4th Annual Jewish Museum Mile Festival Opens Today, 6/12

Now celebrating its 34th year, the annual Museum Mile Festival (www.museummilefestival.org) takes place rain or shine today, June 12, 2012, from 6:00 pm to 9:00 pm.

Over 1.5 million people have taken part in this annual celebration since its inception. Festival attendees can walk the Mile between 82nd Street and 105th Street while visiting nine of New York City's finest cultural institutions which are open free to the public throughout the evening, as well as to 110th Street, the site of Museum Mile's newest museum, the Museum for African Art, where they will be greeted by music and outdoor art activities.  Several other participating museums will also offer outdoor art activities for children.

The Museum Mile Festival's opening ceremony takes place at 5:45 pm at National Academy Museum & School (Fifth Avenue at 89th Street).  Traditionally, the Commissioner of Cultural Affairs and other city and state dignitaries open the Festival. 

El Museo del Barrio; The Museum of the City of New York; The Jewish Museum; Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution; National Academy Museum & School; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; Neue Galerie New York; Goethe-Institut New York/German Cultural Center; and The Metropolitan Museum of Art are the nine institutions participating in this highly successful collaboration. (The Goethe-Institut New York has moved to an interim location.) The Museum for African Art, opening in its new home in a year, has joined the Museum Mile Festival as its newest member. 

Fifth Avenue is closed to traffic and becomes a strollers' haven. Special exhibitions and works from Permanent Collections are on view inside the museums' galleries and live music from jazz to Broadway tunes to string quartets is featured in front of several of the museums. Additional street entertainers perform along Fifth Avenue all evening. Festival attendees will be among the first to see Caribbean: Crossroads of the World, examining the visual arts and aesthetic development across the Caribbean and considering the histories of the Spanish, French, Dutch and English islands and their diasporas, at El Museo del Barrio, opening that evening. Other exhibitions on view include: Capital of Capital: New York City and the Creation of the Global Economy, which will explore the historic factors that led to the emergence of New York City as the world's leading financial center, at TheMuseum of the City of New York; Edouard Vuillard: A Painter and His Muses, 1890-1940, featuring key works by this twentieth-century master whose unique blend of tradition and modernity evokes the refined and sophisticated society of his patrons, at The Jewish Museum;  Altering Perspectives: Women Artists Then and Now, Art of Another Kind: International Abstraction and the Guggenheim, 1949-1960, a collection-based exhibition exploring the affinities and differences between artists working continents apart in a period of great transition following World War II, at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; Heinrich Kuehn and His American Circle: Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Steichen, the Neue Galerie's second ever photography show and a stunning survey of work illustrating Kuehn's role both within the Viennese avant-garde, and the international development of photography as an art form; and Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations, which explores the impact of two Italian designers from different eras on contemporary notions of fashionability by comparing and contrasting 90 of their signature designs, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Established in 1978 to increase public awareness of its member institutions and promote public support of the arts, the Museum Mile Festival serves as a model for similar events across the country. For further information, the public may call 212-606-2296 or visit the festival Web site at MuseumMileFestival.org.