Met Museum Celebrates Hispanic Heritage Month 9/25
¡Fiesta! at Metropolitan Museum Celebrates Hispanic Heritage Month with Full Day of Programs and Performances
Event Date: September 25, 2010Event Time: 10:00 a.m. - 8:00 p.m.
Location: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street, Manhattan
¡Fiesta! Celebrating Hispanic and Latin American Culture will be presented on September 25, 2010, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art by the Museum's Multicultural Audience Development Initiative and its Education Department. ¡Fiesta! is the Metropolitan's first Museum-wide, all-day event in celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month, and it features programs for all ages from 10 a.m. until 8 p.m. ¡Fiesta! offers visitors art-making activities, talks, Museum tours, music and dance performances, films, and many more engaging programs related to Latin American art from the Metropolitan Museum's collection. Nearly all the ¡Fiesta! programs are free with Museum admission.
Daytime Programs
The festivities begin at 10 a.m. with native American dances and a procession on the Museum's front steps by Cetiliztli Nauhcampa Quetzalcoatl in Ixachitlan performers, who will also talk about art and dance in the galleries between 12:30 p.m. and 2 p.m. Family programs include a treasure hunt related to Hispanic and Latin American culture from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., storytime in Spanish and English from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., and drop-in art-making activities from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Other highlights are: drawing sessions for all ages from 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.; a demonstration of the Cuatro, a traditional Latin American instrument, at 2 p.m.; tango lessons at 3 p.m.; and a mariachi band procession at 4 p.m. There will be special Museum tours for ¡Fiesta! in Spanish at 10:30 a.m., 2 p.m., and 5 p.m., and in English at noon.
¡Fiesta! also features film programs for various ages: animated family films in Spanish with English subtitles from 10 a.m. to 11:30 a.m., presented in collaboration with the Havana Film Festival New York; Diego Rivera: I Paint What I See at 11:35 a.m.; and Latin Music USA: The Salsa Revolution at 12:45 p.m. In addition, at 2 p.m, Cinema Tropical will screen a documentary film on five contemporary Mexican women singers, Hasta el Ultimo Trago...Corazón (Till the Last Drop...My Love) (2005), followed by a discussion with Carlos A. Gutiérrez, co-founding director of Cinema Tropical, and Claudia Norman, director of the Celebrate México Now Festival.
Evening Concerts
In the evening, the Museum will host two special ¡Fiesta! musical programs. At 5:30 p.m., the Musica de Camara String Orchestra, which has been presenting Puerto Rican and Hispanic classical musicians in concert for more than 30 years, will perform a selection of works by Hispanic composers in the Museum's Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium. Tickets to the concert are $20 and include free Museum admission on September 25. To order tickets for the Musica de Camara concert, call 212-570-3949, visit the Museum's Box Office, or go to www.metmuseum.org/tickets.
At 7:30 p.m., an energetic performance by the urban bachata duo Loisaidas will take place at in the Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium. Hailing from Manhattan's Lower East Side, Aquiles Nunez (songwriter and vocalist) and longtime friend Isaiah Parker (producer) are known for their transformations of most popular forms of today's Latin music.
General Event Information
¡Fiesta! program information and directions to events throughout the Museum will be available at the Information Desk inside the main entrance on Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street, and in the Uris Center for Education, which is reached from the ground-floor entrance on Fifth Avenue at 81st Street. All ¡Fiesta! programs are free with Museum admission, with the exception of Musica de Camara's orchestral performance. Recommended Museum admission is $20.00 for adults, $15.00 for seniors (65 and over), and $10.00 for students. Children under 12 accompanied by an adult are free.
A complete schedule of ¡Fiesta! programs also can be found on the Museum's website: http://www.metmuseum.org/fiesta.aspx.
Dining operations throughout the Museum will be celebrating ¡Fiesta! with Latin-inspired entrees, soups, and desserts in the cafeteria and the new American Wing Café. Specialty cocktails, such as a prickly pear margarita, will be featured at the Great Hall Balcony Bar, Cantor Roof Garden, and Petrie Court Café and Wine Bar.
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