Upcoming Arts Happenings in Long Island City

We thought we’d survey the local arts spaces and bring you news of what’s coming up so you can get your art on with minimal fuss.

MOMI
Friday, May 11 to Sunday, May 20, 2018
36-01 35 Avenue, Astoria

Roll out the red carpet. Smile for the paparazzi. Tell Carlo he’s a dead man. While others fret over conflicts between theatrical and streaming, red carpets and selfies, true cinephiles turn their attention to the movie event of the year: The Caan Film Festival at Museum of the Moving Image. In celebration of the Bronx-born, Sunnyside-raised, and Meisner-instructed actor, this year’s edition highlights James Caan’s diversity, from his electric Oscar-nominated turn as Sonny Corleone in The Godfather to race car driving for Howard Hawks (Red Line 7000), from action-comedy (Freebie and the Bean, Harry and Walter Go to New York) to song and dance (Funny Lady), and from serving as both actor and director (Hide in Plain Sight) to achieving both safe-cracking sublimity and self-erasing transcendence (Thief). More information.

LIC Springs!
Saturday, May 12
Vernon Boulevard between 50th and 46th Avenues; noon to 5pm

LIC Partnership hosts its 5th Annual LIC Springs! this weekend. “Celebrate Long Island City and enjoy live music, dance, and theater performances plus interactive lessons, art & sculpture-making, fitness classes, outdoor dining, pop-up activities, sports games and more, free and open to all ages.” More information and see our LIC Springs! post from 2016.

Flux Factory
Saturday, May 12, 2018; 1-5pm; daily for additional works
39-31 29th St, Long Island City

Flux Factory opened the very first group exhibition, Wilder LIC, across the street at the Windmill Community Garden (39-22 29th Street), which Flux co-founded with neighborhood partners in 2016. New artworks will be on view until June 17, dawn to dusk every day, with special performances throughout the month. On Saturday, May 12 from 1-5pm, the special performance “Good Vibrations Acoustic Cartography Tour” will be happening:

Using his custom Mobile Listening Kits, Wilder LIC artist Johann Diedrick will be leading three Tours on Saturday May 12th, each lasting 1 hour. The tours encourage participants to shift the way they relate to our environment through sound. With the Mobile Listening Kits, participants can tap into the least audible sounds of the Windmill Community Garden including soil movements, worms, water, and the air around us.

With the use of the Mobile Listening Kits, participants can tune in to subtle acoustic vibrations in the environment and explore the site’s cracks and surfaces. A field guide for urban listening directs aural explorers to acoustic ‘points of interest.’

Tour spots are limited to 6 participants per tour; tickets are required; a suggested $5 – $10 donation is also requested. RSVP for 1pm-2pm tour | RSVP for 2:30-3:30pm tour | RSVP for 4pm-5pm tour

Noguchi Museum
Sunday, May 13, 2018; 1-5pm
9-01 33rd Road, Astoria/LIC

Hands-On at Noguchi | Drawing Clouds

Taking inspiration from the installation Miya Ando: Clouds, participants in this drawing workshop will investigate natural surfaces and forms. Inspired by a Japanese zengo (Zen phrase), Ando’s suspended sculptures are made from solid, optical glass etched internally with cloud imagery, based on the artist’s drawings and photographs. For ages 18 and up. Previous experience is not necessary. $10 members / $20 non-members; includes full Museum admission. Advance registration is required.

More information.

LIC Arts Open
Wednesday, May 16 to Sunday, May 20th, 2018; noon to 6pm
Various locations

The 8th Annual LIC Arts Open Festival 

An exciting celebration of the thriving arts community in Long Island City, Queens. NYC’s fastest growing creative community is celebrating its artistic diversity with a weeklong festival. The festival is open to the public and features myriad cultural activities and events, many of them FREE!

More information.

Chocolate Factory Theater
Wednesday, May 16 to Saturday, May 26, 2018; Wednesdays through Saturdays at 8pm
5-49 49th Avenue, Long Island City

Milka Djordjevich: ANTHEM

Questioning contemporary dance’s predisposition towards neutrality, authenticity and the de-sexualization of the female body, ANTHEM embraces theatricality, virtuosity and sass. The work weaves together existing and imagined vernacular dance styles to explore labor, play, and feminine-posturing. Four women execute a repetitive yet complex movement vocabulary that evolves as they rotate hypnotically within the confines of a square. Over time, the meditative rigor of their steps dissolves into a tangle of commotion, blurring the distinction between the mundane and the glamorous.

More information.

Materials For The Arts
33-00 Northern Boulevard
May 17, 2018; 6:30-8:30pm

MFTA Celebrating 40: Steel Pan and Stilt Walkers 

The 22-member Tropical Fete Steel Pan youth ensemble will play from a set list that includes Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars’ Uptown Funk, Beethoven’s Für Elise, Ed Sheeran’s Shape of You, Louie Armstrong’s What A Wonderful World, and more. Following the performance, you can try your hand at playing the steel pan during an interactive, hands-on workshop. RSVP here.

Dorsky Gallery
Sunday, May 20, 2018; 1:30-3pm
11-03 45th Avenue, Long Island City

All About Water: A conversation with artists Resa Blatman, Stacy Levy, and Naoe Suzuki
moderated by Michele L’Heureux
Seating is Limited
RSVP 718-937-6317 or rsvp@dorsky.org

The work of artists Resa Blatman, Stacy Levy, and Naoe Suzuki addresses the complexities of water as a political, environmental, and human resource. This conversation will focus on each artist’s approach to addressing the fragility of our planet’s waterways. The artists will talk about the role they’d like their artwork to play in the larger conversation about climate change and how that informs their choices of material, method, and medium.

More information.

SculptureCenter
Wednesday, May 23, 6-8pm (Opening Reception)
Off-Site at Hunter’s Point South Park
RSVP

Xaviera Simmons: Convene

Join SculptureCenter on Wednesday, May 23, 6-8pm to celebrate the opening of Xaviera Simmons: Convene, the third temporary public art project commissioned through our art education program Public Process. Convene is a sculptural installation of aluminum canoes painted with designs that evoke national flags symbolic of the diverse historical and contemporary demographic makeup of Astoria and Long Island City. The work will be installed off site along the East River in Hunter’s Point South Park in Long Island City from through August 19, 2018.

The project is curated by SculptureCenter Executive Director and Chief Curator Mary Ceruti. More information.

Additionally, be sure to check out the Socrates Sculpture Park calendar, which is full of artful and physical things to do there.

And while we were surveying the offerings, we came across this announcement from late in 2017 regarding the Fisher Landau Center for Art (38-27 30th Street, Long Island City):

Fisher Landau is closed
“The Fisher Landau Center for Art in Long Island City closed. The Emily Fisher Landau Foundation, which has already pledged over 400 artworks to the Whitney Museum of American Art, announced that it will shift its operations toward exhibition loans and grant fundraising for up-and-coming artists.”