NYC Events,”Only the Best” (09/25) + Museum Special Exhibitions: Manhattan’s 5th Avenue

“We search the internet everyday looking for the very best of What’s Happening, primarily on Manhattan’s WestSide, so that you don’t have to.” We make it as easy as 1-2-3.

For future NYC Events better check the tab above: “Notable NYC Events-September”
It’s the most comprehensive list of top events this month that you will find anywhere.
Carefully curated from “Only the Best” NYC event info on the the web, it’s a simply superb resource that will help you plan your NYC visit all through the month.

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Have time for only one NYC Event today? Do this:

Norma
Metropolitan Opera House / 6:30PM, $32+
“Ponselle, Milanov, Sutherland, Callas … after last night, Radvanovsky can add her name to the list,” declared the Huffington Post when Sondra Radvanovsky made her Met role debut as Norma in 2013. The 2017–18 season opens with a new production of Bellini’s masterpiece, starring Radvanovsky as the Druid priestess and Joyce DiDonato as her archrival, Adalgisa—a casting coup for bel canto fans. Tenor Joseph Calleja is Pollione, Norma’s unfaithful lover, and Carlo Rizzi conducts. Sir David McVicar’s evocative production sets the action deep in a Druid forest where nature and ancient ritual rule.”
OR
“Experience the Metropolitan Opera’s 2017-18 season opening in the heart Times Square. Part of the Met Opera’s initiative to make opera more accessible, Bellini’s bel canto tragedy Norma will broadcast on multiple giant screens in Times Square, with free seating for more than 2000 on a first come, first serve basis.” (untapped cities)

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6 OTHER TOP NYC EVENTS TODAY (see below for full listing)
>>Natalie Douglas: Tributes—Nina
>>Julia Mattison: Ruby Manger Live! A Farewell Engagement
>>Jim Caruso’s Cast Party
>>Muhammad Yunus with Jeffrey Sachs: The New Economics of Selflessness
>>I Write Banned Books
>>With Lawrence in Arabia: Lawrence of Arabia and Lowell Thomas
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Music, Dance, Performing Arts

Natalie Douglas: Tributes—Nina
Birdland, 315 W44th St. / 7PM, $30
“Octuple MAC Award winner Douglas has previously plumbed the catalogs of Stevie Wonder, Lena Horne, Abbey Lincoln and Billie Holiday, among many others. Now she returns to an artist she has interpreted many times in the past, applying her formidable voice to the urgent, plangent songs of Nina Simone.” (TONY)

Julia Mattison: Ruby Manger Live! A Farewell Engagement
Feinstein’s/54 Below / 9:30PM, $25+
“Mattison plays fictional Tony Award winner, failed indie-film actress, drug-abuse icon and erstwhile Rod Stewart paramour Ruby Manger in this much-buzzed-about evening of original tunes and demented Broadway satire. Taylor Trensch (Hello, Dolly!), Andrew Kober (Hair) and Sara Chase (Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt) join the shenanigans, with Noel Carey providing hilarious support as Randy Newman.” (TONY)

Jim Caruso’s Cast Party
Birdland, / 9:30PM, $30
Jim Caruso’s Cast Party is a wildly popular weekly soiree that brings a sprinkling of Broadway glitz and urbane wit to the legendary Birdland in New York City every Monday night. It’s a cool cabaret night-out enlivened by a hilariously impromptu variety show. Showbiz superstars, backed by Steve Doyle on bass, Billy Stritch on piano and Daniel Glass on drums, hit the stage alongside up-and-comers, serving up jaw-dropping music and general razzle-dazzle.” (broadwayworld)

Smart Stuff / Other NYC Events
(Lectures, Discussions, Book Talks, Literary Readings, Classes, Food & Drink, Other)
LIVE from the NYPL /

Muhammad Yunus with Jeffrey Sachs: The New Economics of Selflessness
New York Public Library—main bldg, 476 Fifth Ave./ 7PM, $40
“Nobel Prize–winning economist Muhammad Yunus offers hope in his new book, which lays out altruistic fixes for what’s broken in current capitalism. The dangled potential: a world with zero poverty, zero unemployment, and zero net carbon emissions. Find Yunus in conversation with Jeffrey Sachs, the director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University (and on his own at the Brooklyn Library on Wednesday.)” (ThoughtGallery.org)

I Write Banned Books
The Strand / 7PM, $15
“September 24–30 is “Banned Books Week,” the American Library Association’s annual celebration of the freedom to read. To mark the occasion, PEN America has partnered with Strand Books to invite authors of banned or challenged books to speak out against censorship. The event is as timely as ever: Last year witnessed a 17 percent uptick in complaints of book-banning. The discussion will include David Levithan, whose 2013 Two Boys Kissing was removed from shelves because its cover features, well, two boys kissing; Coe Booth, whose young-adult novels Tyrell and Bronxwood faced censorship challenges in Virginia; and Ariel Schrag, whose comics anthology Stuck in the Middle was challenged by an Oklahoma school library. Moderated by Jason Low, publisher and a co-owner of Lee & Low Books, the conversation will highlight the value of reading books by authors of diverse backgrounds and experiences.” (Amy Brady, Village Voice)

With Lawrence in Arabia: Lawrence of Arabia and Lowell Thomas
The Explorers Club, 46 E. 70th St./ 6PM, $25
“Join us for an outstanding evening when we launch our edition of With Lawrence in Arabia written by our esteemed Explorers Club Member, Lowell Thomas.

Our first speaker will be Mitchell Stephens, a professor of journalism in the Carter Institute at New York University. He is author of The Voice of America: Lowell Thomas and The Invention of the 20th-Century Journalism. Mitchell had the privilege of following Lowell Thomas’s trail around the world and into Arabia. Mitchell has written a new foreword to With Lawrence in Arabia.

In 1918, Lowell Thomas met T. E. Lawrence in Jerusalem and traveled with him for part of the Arab Revolt, which was part of the process of ending the Ottoman Empire during WWI. Lowell’s travels plus interviews with Lawrence led him to write this fast paced book, the basis for the film Lawrence of Arabia, 1961.

Our second speaker will be Explorers Club member Steve Pigott MN’13 who has just returned from tracing the footsteps of Lawrence of Arabia for a Ric Burns documentary. Steve will have slides from this flag expedition.”

Continuing Events

EXHIBIT ‘TO QUENCH THE THIRST OF NEW YORKERS: THE CROTON AQUEDUCT AT 175’ (thru Dec 31)
“Many New Yorkers today take for granted the appearance of clean water in the city’s taps. This exhibit focuses on the history of the Croton Aqueduct, an engineering feat that brought fresh water from the Croton River upstate to fountains in the middle of the city when it was completed in the 1840s.” (STAV ZIV, Newsday)
WHEN | WHERE Opens Saturday, Sept. 2 at the Museum of the City of New York, 1220 Fifth Ave.
INFO $18; 2125341672, mcny.org.

Learn all about the High Bridge, which carried the Croton Aqueduct across the Harlem River. This magnificent civic structure was modeled on the old Roman Aqueduct bridges, and is New York City’s oldest and best bridge. I know, because I lived nearby in the far west Bronx neighborhood of Highbridge, and have strolled across it many times.

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Madison Square Eats (thru sept 29)
Worth Square, 11AM, FREE
“The fall version of this twice-a-year event from UrbanSpace and the Madison Square Park Conservancy runs daily from September 2–29, and it’s your chance to try food from two dozen vendors who converge on the park from all corners of the city. It’ll be hard to go wrong with any of it, but we recommend the po’boys from the Gumbo Brothers and whatever sweet concoction that Renegade Lemonade, Ice & Vice, and Macaron Parlour have teamed up to create. (Hint: It’s called “Renegade Vice Parlour.”) Or, if you look at a plate of chicken and waffles and think, “Wish I didn’t have to sit at a table and bother with utensils to enjoy this,” Chick’nCone is your food trend du jour.” (Mary Bakija, Village Voice)

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Bonus NYC events– Jazz Clubs:
Many consider NYCity the Jazz capital of the world. Here are my favorite Jazz clubs, all on Manhattan’s WestSide. Check out who is playing tonight:

Greenwich Village:
(5 are underground, classic jazz joints. all 6 are within walking distance of each other):
Village Vanguard – UG, 178 7th Ave. South, villagevanguard.com, 212-255-4037
Blue Note – 131 W3rd St. nr 6th ave. bluenotejazz.com, 212-475-8592
55 Bar – basement @55 Christopher St. nr 7th ave.S. 55bar.com, 212-929-9883
Mezzrow – basement @ 163 W10th St. nr 7th Ave. mezzrow.com,646-476-4346
Smalls – basement @ 183 W10th St. smallslive.com, 646-476-4346
Cornelia Street Cafe – UG, 29 Cornelia St. corneliastreetcafe.com, 212-989-9319

Outside Greenwich Village:
Dizzy’s Club – Broadway @ 60th St. — jazz.org/dizzys / 212-258-9595
Birdland – 315 W44th St.(btw 8/9ave) — birdlandjazz.com / 212-581-3080
Smoke Jazz Club – 2751 Broadway nr.106th St. — smokejazz.com / 212-864-6662

Special Mention:
Caffe Vivaldi – 32 Jones St. nr Bleecker St. — caffevivaldi.com / 212-691-7538
a classic, old jazz club in the Village, Caffe V often surprises with a wonderfully eclectic lineup. It’s my favorite spot for an evening of listening enjoyment and discovery.

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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, with a population of 8.5 million, had a record 60 million visitors last year and was TripAdvisor’s Traveler’s Choice Top U.S. Destination for 2017. Quality shows draw crowds.
Try to reserve seats for these top NYC events in advance, even if just on day of performance.

NYCity Vacation Travel Guide Video (Expedia):

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WHAT’S ON VIEW
These are My Fave Special Exhibitions @ MUSEUMS / Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue
(See the New York Times Arts Section for listings of all museum exhibitions,
and also see the expanded reviews of these exhibitions)

Museum of the City of New York
NY AT ITS CORE (ongoing)
“Ten years in the making, New York at Its Core tells the compelling story of New York’s rise from a striving Dutch village to today’s “Capital of the World.” The exhibition captures the human energy that drove New York to become a city like no other and a subject of fascination the world over. Entertaining, inspiring, important, and at times bemusing, New York City “big personalities,” including Alexander Hamilton, Walt Whitman, Boss Tweed, Emma Goldman, JP Morgan, Fiorello La Guardia, Jane Jacobs, Jay-Z, and dozens more, parade through the exhibition. Visitors will also learn the stories of lesser-known New York personalities, like Lenape chieftain Penhawitz and Italian immigrant Susie Rocco. Even animals like the horse, the pig, the beaver, and the oyster, which played pivotal roles in the economy and daily life of New York, get their moment in the historical spotlight. Occupying the entire first floor in three interactive galleries (Port City, 1609-1898, World City, 1898-2012, and Future City Lab) New York at Its Core is shaped by four themes: money, density, diversity, and creativity. Together, they provide a lens for examining the character of the city, and underlie the modern global metropolis we know today. mcny.org” (NYCity Guide)

Guggenheim Museum
‘MYSTICAL SYMBOLISM: THE SALON DE LA ROSE+CROIX IN PARIS, 1892-1897’ (through Oct. 4). This brilliantly tasteless exhibition, complete with carmine walls and blue velvet settees, plunges viewers into a spiritualist — and, let’s say it, tawdry — Parisian collective of the last decade of the 19th century. Around the time Cézanne and van Gogh were down in Provence analyzing apples and mountains, the artists of the Salon de la Rose+Croix painted lovesick Orpheuses, busty femmes fatales and virginal shepherdesses, all in the service of the salon’s dubious mystic founder, Joséphin Péladan, an author with a taste for high drama and white robes. Most of the artists here are little exhibited today. Much of their work is sordid; some is simply gross. But it’s all weirdly compelling, and a reminder of the hunger even we alleged moderns still nurse for worlds beyond this one. (Jason Farago-NYT)

and you should be sure to check out these special exhibitions at that little museum on Fifth Ave., The Metropolitan Museum of Art
(open 7 days /week, AND always Pay What You Wish)

‘CRISTÓBAL DE VILLALPANDO: MEXICAN PAINTER OF THE BAROQUE’ (through Oct. 15). “In 1683, the leading painter of colonial Mexico painted a stupefying altarpiece for the cathedral of Puebla: a 26-foot showstopper that merged a radiant vision of Jesus’ transfiguration into light with a grimmer narrative of Israelites attacked by snakes. Now, for the first time ever, Villalpando’s altarpiece has left Mexico and stands alone in the Robert Lehman Collection wing of the Met, where you could spend days gaping at its churning collision of saints and mortals, and puzzling over the strange confluence of Old and New Testament visions. Compared with Baroque painting in Italy or Flanders, the Mexican version was lighter and less rigid, making use of bright color and free ornamentation. Ten other paintings by Villalpando, all but one lent from Mexican collections, round out the presentation, but it’s the altarpiece that matters, and it’s here for your veneration into the fall.” (NYT-Farago) 212-535-7710, metmuseum.org

‘TALKING PICTURES: CAMERA-PHONE CONVERSATIONS BETWEEN ARTISTS’ (through Dec. 17). “One of the wisest, savviest museum exhibitions of the summer may not have much actual art in it, but it circles the subject like a satellite around a planet. Using prints, slide shows, books and iPads, it presents image-only camera-phone exchanges between 12 pairs of artists and is full of flashes of wit, poetry, even genius. Observers will find occasional momentous events, both personal and presidential.” (NYT – Roberta Smith) 212-535-7710, metmuseum.org

‘STREAMS AND MOUNTAINS WITHOUT END: LANDSCAPE TRADITIONS OF CHINA’ (through Jan. 6, 2019). “If you’ve seen only ash-aired Beijing, or that architectural Oz Shanghai, you haven’t seen China. Most of the country is wide-open space, green and blue: hills, plains, water. And it was for an escape to that openness that some Chinese urbanites yearned in centuries past. Their dream: to sit in on a terrace halfway up a mountain, with tea steeping, an ink-brush at hand, a friend at the door, and a waterfall splashing nearby. Not just for vacation. Forever. One way they could live the dream was through images of the kind seen in this show. Technically, it’s a collection reinstallation spiced with a few loans. But the Met’s China holdings are so broad and deep that some of the pictures here are resurfacing for the first time in almost a decade; one is finally making its debut a century after it was acquired. And there’s more than just paintings on view: ceramics, textiles and scholar’s rocks fill out the panorama.” (NYT-Holland Cotter) 212-535-7710, metmuseum.org

‘JAPANESE BAMBOO ART: THE ABBEY COLLECTION’ (through Feb. 4). “This fabulous show celebrates Diane and Arthur Abbey’s gift of some 70 bamboo baskets and sculptures, which nearly doubles the Met’s already outstanding holdings in this genre and brings them into the 20th and 21st centuries. The curator has embedded this trove within what is essentially a second exhibition that traces bamboo’s presence through folding screens, ink paintings, porcelain, netsuke, kimonos and more.” (NYT-Roberta Smith)
212-535-7710, metmuseum.org

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Museum Mile is a section of Fifth Avenue which contains one of the densest displays of culture in the world. Eight museums can be found along this section of Fifth Avenue:
• 105th Street – El Museo del Barrio (closed Sun-Mon)*
• 103rd Street – Museum of the City of New York (open 7 days /week)
• 92nd Street – The Jewish Museum (closed Wed) (Sat FREE) (Thu 5-8 PWYW)
• 91st Street – Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum (open 7 days /week)
• 89th Street – National Academy Museum (closed Mon-Tue)
• 88th Street – Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (closed Thu) (Sat 6-8 PWYW)
• 86th Street – Neue Galerie New York (closed Tue-Wed) (Fri 6-8 FREE)
Last, but certainly not least, America’s premier museum
• 82nd Street – The Metropolitan Museum of Art (open 7 days /week)*
*always Pay What You Wish (PWYW)

Although technically not part of the Museum Mile, the Frick Collection (closed Mon) (SUN 11am-1pm PWYW) on the corner of 70th St. and Fifth Avenue and the The Morgan Library & Museum (closed Mon) (Fri 7-9 FREE) on Madison Ave and 37th St are also located near Fifth Ave.
Now plan your own museum crawl (info on hours & admission updated June 2, 2015).
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For other selected Museum and Gallery Special Exhibitions see Recent Posts in right Sidebar dated 09/23 and 09/21.
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