No plans? We've got your schedule set with great events and activities for the week.
Monday, Sept. 16
Make your way down to the Brooklyn Art Library in Williamsburg to join The Sketchbook Project, a global, crowd-sourced project that collects and shares sketchbooks full of drawings and paintings submitted by artists. The Sketchbook Project is also a traveling exhibition of handmade books. Anyone from anywhere is welcome to participate in The Sketchbook Project.
Sign up (at the Art Library or online), get a book and send it back. The idea is for participants from all walks of life to fill the pages of a blank 32 page Saddle Stitch bound sketchbook and send it back for inclusion in the Brooklyn Art Library alongside more than 27,871 sketchbooks from 135 countries. Your book also joins a multi-city exhibition around North America and, for an extra charge, can be professionally digitized and added to their Digital Library. What's stopping you becoming a exhibited artist? (At the Brooklyn Art Library. 103A N. 3rd St., Brooklyn. Open noon to 8 p.m. every day.)
Fall For Dance features four professional dance troupes — New York City Ballet, Paul Taylor Dance Company, Ronald K. Brown/Evidence and STREB Extreme Action Company — performing at Central Park's Delacorte Theater for two nights only, ending Tuesday. Free tickets are available on the day of the performance.
Tuesday, Sept. 17
3rd Ward is a workspace and education center specializing in teaching people new skills across a variety of fields including art, media, jewelry, metalworking, woodworking and electronics. Starting tonight is a five-session chair making intensive, in which students will build a complete side chair, starting from rough cherry lumber. This class will focus on machining methods as well as hand tool work, from milling, measuring and marking to final assembly. Students will follow pre-designed chair plans, and by the end of the five-session course you'll have a throne you can own. (195 Morgan Ave., Brooklyn.)
Anna Nicole, opening tonight at BAM, has been described by The New York Times as "an engrossing, outrageous, entertaining and, ultimately, deeply moving new opera.” Merging lowbrow bawdiness and highbrow operatic craft, British composer Mark-Anthony Turnage and librettist Richard Thomas ("Jerry Springer: The Opera") immortalize the tumultuous life of Anna Nicole Smith — stripper, Playboy playmate, and formidable tabloid queen. (Through Sept. 28 as part of 2013's Next Wave Festival.)
Wednesday, Sept. 18
The New York Transit Museum is the largest museum in the United States devoted to urban public transportation history, and one of the finest institutions of its kind in the world. Permanent exhibitions include "Steel, Stone & Backbone: Building New York's Subways 1900-1925" a look at the building of New York City's first subway line, various construction methods, and the people who built it, and "On the Streets: New York's Trolleys and Buses" which contains a simulated traffic intersection complete with traffic lights and coordinated walk-don't walk signs, parking meters, fire hydrants, and an array of other "street furniture." You can also view Michael Jackson's "Bad" music video — shot at Hoyt–Schermerhorn station — and view a collection of Subway inspired LP vinyl album covers. Hiroyuki Suzuki's striking black and white photographs of subway infrastructure is not to be missed. (Located at the corner of Boerum Place and Schermerhorn Street, Brooklyn Heights. Listen to a Spotify playlist of train & subway themed songs here.)
Go after-hours gallery-hopping in the Metropolitan Museum's reinstalled New European Paintings Galleries, 1250–1800, while experiencing four different concerts in four different galleries by some of the world’s leading Renaissance and Baroque musicians. Tickets include Metropolitan Museum admission.
Thursday, Sept. 19
This evening, celebrate the opening of Photoville 2013 at Brooklyn Bridge Park. Photoville is a Brooklyn-based pop up exhibition space built from freight containers. Photoville also includes lectures, hands-on workshops and night-time projections centered around a beer and food garden. Tonight, get a peek of juror highlights from "The Fence," a summer-long, outdoor photo exhibition that explores the essence of community across cultural boundaries and geographical lines. Also check out the multimedia presentation "Adventures Across the 7 Seas," a curated multimedia presentation of diverse photographic images that navigate humanity’s deep relationship to water.
Friday, Sept. 20
Looking for a truly intimate musical experience? Enjoy back-in-the-day “no amp” salon jazz in a historic Brooklyn Brownstone home with a take-off-your-shoes vibe and a late night fish fry. Book tickets here.
Saturday, Sept. 21
The final weekend of the 87th Annual Feast of San Gennaro unfolds on the streets of historic Little Italy, the lower Manhattan neighborhood that served as the first home in America for hundreds of thousands of Italian immigrants.
Sunday, Sept. 22
An enormous selection of discussions, interviews and presentations unfolds today at the the largest free literary event in New York City, the Brooklyn Book Festival. There are specific activities for kids, tweens and teens including The Target Children’s Area, for the youngest readers of the festival, which celebrates a day of picture books, stories and illustrations. The Youth Stoop hosts discussions, readings and conversations all day long, targeted at older kids and teenagers. Additionally, illustrators and cartoonists will entertain by drawing for children and holding interactive events. (At Brooklyn Borough Hall and Plaza, 209 Joralemon St., Brooklyn. A full week of “Bookend” literary-themed events with venues in clubs, parks, bookstores, theaters and libraries across the borough runs from Sept. 16 to 22, serving readers of all ages.)
