Today’s “Fab Five” / Selected NYCity Events – SATURDAY, AUG 03, 2013

‘The Woolworth Building @ 100’ (through Sept 8, 2013)
An exhibition celebrating the 100th anniversary of this Cass Gilbert-designed building — when completed in 1913 it was considered the tallest office building in the world — features blueprints, photographs, contracts and other items.

“Eighty thousand incandescent bulbs illuminated the New York night on April 24, 1913, when the Woolworth Building opened with a ceremony attended by 800 dignitaries. Witnessed by multitudes and wired to press around the world, …

The great Gothic tower-the Cathedral of Commerce-became the preeminent silhouette on the New York skyline and took the title of world’s tallest office building.”
Skyscraper Museum, 39 Battery Place, Lower Manhattan
The exhibition can be viewed Wednesdays through Sundays from noon to 6 p.m.
$5, $2.50 for students and 65+
(212) 968-1961 / skyscraper.org

Summer Streets
For the next three Saturdays, portions of Park Avenue will be closed to traffic and open for recreation as part of the Summer Streets program sponsored by the Department of Transportation. There will be recreational and cultural events as well as rest stops along the route: Lafayette Street, from the Brooklyn Bridge to 14th Street, and Park Avenue, from 14th to 72nd Streets. From 7 a.m. to 1 p.m.; nyc.gov/html/dot/summerstreets.

ZviDance
Inspired by the Arab Spring, the Israeli-born, New York-based choreographer Zvi Gotheiner created “Dabke,” named for the traditional, celebratory line dance performed at Muslim weddings in the Middle East. (The title means “stomping the ground” in Arabic.) A free class in Lebanese dabke and its Israeli offshoot, debka, precedes this Lincoln Center Out of Doors performance, which is a split bill with El Gusto, the recently reunited Algerian band of Muslim and Jewish musicians. At 7 p.m., with the dance class starting at 6 p.m., Damrosch Park, Lincoln Center, (212) 721-6500, lcoutofdoors.org; free. (Burke)

Steve Turre and the Bones of Art (Friday through Sunday)
“Steve Turre regroups with several fellow trombonists — Frank Lacy, Robin Eubanks and Steve Davis — to pay homage to Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, the hard-bop institution to which they all belonged, at different times. Drawing from a forthcoming album on the HighNote label, they rely on the steam locomotion of the pianist Xavier Davis, the bassist Kenny Davis and the drummer Willie Jones III. At 7:30 and 9:30 p.m., Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola, Frederick P. Rose Hall, Jazz at Lincoln Center, 60th Street and Broadway, (212) 258-9595, jalc.org; $35 to $45 cover” (Chinen-NYT)

Craig Taborn and Gust Burns*
Craig Taborn, who has proven himself a pianist of nearly boundless imagination, teams up here with Gust Burns, a Seattle native who approaches pianism, and improvisation, from a complementary angle. They recently played a brief duo set as part of the one-year anniversary celebration for the Sound It Out series; returning to the series here, they’ll have more space to stretch out. At 8 p.m., Greenwich House Music School, 46 Barrow Street, West Village, (212) 242-4770, greenwichhouse.org; $15, $12 for students. (Chinen-NYT)

Before making final plans, we suggest you call the venue to confirm dates and check times, as schedules are subject to change.
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Special Exhibitions @ 3 Museum Mile / Fifth Ave. Museums:

‘Subliming Vessel: The Drawings of Matthew Barney’ (through Sept. 2)
Morgan Library & Museum: 225 Madison Avenue, at 36th St.
(212) 685-0008 / themorgan.org.

‘At War With the Obvious: Photographs by William Eggleston’ LAST DAY! 
‘Punk: Chaos to Couture’ (through Aug. 14)
“African Art, New York, and the Avant-Garde” (through Sept. 2)
‘The Civil War and American Art’ (through Sept. 2)
‘Photography and the American Civil War’ (through Sept. 2)
‘The Roof Garden Commission: Imran Qureshi’ (through Nov. 3)
Metropolitan Museum of Art: 1000 5th Ave, at 82nd St.
(212) 535-7710 / metmuseum.org

“New Harmony: Abstraction Between the Wars, 1919-1939” (through Sept. 8)
“Aten Reign” (through Sept. 25)
……the centerpiece of James Turrell’s first exhibition in a New York museum since 1980, recasts the Guggenheim rotunda as an enormous volume filled with shifting artificial and natural light. {see review below}
Guggenheim Museum: 1071 Fifth Avenue, at 89th St.
(212) 423-3500 / guggenheim.org.

Light and color wash the Rotunda. 
“Turrell works in a single medium: light. He has sliced into walls, designed seamless rooms with holes in the ceiling, and spent four decades building a giant naked-eye observatory in the Arizona desert—all to provide unexpectedly intimate and mysterious views of the sky, the sun, and the stars. For this segment of a three-part show running concurrently in L.A. and Houston, he’s turned the museum’s atrium into a giant light box. —J.D.” (NYMag)

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Museum Mile is a section of Fifth Avenue which contains one of the densest displays of culture in the world. Ten museums can be found along this section of Fifth Avenue:
• 110th Street – Museum for African Art
• 105th Street – El Museo del Barrio
• 103rd Street – Museum of the City of New York
• 92nd Street – The Jewish Museum
• 91st Street –  Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum
• 89th Street – National Academy Museum
• 88th Street – Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
• 86th Street – Neue Galerie New York
• 83rd Street – Goethe-Institut
• 82nd Street – The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Additionally, though technically not part of the Museum Mile, the Frick Collection on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 70th St. and the The Morgan Library & Museum on Madison Ave and 37th St are also located near Fifth Ave. Now plan your own museum crawl.
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For other selected Museum and Gallery Special Exhibitions see Recent Posts in right Sidebar: “NYCity Events: Manhattan’s WestSide” dated 08/01 and 07/30.