Museum Mile Festival Set for 6/14

Now celebrating its 38th year, the annual Museum Mile Festival takes place rain or shine on Tuesday, June 14, 2016, from 6:00pm to 9:00pm. Over 1.5 million people have taken part in this annual celebration since its inception. Festival attendees can walk the Mile on Fifth Avenue between 82nd Street and 105th Street while visiting seven of New York City's finest cultural institutions, which are open free to the public throughout the evening. The Museum Mile Festival's opening ceremony takes place at 5:45pm at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (1000 Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street). Traditionally, the Commissioner of Cultural Affairs and other city and state dignitaries open the Festival. Details on the Festival's offerings can be found at MuseumMileFestival.org.

Fifth Avenue is closed to traffic and becomes a strollers' haven for New York City's biggest block party. Special exhibitions and works from permanent collections are on view inside the museums' galleries and live music from jazz to Broadway tunes to mariachi is featured in front of several of the museums. The Metropolitan Museum of Art; Neue Galerie New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum; The Jewish Museum; The Museum of the City of New York; and El Museo del Barrio are the seven institutions participating in this highly successful collaboration.

Additional street entertainers perform along Fifth Avenue all evening. Exhibitions on view include: Antonio Lopez: Future Funk Fashion, exploring the artist and illustrator's daring exploration of race, gender and the body through fashion, at El Museo del Barrio; Roz Chast: Cartoon Memoirs, featuring more than 200 works by this distinguished artist, and showcasing her keen eye for the absurdities and insecurities that permeate daily life, including many situations that are particular to New York City, at the Museum of the City of New York; Isaac Mizrahi: An Unruly History, the first museum exhibition to focus on the influential American fashion designer, artist, and entrepreneur, at the Jewish Museum; Beauty - Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial, exploring aesthetic innovations through 250 works by 63 designers from around the globe, at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum; Moholy-Nagy: Future Present, the first comprehensive retrospective of the work of László Moholy-Nagy to appear in the United States in nearly fifty years, revealing a utopian artist who believed that art could work hand-in-hand with technology for the betterment of humanity, at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; Gustav Klimt's iconic portrait Adele Bloch-Bauer I at Neue Galerie New York; and Manus x Machina: Fashion in an Age of Technology, exploring how designers reconcile the handmade and the machine-made in the creation of haute couture and avant-garde ready-to-wear, 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 details on the Festival's offerings, the public may call 212-606-2296 or visit MuseumMileFestival.org.

Participating museums offer programs and services for visitors with disabilities. Please contact the museums you plan to visit to arrange access accommodations and for further information.

MUSICAL ENTERTAINERS will perform in front of these participating institutions:

104th Street El Museo del Barrio - It's Showtime NYC: music by DJ Mickey Perez spinning Afro Latin disco

92nd Street The Jewish Museum - Mariachi Flor de Toloache, in collaboration with Bang on a Can

89th Street Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum - Alsarah and the Nubatones, performing Nubian/Sudanese inspired East-African Retro-Pop

86th Street Neue Galerie New York - cabaret singer Kim David Smith

A wide variety of additional entertainers will be featured along Museum Mile that evening, including Magic Brian; Daisy Doodle's Parties, Magic, Face Painting & Balloons; Silly Billy the Very Funny Clown; and Sammie & Tudie's Imagination Playhouse

FAMILY ACTIVITIES:

There will also be an array of outdoor family activities for Museum Mile Festival attendees: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum will offer chalk drawing. Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum entertainment will include Imagination Playground in the museum's garden, and a sidewalk design activity in conjunction with the exhibition Pixar: The Design of Story. Visitors to the Jewish Museum can create an abstract fabric design using stamps and drawing techniques inspired by imagery in the exhibition Roberto Burle Marx: Brazilian Modernist and the looks on view in Isaac Mizrahi: An Unruly History. El Museo del Barrio will offer art-making for the entire family.

EXHIBITIONS ON VIEW:

El Museo del Barrio: Antonio Lopez: Future Funk Fashion; Figure and Form: Recent Acquisitions to the Permanent Collection; Joiri Minaya: Redecode; Sarah Zapata: Siempre X

Museum of the City of New York: Chris "Daze" Ellis: The City Is My Muse; Scenes from the South Bronx, 1976-82; Roz Chast: Cartoon Memoirs; New York's Yiddish Theater: From the Bowery to Broadway; Picturing Prestige: New York Portraits, 1700 - 1860; Activist New York; Gilded New York; and

Timescapes

The Jewish Museum: Isaac Mizrahi: An Unruly History; Roberto Burle Marx: Brazilian Modernist; Using Walls, Floors, and Ceilings: Beatriz Milhazes; Masterpieces & Curiosities: The Fictional Portrait; The Television Project: Some of My Best Friends; Culture and Continuity: The Jewish Journey; for children, Archaeology Zone: Discovering Treasures from Playgrounds to Palaces

Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum: Beauty-Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial; Thom Browne Selects; Pixar: The Design of Story; Energizing the Everyday: Gifts from the George R. Kravis II Collection; Passion for the Exotic: Louis Comfort Tiffany and Lockwood de Forest; Fragile Beasts; Immersion Room

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum: But a Storm is Blowing from Paradise: Contemporary Art of the Middle East and North Africa; Moholy-Nagy: Future Present; Guggenheim Collection; Thannhauser Gallery

Neue Galerie New York: Neue Galerie New York invites attendees of the 2016 Museum Mile Festival to visit the second floor gallery where Gustav Klimt's iconic portrait Adele Bloch-Bauer I (1907) hangs on permanent display. This work is joined by a selection of landscape and portrait paintings by Klimt, and a display of Austrian decorative arts from the early twentieth century.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Manus x Machina: Fashion in an Age of Technology; The Roof Garden Commission: Cornelia Parker, Transitional Object (PsychoBarn), weather permitting; and P.S. Art 2016: Celebrating the Creative Spirit of NYC Kids