As the flowers start to bloom and the dogs are playing in the parks it is the perfect time to take a day trip to an art exhibit. You can walk, take the bus or subway, or ride a bike to these locations, and best of all they are free to New School students and to the general public.
Museum of Modern Art
There are three exhibitions at the MoMA that are free to all New School students. You can visit the Ellsworth Kelly exhibit until June 11th in a rare chance to view Sculpture for a Large Wall (1957) and some of Ellsworth Kelly’s modern artworks. The Guillermo del Toro exhibit is open until April 15th to see the making behind his Oscar winning film Pinocchio and experience what it is like to be on a movie set. And the Ming Smith exhibit is open until May 29th. According to the MoMA, the Ming Smith exhibits “highlights how Smith’s images collapse the senses, encouraging us to attend to the hue of sound, the rhythm of form, and the texture of vision.”
The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology
The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology is open every day with free admission. Now is a great time to visit your favorite fashion exhibits before the spring semester is over. There are two current exhibits on display. The Fresh, Fly, and Fabulous: Fifty Years of Hip Hop exhibit is open until April 23rd and the Designing Women: Fashion Creators and Their Interiors is open until May 14th. The Fresh, Fly, and Fabulous: Fifty Years of Hip Hop exhibition celebrates the 50th anniversary of the birth of hip hop and examines the roots and history of its fashion. Designing Women: Fashion Creators and Their Interiors exhibit is showing 70 garments with images of the interiors of female fashion designers’s work spaces.
Bronx Museum of the Arts
The Bronx Museum of the Arts is open daily with free admission. There are two current exhibitions. The first exhibition is the Abigail DeVille: Bronx Heavens, featuring sculptures and installations made from found materials to talk about how the Bronx has been a space for immigrant and migrant communities. The second exhibition is Swagger and Tenderness: The South Bronx Portraits by John Ahearn and Rigoberto Torres, featuring portraits, essays, poetry, and interviews that highlight the importance of every individual in John Ahearn and Rigoberto Torres’s famous portraits of South Bronx neighbors. The Swagger and Tenderness exhibit closes on the April 30th and the Bronx Heavens exhibit is open until June 18th.
The New Museum
The New Museum is exhibiting Wangechi Mutu: Intertwined until June 4th. According to the exhibit statement, “Wangechi Mutu: Intertwined will trace connections between recent developments in the artist’s sculptural practice and her decades-long exploration of the legacies of colonialism, globalization, and African and diasporic cultural traditions. At once culturally specific and transnational in scope, Mutu’s work grapples with contemporary realities, while proffering new models for a radically changed future informed by feminism, Afrofuturism, and interspecies symbiosis.” The New museum allows for free entry to all under 18 and pay-what-you-wish hours between 7-9pm.
The Brooklyn Museum
The Brooklyn Museum’s Thierry Mugler: Couturissime exhibit is closing on May 7th. If you have not gone yet, it is the perfect chance to see Mugler’s fashion designs in person. The exhibit is not free but there is a discount for all students. The admission fee is $12 discounted. The exhibit features over 100 outfits, sketches, and installations revolving around Mugler and his fashion legacy.