Some of New York City's venerable arts institutions are in the spotlight this week, with a new exhibition opening at the Museum of Modern Art and the New York Philharmonic moving back to its newly rebuilt performing space at Lincoln Center. Speaking with Weekend Edition host David Furst, WNYC's Culture and Arts Editor Steve Smith brings us his latest arts picks.
1. Just Above Midtown: Changing Spaces
One of the season's most promising new museum exhibitions is set to open Sunday, Oct. 9 at the Museum of Modern Art. "Just Above Midtown: Changing Spaces" doesn't focus on a single artist or historical style, but rather on a pioneering art space called Just Above Midtown, which was opened at 50 West 57th Street in 1974 by a then 25-year-old arts educator named Linda Goode Bryant. It was meant to provide a venue for Black artists to show at a level of visibility readily available to their white peers, and allowed them to pursue work in whatever medium and mode suited them, including abstraction, conceptual and performance art, and video. Future stars like David Hammons, Howardena Pindell and Lorraine O'Grady were among the artists who got an early boost at Just Above Midtown, and they're all represented in a show that Linda Goode Bryant helped to assemble. It opens on Oct. 9, and runs through February.
2. San Juan Hall: A New York Story
On Saturday, Oct. 8, Lincoln Center will reopen its flagship auditorium, David Geffen Hall, with a pair of concerts that pay tribute to a historic Black and Latin-American neighborhood that was displaced and demolished to make way for the construction of Lincoln Center itself. San Juan Hill was the name of the neighborhood, and "San Juan Hall: A New York Story" is a big new piece the Trinidad-born trumpeter and composer Etienne Charles wrote for his band, Creole Soul, to perform with the New York Philharmonic.
In composing "San Juan Hill," Charles found his inspiration in all the various kinds of music favored in Black and Latin-American neighborhoods, then and now: from jazz, blues, mambo, and calypso to disco and hip hop. The piece also includes recorded interviews with former residents of San Juan Hill and their families, as well as spoken narration by poet Carl Hancock Rux. There will be two performances Saturday, at 2 and 8 p.m. And, in an effort to make these concerts available to everyone, tickets are available on a Choose-What-You-Pay basis, starting at $5 per ticket, and a handful of free tickets will be distributed at the David Geffen Hall welcome center starting at 10:00 a.m. this morning. Check out Lincoln Center for details.
3. The New York Philharmonic comes home
The New York Philharmonic starts its own season in the newly renovated David Geffen Hall next week. Bear in mind that folks complained about the hall under question pretty much from the start in 1962. Now, 60 years later, the auditorium has been radically remodeled, with better acoustics, seating that surrounds the stage on all sides, more performance spaces, and better amenities and access.
The New York Philharmonic will give its extensively renovated hall a proper workout with its season-opening program on Wednesday, Oct. 12. Music director Jaap van Zweden conducts the world premiere of "Oyá," a new composition not just for the musicians, but for the hall itself, including its structural acoustics and lighting. Also on the program are a repeat performance of "Stride" by Tania León, which the New York Philharmonic commissioned, and premiered just before the pandemic shutdown in 2020 – it went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for music in 2021. There's also a beautifully quirky piece by John Adams, "My Father Knew Charles Ives," and the over-the-top Technicolor glitz of Respighi's "Pines of Rome." The program repeats three more times though Oct. 18, and you can find out more at NY Phil.