cultureNOW

cultureNOW dedicates itself to celebrating our cities through an appreciation of the city’s unique architecture, public art, history, and people.

New York City's monumental works of art and architecture are free to viewers every day. CultureNOW's iPhone app puts thousands of public artworks right at your fingertips, along with location maps, tour routes, historical information, plus a growing collection of photographs and podcasts by the very artists and architects themselves.

03/18/2026

Cocktails & Conversation is a series of dialogues about design that brings an architect together with a critic, journalist, curator, architectural historian, or colleague to discuss current architecture and urban design issues. For this program, Jordan Rogove, FAIA, will present a new paradigm for disaster relief housing, using his work after the devastating Lahaina fire in Hawaii as a case study. He will be joined in conversation with journalist James S. Russell, FAIA Emeritus, over a custom-crafted cocktail to be enjoyed by all attendees.

journalist curator architecturalhistorian

07/04/2025

Explore The Battery with the landscape architects who have helped shape it for nearly three decades. Learn about how The Battery’s location at the tip of Manhattan destined it to become the birthplace of country’s first corporate headquarters — for the Dutch West India Company — and how this strategically located open space has continuously transformed to serve New York City’s social, commercial and climatic forces.

Tour Leaders:
Jeff Poor ASLA, LEED AP, Partners, Starr Whitehouse Landscape Architects and Planners
Laura Starr FASLA, LEED AP, Principal, Starr Whitehouse Landscape Architects and Planners
Layng Pew, AIA, WXY architecture + urban design

Starting Point: Meet at the Broadway entrance to the Park across from Bowling Green.

Date : Monday, July 7, 2025
Time : 11:00 AM 1:00 PM

Location :
The Battery
New York, NY, 10004

Registration link in bio.

WXY Architecture + Urban Design

06/18/2025

To kick off the United States’ upcoming 250th birthday and celebrate New York’s 400th Anniversary, It Happened Here is planned for the weekend of July 4, 2025 and will compress the city’s 400 years into 5 days with each day being devoted to a century of the city’s life and history. The program will feature multiple types of activities, including tours, panels, and special events that will take place in many of the sites downtown where highlighted historical events actually occurred, supplemented with additional information and images via our digital “museum without walls” app.

04/30/2025

Everyday over 700,000 New Yorkers pass through Midtown along Park Avenue to and from Grand Central Terminal. This is a part of the City where in a few blocks you can see many of the forces that have shaped our city. There are icons of architecture (Midtown Modernism) and capitalism such as Lever, Seagram, and the Chrysler building. There are icons of real estate such as the Grand Hyatt and Helmsley. Under construction is one of the city’s tallest office buildings Chase. There are great clubs and great churches. This walk will showcase some of the art and architecture along Park Avenue and tell some of the stories about its past, its present, and perhaps future.

The tour is available as a guided tour, as well as a virtual tour.

04/15/2025

Cocktails & Conversation is a series of dialogues about design that brings together an architect with a critic, journalist, curator, or architectural historian to discuss current design issues. For this program, Austin Sakong, AIA, of FXCollaborative will discuss how New York's buildings can be reinvented to meet current societal needs and the climate imperative while retaining the city's characteristic fabric in a program entitled "Historical Reinvention". He will be joined in conversation with Anna Kodé of The New York Times over a custom-crafted cocktail to be enjoyed by all attendees.

Registration link : https://bit.ly/4lxUT87

04/02/2025

On the seventh day of Passover April 8, 1730 the nascent Jewish community of New York City consecrated the Mill Street Synagogue at what today is 26 South William Street. Congregation Shearith Israel which was has long since moved to the Upper West Side of Manhattan. The history of the Jewish communities in New York and its first native born Jewish leader, the most dedicated and influential Hazzan, Gershom Mendes Seixas, is well documented. In addition to his contributions to the Revolutionary War effort, he was also a trustee of Kings College and participated in George Washington’s Inauguration. The street was co-named Seixas Way on April 8,2019. In August 2019 a plaque was installed at 22 South William Street to commemorate the Mill Street Synagogue. It is, therefore, our intention to raise the community’s awareness regarding the important contribution of Seixas and his congregation to the rise of New York as that most cosmopolitan of American cities.

Registration link in bio.

03/19/2025

The Alexander Hamilton Immigrant Achievement Awards was held on the 249th anniversary of Alexander Hamilton’s appointment as the Captain of the 1st Battalion of the 5th Artillery Unit, the oldest battalion still existing in the United States Army and the only one remaining from the Revolution. The award honors immigrants who have made an impact in Lower Manhattan. The awardees were Daniel Libeskind, Marcus Samuelsson, Ya-Ting Liu, and Graeme Birchall.

03/13/2025

The Alexander Hamilton Immigrant Achievement Awards are given to naturalized citizens of the United States who have made outstanding contributions to Lower Manhattan and New York City. This year’s ceremony will be held on the 249th anniversary of Alexander Hamilton’s appointment as the Captain of the 1st Battalion of the 5th Artillery Unit, the oldest battalion still existing in the United States Army and the only one remaining from the Revolution.
Registration Link in Bio.

03/04/2025

It Happened Here: Gala

There almost 1000 events of global, local and national significance that occurred downtown. Since 2025 is the official 400th anniversary of New York’s founding and almost the sesquicentennial of our country it July 4th weekend would be a perfect time to celebrate both events and since most of the places where things happened are fairly close together it would be possible to compress it into a 5-day festival in Lower Manhattan on July 4th weekend. Every day will be a century and we will have tours, open houses, and other special programs, of which this is an ‘amuse bouche’.

We have a long list of partnering organizations, in addition to New York City’s Department of Cultural Affairs and New York State Council on the Arts, Humanities New York for their support, and our friends here at WSA– they have all been terrific. For those of you who have attended our Cocktails & Conversations series at the Center for Architecture you will be aware of how seriously we take our drink pairings. Many have you have met Toby Cecchini and David Moo who are our regular bartenders. They spend considerable time crafting an appropriate beverage for each program. For the special event we wanted to do something special so we reached out to David Wondrich who is a cocktail historian- David came up with some of New York’s historic cocktails. When he shared them, he said that they were all delicious which is why New Yorkers liked to drink them. Natasha David who we met during one of our cocktail programs reimagined them.
bellerjeau

research.office

02/28/2025

Black History : Much of Black history in New York revolves around Foley Square. This was a two-part event. First, we had a tour of the African Burial Ground with its architect Rodney Leon, including a look at some of the artworks commissioned for the Burial Ground which depict the experience of slaves. This was followed by the second part of the program highlighting three future jurists who collaborated at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund: Justice Thurgood Marshall, Judge Constance Baker Motley, and Judge Robert L. Carter.

02/26/2025

American Presidents in New York: It Happened Here :
Every American President passed through New York City. Some were born here such as Theodore Roosevelt. Some lived here. Herbert Hoover spent his post Presidential years residing in the Presidential Suite at the Waldorf Astoria. Some were Married Here. John Tyler married Julia Gardiner at the Church of the Ascension on 5th Avenue & 10th Street in 1844. Chester Arthur worked in New York first as a lawyer and later as the Collector of the Port of New York, a position which actually paid more than the presidency. Grover Cleveland was operated on for cancer of the jaw on a yacht off of Pier A. Some like Ulysses S Grant went bankrupt here. Abraham Lincoln gave the famous speech at Cooper Union that launched his candidacy and sadly returned a few years later in a casket to City Hall to terminate it. The appropriate place to celebrate President’s Day is, of course, Federal Hall, our first capital whose balcony was the site of Washington’s Inauguration Speech.

Address

37-24, 24th Street, Suite 102
New York, NY
11101

Website

http://www.culturenow.org/

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when cultureNOW posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Museum

Send a message to cultureNOW:

Shortcuts

Want your museum to be the top-listed Museum in New York?