new monograph Architecture x Architecture: A Dialectic. Rizzoli Bookstore.
Thursday, May 21. Harken back to Baroque Echoes from Bolivia & Peru, an Instituto Cervantes (Nueva York) program that illuminates the musical legacy of the Jesuit missions in the Viceroyalty of Peru.
Installation view of Whitney Biennial 2026(Whitney Museum of American Art, March8–August 2026). Zach Blas, CULTUS,2023. Photograph by DarianDiCanno/BFA.com. © BFA 2026.
Friday, May 22. Take advantage of Free Friday Nights at the Whitney, with drinks, special programming, music, city views, and ample time to browse the Whitney Biennial 2026.
Saturday, May 23. Catch the final night of multimedia dance-theater work Here NOW So Long, showing off the choreographic virtuosity of Young Soon Kim in its New York premiere. New York Live Arts.
Sunday, May 24. Tuck in for an evening of comedy and catharsis where comedian Adri Fernandez performs stand-up and then invites a local therapist onstage to unpack her jokes. Q.E.D.
Monday, May 25. Let sound ring out at a Memorial Day Carnegie Hall concert with a program that includes a world premiere and a setting of the medieval Latin text Stabat Mater.
Tuesday, May 26. Warm up to some heated rivalries as Bowery Boys History Live! heads to The Loft at City Winery to look at "the nation's most combative frenemies and jaw-dropping personal clashes."
Wednesday, May 27. Soak up some bygone Hollywood glamour as Film Forum hosts a screening of 1932's Sinners in the Sun, introduced by Howard Gutner, author of the new Banton of Paramount: Haute Couture in Hollywood's Golden Age.
Thursday, May 28. Shift from film past to film future with award-winning directors Michaela Ternasky-Holland and Aaron Santiago, building worlds at the cutting edge of AI, VR, and immersive media. They'll talk Where Art Meets Machine: Creating Stories That Change How We See at The National Arts Club.
Friday, May 29. Reconsider the material culture of the early American republic through the histories hidden in porcelain, teeth, tea, and sugar; curator Dominique Jean-Louis leads the Old Stone House of Brooklyn program Teatime with Broken China: An Anti-colonial Ceremony and Artists' Talk.
Head of a woman from the Glyptothek in Munich, possibly a copy of Silanion's fourth-century BC imaginative portrait of Sappho.
Saturday, May 30. Consider the premise "Everyone knows Sappho, and no one knows Sappho" at a Brooklyn Institute for Social Research's Afternoon of Learning dedicated to one of the most brilliant and least legible poets of the ancient world.
Sunday, May 31. Reckon with our volatile moment with Gen. David H. Petraeus, who has spent a lifetime contemplating war. Find him at The 92nd Street Y, New York on Iran, Israel, and the Future of War and Global Power.
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