Today’s “Fab 5”+1/ Selected NYCity Events – SUNDAY, MAY 18, 2014.

World’s Fair Anniversary Festival
A full day of free activities celebrating World’s Fairs past,
including the return of the 1964 World’s Fair Belgian Waffle.

“Celebrate the 75th and 50th anniversaries of the NYC World’s Fair at this day-long event. Enjoy tours of the historic site, food, and music and dance performances throughout the day. Come nightfall, the sky explodes with a special fireworks display.”
(FlavorPill-Mindy Bond, Editor)
Unisphere in Flushing Meadows Corona Park, Queens, NY
from 1pm-8pm / FREE
This is surely not Manhattan’s WestSide, but I worked the World’s Fair in 1965, so this event has to be listed. If you ever rode the Paratrooper ride in the amusement area, then I was your ride operator, so drop me a line.
subway: #1-2-3 to TimesSquare, transfer to #7 to Shea Stadium/Willets Point ,
then a nice long walk in the park to the Unisphere.

New York Hot Jazz Festival 2014
“Hot Jazz” has lately become a catch phrase encapsulating New Orleans and traditional jazz, blues, big bands, “Hot Club”-style gypsy swing and often also vaudeville, burlesque and the thriving Retro Nouveau scene. All of those factions are joining together for a 12-hour party/dance/concert at which 16 bands will alternate in three different spaces within the Players Club.

On the bill are such worthies as Vince Giordano and the Nighthawks, the hyper-energetic Hot Sardines, clarinet master Ken Peplowski’s New Swing, Aussie sax stalwart Professor Cunningham and His Old School, Dan Levinson’s Gotham SophistiCats and Birdland faves David Ostwald’s Louis Armstrong Eternity Band with Wycliffe Gordon. The guest vocalists—Brianna Thomas, Catherine Russell, Tamar Korn, Molly Ryan, Kate Davis, and Marilyn Maye—are worth the price of a day-long admission alone.” (WSJ)
The Players Club, 16 Gramercy Park South,
212- 475-6116

René Marie
“The feisty singer, an outspoken civil-rights activist, pays tribute to the equally forthright and defiantly eccentric Eartha Kitt. Positing Kitt—whose lengthy career found her juggling turns as a brazenly sexual, bilingual night-club, stage, and recording star; a delicious Catwoman on the sixties TV camp classic “Batman”; and a tell-it-like-it-is media figure—as a woman whose time has come for celebration, Marie brings her own insouciance to such Kitt classics as “Santa Baby” and “C’est Si Bon” on her album, “I Wanna Be Evil (With Love to Eartha Kitt).” (NewYorker)
Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola, Broadway at 60th St.
jalc.org.

The 9th Avenue International Food Festival
The Ninth Avenue International Food Festival, blends international cuisine, art and soul in one of the country’s most unique neighborhoods. Adjacent to Times Square, America’s number one tourist destination. The Festival is New York’s oldest and largest continuous Food Festival, drawing over 200,000 visitors over the course of the two day festival weekend. From open to close, visitors can browse the offerings of 15 City Blocks of gourmet food and beverages. Asian to Cajun and everything edible, along with fine art and crafts and an entire city block of family friendly children’s games and entertainment.
9th Avenue, 42nd – 57th Streets
noon to 5PM

Around the World with Barry Lewis: Central Park
Central Park’s design is democracy in three dimensions. No one understood that better than its creators, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux. With their talented team, they created a slice of the American countryside—accessible to all—that looks completely natural but is a brilliantly crafted artifice that helps us achieve the “American dream.”

Barry Lewis is an architectural historian who currently teaches at Cooper Union Forum and specializes in European and American architecture from the 18th to 20th centuries.
He is a fascinating font of NYCity knowledge who will talk for 30 minutes without taking a breath. He’s the best.
New-York Historical Society, 170 Central Park West,
212-873-3400 /
at 5:00 pm / $34; $20 members

Sacred Sites Open House Weekend
“For the past four years, the New York Landmarks Conservancy has arranged tours of a number of houses of worship. This year, the weekend focusses on immigrant communities, and the sites include St. Anselm’s Church, in the Bronx (modelled on the Hagia Sophia), the Lower East Side’s Church of St. Brigid—St. Emeric (designed by the noted Irish architect of churches Patrick Keely), and the Museum at Eldridge Street, located in the Eldridge Street Synagogue (a New York City and National Historic Landmark). More than forty-five places in the five boroughs will be open for touring.” (NewYorker)
nylandmarks.org.
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♦ Before making final plans, we suggest you call the venue to confirm ticket availability, dates and times, as schedules are subject to change.

♦ NYCity is a big town with many visitors where quality shows draw crowds. Try to reserve seats in advance, even if just on day of performance.
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What’s on View:
Special Exhibitions @ 4 Museum Mile / Fifth Ave. Museums:

‘The Passions of Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux’ (through May 26)
‘Tibet and India: Buddhist Traditions and Transformations’ (through June 8)
‘Lost Kingdoms: Hindu-Buddhist Sculpture of Early Southeast Asia, 5th to 8th Century’ (through July 27)
The Flowering of Edo Period Painting: Japanese Masterworks from the Feinberg Collection’ (through Sept. 7)
‘Early American Guitars: The Instruments of C.F. Martin’ (through Dec. 7)
Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 5th Ave, at 82nd St.
(212) 535-7710 / metmuseum.org
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‘Renaissance and Baroque Bronzes From the Hill Collection’ (through June 15)
“This sensational, beautifully presented show of 33 late-15th- to early-18th-century bronzes reflects a taste for historically important, big-statement examples in exceptional condition. They vividly reflect the Renaissance’s new interest in antiquity and the human form while encouraging concentration on emotional expression, refined details (great hair!), struggling or relaxed figures and varied patinas. Works by the reigning geniuses Giambologna, Susini and the lesser-known Piamontini dominate, further enlivened by a handful of old master and late-20th-century paintings from the Hill collection.”
(Roberta Smith-NYT)
Frick Collection: 1 East 70th St.
212-288-0700 / frick.org.
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Guggenheim Museum: ‘Italian Futurism, 1909-1944: Reconstructing the Universe’ (through Sept. 1)
“This epic, beautifully designed exhibition may be one of the more thorough examinations of modernism’s most obnoxious and conflicted art movement that you are likely to see. Awash in the manifestoes that its members regularly fired off, it follows Futurism through to its end with the death of its founder, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, in 1944. It covers the Futurist obsessions with speed, war, machines and, finally, flight and the aerial views it made possible. And the show highlights relatively unknown figures like the delightful Fortunato Depero and Benedetta Cappa, Marinetti’s wife. 1071 Fifth Avenue, at 89th Street, 212-423-3500, guggenheim.org.“ (Smith-NYT)
Guggenheim Museum, 1071 Fifth Avenue, at 89th St.
(212) 423-3500 / guggenheim.org.
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‘Degenerate Art: The Attack on Modern Art in Nazi Germany, 1937’ (through June 30)
Neue Galerie, 1048 Fifth Avenue, at 86th St.
212-628-6200 / neuegalerie.org.

========================================================== 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

Last, but certainly not least, America’s premier museum
• 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. ==========================================================

For other selected Museum and Gallery Special Exhibitions see Recent Posts in right Sidebar: “NYCity Events: Manhattan’s WestSide” dated 05/16 and 05/14.