The Broadsheet - Lower Manhattan’s Local Newspaper

Now through Saturday, the Battery Park City Authority is partnering with Illuminations.NYC, a non-profit organization that produces free, light-inspired art installations, to present a Spring Showcase on Belvedere Plaza (the elevated plaza between North Cove Marina and the World Financial Center ferry terminal). Billed as an “immersive multi-sensory light art festival,” the event will use the work of seven avant-garde light artists, long with a roster of jugglers, stilt walkers, fire circus artists, and DJs to transform the space into an outdoor art gallery, performance space, and music venue. This free family event features inventive pieces that incorporate technologies like projection mapping, interactive video art, and UV light art. 

Among the artists is Daniel Rautenbach, who will present his 2022 Masters Thesis project for NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, “Cui Bono”—a phrase from Cicero suggesting that culpability for a misdeed can be discerned by who benefits from it. This interactive light installation consists of immersive LED panels that react to the presence of those who approach—responding to how much space they take up and how much movement they exhibit. In this way, the piece invites users to visualize and spatially experience how organisms enter and influence an ecosystem.

Another virtuoso whose work is featured at the Illuminations Spring Showcase is Young-Min Choi, a South Korean-born, Brooklyn-based multimedia artist who works with visual coding languages, three-dimensional renders, and digital fabrication to create interactive experiences and artifacts that alter the viewer’s perception through embodied experience. Ms. Choi’s “Cloud Mirror” reflects where the viewer was three seconds in the past. As the participant’s breathing gets deeper and longer, their “reflection” (generated using point cloud data to produce an artistic interpretation of their body as seen through a depth camera) moves closer to the present. In this way, “Cloud Mirror” invites participants observe and communicate with past versions of themselves through body movements.

The Illuminations Spring Showcase is on view tonight through this Saturday, May 6, from 7:30pm to 10:30pm each evening (open until 11:30pm on Saturday). Admission is free, but registration is required. Get more information, or reserve complimentary tickets.

In the wake of the collapse of a Lower Manhattan parking garage in the Financial District on the evening of April 18, the City’s Department of Buildings has identified structural problems at a similar facility, located in the back of the 225 Rector Place condominium building. Read more...

Community Board 1 is getting behind a push to scale back the number of outdoor dining sheds on Lower Manhattan streets and sidewalks, led by the Coalition United for Equitable Urban Policy (CUEUP). The group describes itself as “an alliance of neighborhood and block associations, organizations, institutions, businesses, and residents united for collective action and participatory policymaking to ensure the safety, health, and well-being of all New Yorkers.” CUEUP is spearheading a drive to set limits on the number of restaurants that claim space in streets and on sidewalks for sheds to accommodate outdoor diners. These structures became common on New York’s streetscape during the Covid pandemic under the Open Dining program, as an emergency lifeline to the beleaguered restaurant industry. Read more...

Observe and sketch the human figure. Each week a model will strike poses for participants to draw. An educator will offer constructive suggestions. Free.

Free concert.

Create with drawing materials, pastels and watercolors. An educator will provide ideas and instruction. Free.

Outdoor yoga. All levels are welcome. Bring your own mat. Free.

Agenda

Concert.

Reading and discussion. Celebrated Cavafy scholar and a noted translator of his work Daniel Mendelsohn will engage in conversation with acclaimed poet Jana Prikryl on Cavafy’s stature as a “poet of the world.”

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Free concert.

Tour of the urban vegetable farm and perennial forest farm, led by park staff. Free.

This open house features printing equipment that attendees will be invited to use. Established in 1775, this letterpress print shop is the city’s oldest operating business under the same name. Advanced registration is required. Ages 12 and up. Participants will take home the prints they make during the evening. Free.

Richard Rodgers’ award-winning musical tells the story of the Jewish Underground in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943. In the tradition of “Fiddler on the Roof” and “Les Misérables,” and inspired by memoirs, video, and first-hand accounts from survivors, To Paint the Earth is a musical about ordinary people who, together, planned an armed rebellion despite the overwhelming challenges they faced. This performance commemorates the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and is a first orchestrated concert version of the musical. $32.

Reading. After years away from her family's homeland, and reeling from a disastrous love affair, actress Sonia Nasir returns to Haifa to visit her older sister Haneen.

SYREN celebrates its 20-year anniversary and presents Ithaka, a nine-section modern dance created by Kate Sutter in collaboration with the dancers of SYREN and set to the dynamic music of composer and producer Calimossa. $20.

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James Brown, the Godfather of Soul, was born on this day in 1933 (d. 2006). Go ahead, dance.

1802 – Washington, D.C. is incorporated as a city.

1855 – American adventurer William Walker departs from San Francisco with about 60 men to conquer Nicaragua.

1921 - Northern Ireland is created under the UK Government of Ireland Act partitioning off six northeastern counties with a Protestant majority

1957 – Walter O'Malley, owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers, agrees to move the team from Brooklyn to Los Angeles.

1978 – The first unsolicited bulk commercial email, later known as spam, is sent by a Digital Equipment Corporation marketing.

2021 - US Environmental Protection Agency takes first significant step against climate change, announcing limits on hydrofluorocarbons (-85% over 15 years)

612 – Constantine III, Byzantine emperor (d. 641)

1469 - Niccolo Machiavelli, statesman, author (d. 1527)

1849 – Jacob Riis, journalist and photographer (d. 1914)

1912 – Virgil Fox, organist and composer (d. 1980)

1919 – Pete Seeger, singer-songwriter, guitarist, activist (d. 2014)

1933 - James Brown, singer-songwriter aka the Godfather of Soul (d. 2006)

1940 – David Koch, engineer, businessman, political activist (d. 2019)

1991 – Jerzy Kosiński, novelist and screenwriter (b. 1933)

2006 – Karel Appel, painter, sculptor, and poet (b. 1921)

2007 – Wally Schirra, captain, pilot, and astronaut (b. 1923)