The Museum Mile Festival is a street party and open house at the museums along Fifth Avenue’s “Museum Mile” from 82nd Street to 105th Street in Manhattan’s Upper East Side. It’s held annually on the second Tuesday in June.
- The Africa Center
- El Museo del Barrio
- Museum of the City of New York
- Jewish Museum
- Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
- Guggenheim Museum
- Neue Museum
- Metropolitan Museum of Art
Museum Mile Festival 2021
Tuesday, June 8, 2021 ~ Hopefully the 2021 Museum Mile Festival will be back on Fifth Avenue. We’ll see next year.
#MMF2021
Museum Mile Festival 2020
Tuesday, June 9, 2020 ~ The 2020 Museum Mile Festival goes virtual on the Twitter, Facebook and Instagram accounts of museum participants.
#MMF2020
#VirtualMuseumMile
Museum Mile Festival 2019
The 2019 Museum Mile Festival is Tuesday, June 11, 2019 from 6-9pm, rain or shine.
The opening ceremony is at El Museo del Barrio at 5:45pm.
#MMF2019
The Africa Center
The Africa Center will offer activities and fun for the whole family.
All Power to All People by Hank Willis Thomas, a larger than life outdoor steel sculpture celebrating cultural identities in the African diaspora, is presented on the Center’s public plaza in partnership with Kindred Arts Cultural Equity Initiative. I had a dream, an exhibition produced in partnership with Moleskine Foundation, features 100 hand decorated notebooks made by young creatives who attended workshops in Rome, N’Djamena, Kampala and Harare.
El Museo del Barrio
Dance the night away with Aurora Flores and Zon del Barrio, Palladium Mambo All Stars, and DJ Bembona.
Visitors can travel back in time through a birthday photo booth inspired by the late 1960s, in partnership with Nuevayorkinos.
In celebration of its 50th anniversary, El Museo del Barrio presents Culture and the People: El Museo del Barrio, 1969-2019, a two-part exhibition featuring selections from the Permanent Collection (on view now) and a historic timeline of the institution (opening June 11).
Featuring over 80 artists, the exhibition will reflect on the institution’s activist origins and pioneering role as an organization dedicated to presenting and preserving Puerto Rican, Latinx, and Latin American art and culture.
Museum of the City of New York
The Museum of the City of New York is partnering with Blick Art Materials for a family friendly art-making activity on Fifth Avenue.
In recognition of the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, a watershed moment in the modern LGBTQ rights movement, the Museum of the City of New York presents Pride = Power! This series of exhibitions and events, including PRIDE: Photographs of Stonewall and Beyond by Fred W. McDarrah, invites New Yorkers and visitors from around the world to discover and celebrate LGBTQ history and culture. Also on view are The Voice of the Village: Fred W. McDarrah Photographs; City of Workers, City of Struggle: How Labor Movements Changed New York; Jackie Robinson: An Intimate Portrait of a Baseball Legend; Cycling in the City: A 200-Year History; A City for Corduroy: Don Freeman’s New York; New York at Its Core, Activist New York; and Timescapes.
The Jewish Museum
Steven Bernstein’s Sexmob (presented in collaboration with Bang on a Can) entertains the crowd.
Families can create playful portraits in relief, inspired by Leonard Cohen’s self-portrait drawings.
Leonard Cohen: A Crack in Everything, the first exhibition devoted to the imagination and legacy of the influential singer/songwriter, poet, and global icon from Montreal, features large-scale, immersive contemporary artworks inspired by Leonard Cohen’s life, work, and legacy. The exhibition also includes a video projection showcasing Cohen’s own drawings, and an innovative multimedia gallery where visitors can hear covers of Cohen’s songs by various musicians. Scenes from the Collection, featuring nearly 600 works from antiquities to contemporary art, is also on view.
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum: Nature
Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial features over 60 innovative projects that highlight the ways designers are collaborating with scientists, engineers, farmers, environmentalists, and nature itself to design a more harmonious and regenerative future.
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
NYC’s own all-woman Brazilian Samba Reggae drum line Fogo Azul entertains. They are great.
There is a button-making station led by Blick Art Materials.
On view during the 60th anniversary of the Guggenheim’s iconic Frank Lloyd Wright–designed building, Artistic License: Six Takes on the Guggenheim Collection celebrates the institution’s extensive 20th-century holdings through the intervention of six contemporary artists: Paul Chan, Cai Guo-Qiang, Jenny Holzer, Julie Mehretu, Richard Prince, and Carrie Mae Weems. Implicit Tensions: Mapplethorpe Now honors the legacy of the critically acclaimed yet controversial American artist Robert Mapplethorpe. The Hugo Boss Prize 2018: Simone Leigh, Loophole of Retreat presents new sculptures and a sound installation by Leigh exploring narratives of resilience and resistance.
Neue Galerie New York
The Self-Portrait, from Schiele to Beckmann examines works primarily from Austria and Germany made between 1900 and 1945. Approximately 70 self-portraits by more than 30 artists—both well-known figures and others who deserve greater recognition—are united in the presentation, which is comprised of loans from public and private collections worldwide. Also on view are Austrian Masterworks from Neue Galerie New York and Eclipse of the Sun: Art of the Weimar Republic.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
There is a Battle of the Legends vogueing competition from 6:30 to 7pm.
Camp: Notes on Fashion explores the origins of camp’s exuberant aesthetic and how the sensibility evolved from a place of marginality to become an important influence on mainstream culture. The exhibition includes some 250 objects, including womenswear and menswear, as well as sculptures, paintings, and drawings from the 17th century to the present. Play It Loud: Instruments of Rock & Roll presents one of the most influential artistic movements of the 20th century through more than 130 instruments that made the music possible. Also on view are The World between Empires: Art and Identity in the Ancient Middle East and The Roof Garden Commission: Alicja Kwade, ParaPivot (weather permitting).
Museum Mile Festival was started to develop new museum audiences
The festival was started in 1978 during a time in our history when support for the arts was declining. The festival brings together New Yorkers from all walks of life to enjoy the cultural riches of our city.
Why Museums are Important
Jean-Michel Basquiat was an American artist from Brooklyn with a Haitian – Puerto Rican heritage. His talent took him from a homeless kid in the Lower East Side to the first Black international art star in the 1980s.
In (2017) one of Basquiat’s paintings became the most expensive piece of art ever sold by an American artist, by a Black artist, and by a contemporary artist painted after 1980.
Basquiat’s mother took him to the museum when he was a little boy. He started dreaming of becoming an artist. That’s why museums are important.
Museum Mile Festival 2018
The 2018 Museum Mile Festival is Tuesday, June 12, 2018 from 6 – 9 pm, rain or shine.
#MMF2018
Museum Mile Festival 2017
2017’s opening ceremony is at El Museo del Barrio at 5:45pm. The party goes from 6-9pm, rain or shine.
#MMF2017
El Museo del Barrio
Fifth Avenue at 104th St
El Museo del Barrio is New York City’s Puerto Rican, Caribbean, and Latin American art museum. It was founded by the Puerto Rican community in El Barrio (East Harlem or Spanish Harlem).
NYC’s all-woman Brazilian drum marching band, Fogo Azul Bateria Feminina, will perform. DJ Shabbakano will keep the party moving. There will be a street performance by Carlos Jesus Martinez Dominguez & Leslie Jimenez.
NKAME a retrospective of Cuban printmaker Belkis Ayón, a striking exhibition of the artist’s exploration of the Abakuá secret society opens for the festival.
Museum of the City of New York
Fifth Avenue at 103rd St
Exhibitions at the Museum of the City of New York are partly about the Latin community because we are part of New York’s DNA.
Jewish Museum
Fifth Avenue at 92nd St
The Jewish Museum preserves Jewish cultural heritage. There are regular exhibitions about Latins because we are Jewish too.
Banda de los Muertos, NYC’s own Banda band (Mexican brass band) will perform.
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
Fifth Avenue at 91st St
Check out “Esperanza Spalding Selects,” an exhibition of people, culture and design curated by the popular American Latin Jazz musician. Through January 7, 2018.
Esperanza has it all in the mix. She is African-Native-European-Hispanic. Esperanza is fond of Brazilian music. She is one of the those artists who turns Classical and Jazz into Pop.
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
Fifth Avenue at 89th St
The Guggenheim has one of the great collections of Modern art. Paris was the center of the art world when the collections that are now part of the museum where assembled. The permanent collection includes many works by Spanish, French, Italian, Romanian, and Uruguayan artists.
The current exhibition Visionaries: Creating a Modern Guggenheim looks at the collection through the eyes of the patrons who created it. The exhibtion includes stunning work by Picasso and Brâncuși.
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Fifth Avenue at 82nd St
There is lots to see at New York City’s encyclopedia of art from pre-Columbian to Contemporary times. Current exhibitions include “Collecting the Arts of Mexico” and the “Crown of the Andes.”
For more information, visit museummilefestival.org