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Get Out and Do This: Snow Birds, Activists and Radical '70s Performance Art

By Daniel Jumpertz | January 13, 2014 8:19am
 The week's most exciting events are here for you in one handy guide.
Get Out and Do This - Events Mon Jan 13
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Monday, Jan. 13
"Dark Universe" is the new Space Show film at the American Museum of Natural History's Hayden Planetarium on the Upper West Side. With astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson as your guide, go beyond the night sky and into deep space to find out how discoveries over the past 100 years have led us to two great cosmic mysteries: dark matter and dark energy.

Tuesday, Jan. 14
Opening today at the Upper East Side's Metropolitan Museum is "Early American Guitars - The Instruments of C. F. Martin." Christian Frederick Martin, founder of the great American guitar firm C. F. Martin & Co., was the son of a cabinetmaker. Martin learned to build instruments from a Viennese master, but due to the restrictive guilds in Germany at the time, he moved to the United States in 1833, settling first in New York City and, later, Nazareth, Pa. In the US, Martin encountered the Spanish guitar and incorporated elements from that tradition into his own Viennese style of instrument construction. The result was a new form of the guitar, a style that would become important as a basis for other American makers of the instrument. The exhibition includes 35 instruments from the Martin Museum in Nazareth.

Wednesday, Jan. 15
New York City is known for its in-your-face persona and, over the years, citizens have banded together on issues as diverse as historic preservation, civil rights, wages, sexual orientation, and religious freedom. Using artifacts, photographs, audio and visual presentations, as well as interactive components that seek to tell the entire story of activism in the five boroughs, Activist New York, an exhibition at the Upper East Side's Museum Of The City Of New York, presents the passions and conflicts that underlie New York City's history of agitation.

Thursday, Jan. 16
Edgar Allan Poe: Terror of the Soul is a small exhibition of Poe’s manuscripts and first editions at Murray Hill's Morgan Library. Poe's mastery is represented by manuscripts, early printed editions, letters, and literary criticism published in newspapers, magazines and journals. On view is one of the earliest printings of The Raven and copies of Tamerlane, Poe's earliest published work and one of the rarest books in American literature. This evening at 7 p.m. catch "Auster on Poe: A Conversation with Paul Auster and Isaac Gewirtz." Award-winning writer Paul Auster (The New York Trilogy, Winter Journal) talks with Poe exhibition co-curator Gewirtz about his life spent reading the works of Edgar Allan Poe.

Friday, Jan. 17
"Rituals of Rented Island: Object Theater, Loft Performance and the New Psychodrama—Manhattan, 1970–1980" at the Upper East Side's Whitney Museum of American Art, illuminates a radical period of 1970s performance art that flourished in downtown Manhattan, and still remains largely unknown today. Working in lofts, storefronts, and alternative spaces, a group of artists, with backgrounds in theater, dance, music, and visual art, created complex new forms of performance to embody and address contemporary media, commercial culture, and high art. Through Feb 2.
A linked series screening at the Anthology Film Archives at 32 Second Avenue in the East Village includes videos, films, and documentation from artists of the era and features many pieces not on view in the exhibit. Through Jan. 21.

Saturday, Jan. 18
Winter brings many rare birds to New York City including the “snow birds” of the Arctic tundra, such as snow buntings and snowy owls. Look for these and other winter visitors such as horned larks, tree sparrows and rough-legged hawks, as well as wintering ducks, grebes and loons on this New York City Audubon field trip to Floyd Bennett Field and Fort Tilden, Queens. From 10.30 p.m until 4 p.m, registration fees $67.50/$75.00.

Sunday, Jan. 19
As New York and New Jersey play host to Super Bowl XLVIII this February, Madden NFL: 25 Years and Running at the Museum Of Moving Image in Astoria, Queens, looks back on 25 years of the groundbreaking video game franchise Madden NFL. The exhibition explores this landmark series, highlighting the game's focus on sports simulation and its aesthetic evolution and enduring cultural legacy. In addition to the five playable games, from the original John Madden Football (1988) on Apple II to the latest release Madden NFL 25 (2013) on Xbox One, the exhibition also features a timeline charting milestones in the series' development highlighted by gameplay footage from each year. At the Museum Of Moving Image, 36-01 35 Ave. (at 37th Street).