Laurel Graeber

Times Square

Apollo 50th Celebration of the People’s Moon

Tranquility is not a word normally associated with this neighborhood, but that will change with this free event, which intends to transform Duffy Square into Tranquility Base, site of the lunar landing. Presented by the Aldrin Family Foundation — as in Buzz Aldrin — in partnership with “The People’s Moon,” an online project by the British artist Helen Marshall, the festival will turn the pavement into a giant mosaic featuring Neil Armstrong’s lunar boot print overlaid with photos collected from spaceflight enthusiasts around the world. Children can meet two former NASA astronauts and see robotics and other educational demonstrations take place on giant maps of the moon and Mars. Or you can just relive Apollo 11 with the help of enormous overhead screens, which will show footage of the launch and the landing.

Saturday from 9 a.m.-11 p.m.; aldrinfoundation.org

Cradle of Aviation Museum

Moon Fest and Countdown Celebration

Why not celebrate the space program where much of it began? This Long Island museum has an extensive collection of artifacts from the Apollo missions, whose lunar modules were designed and built at what was then the Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation in Bethpage, N.Y. The daytime festival will offer opportunities to explore Apollo 11 in virtual reality, look through solar telescopes, drive lunar rovers around an obstacle course, meet two former shuttle astronauts and see “Apollo 11: First Steps Edition,” the Imax version of Todd Douglas Miller’s recent documentary. The evening party will recreate a 1969 living room, where guests can watch Apollo 11 footage, dance to a band playing the era’s hits and count down to that first step. (Wear your ’60s best.)

Apollo at 50 Moon Fest (Saturday from 9:30 a.m.-5 p.m.) and Apollo at Countdown Celebration (Saturday from 7-11 p.m.), Charles Lindbergh Boulevard, Garden City, New York; 516-572-4066, cradleofaviation.org

New York Hall of Science

Apollo, a Party!

Even the music will have a space theme at these festivities. The Amateur Astronomers Association of New York will bring telescopes for stargazing, and the museum, which will also show “Apollo 11: First Steps Edition,” will offer model rocket and robotics activities for children. If you’re interested in the spaceflights of the future, try Escape the Planet!, an escape-room adventure devised by theater director Andrew Scoville and astronomer Moiya McTier, who will both attend the celebration, along with other scientists and designers. “Above and Beyond: The Ultimate Flight Exhibition,” on view through Sept. 8, includes a mock ascent to space and an augmented-reality experience evoking the challenges of flying to Mars.

Saturday from 7-10 p.m., 4701 111th St., Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, Queens; 718-699-0005, nysci.org

Paley Center for Media

50th Anniversary of Apollo 11 Screenings

These are rare free opportunities to see both the real Buzz Aldrin (onscreen) and actor Bryan Cranston portraying him. Each day will include two showings of the first 52 minutes of the moon walk, from Neil Armstrong’s first step to the placement of the American flag. The 1979 NBC special “The Day They Landed: July 20, 1969” includes interviews with all three Apollo 11 astronauts, and the 1979 ABC special “Infinite Horizons: Space Beyond Apollo” presents a look at the future hosted by author Ray Bradbury. The center will also screen a segment of HBO’s Emmy-winning 1998 mini-series “From the Earth to the Moon,” in which Cranston blasts off.

Saturday and Sunday from 12:15-5:15 p.m., 25 W. 52nd St., Manhattan; 212-621-6600, paleycenter.org

The Intrepid Museum

Apollo at 50

The Intrepid focuses on both actual spaceflight and flights of fancy. Its “Apollo 11: Media, the Moon and Beyond,” an installation through Sept. 3, features period televisions showing archived mission news reports. Friday evening, a free Astronomy Night, will offer stargazing; an outdoor screening of “First Man,” Damien Chazelle’s feature starring Ryan Gosling as an enigmatic Neil Armstrong; and a talk by Noah Petro, a NASA scientist. On both Friday and Saturday, members of the space-enabled research group of the MIT Media Lab will present “Earthrise: A 50 Year Contemplation,” a pop-up installation intended to inspire the same awe-struck response astronauts had to the famous image of Earth captured during Apollo 8. “Giant Leaps,” a planetarium show on Saturday, will trace technological progress. The celebration ends with “To the Moon With the Upright Citizens Brigade Touring Company,” an evening show of history and humor for adults, with guests including comedian Lauren Adams and former astronaut Mike Massimino.

Friday and Saturday at various times, Pier 86, West 46th Street and 12th Avenue, Manhattan; 877-957-7447, intrepidmuseum.org

American Museum of Natural History

SpaceFest

How can you not be intrigued by a museum that has a director of astrovisualization? Or by a festival whose astrovisualizers include performance artist Laurie Anderson? This daylong event will include the U.S. premiere of “To the Moon,” a 15-minute virtual-reality experience in which Anderson and artist Hsin-Chien Huang chart a lunar journey that draws on Greek mythology, literature, science, film and even politics. (Although “To the Moon,” which continues through July 28, is close to sold out, the museum will make additional slots available each day, first come first served. Spaces remain Sunday for a discussion about the work that will feature Anderson.) At SpaceFest, Carter Emmart, who has that exciting astrovisualization job title, will use data-visualization software from NASA to present a complete model of Apollo 11’s journey. You can also experience the sun in an immersive video installation, watch demonstrations of extraterrestrial volcanoes and embark on virtual-reality explorations of NASA spacecraft and models. Young space enthusiasts can look forward to children’s book readings, portable-planetarium shows and themed performances by the Story Pirates.

Saturday from 11 a.m.-5 p.m., Central Park West at 79th Street, Manhattan; 212-769-5200, amnh.org

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/18/arts/design/apollo-11-anniversary-events.html" id="dae4a35a-cc3c-312e-a918-e9a4570f078c">The New York Times</a>.

NEW YORK — Summer is usually the season of sun worship, but this weekend that star will be eclipsed — at least in many hearts — by the moon. Saturday brings the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11, the first mission to send astronauts to the lunar surface, and festivals, exhibitions, screenings and even stand-up comedy will commemorate the landing. (Outdoor activities are weather-dependent.) Here are selected highlights.

This Weekend, All Roads Lead to the Moon

NEW YORK — Charles Dickens often dominates the stage at this time of year, with variations on “A Christmas Carol” only slightly less common than jingle bells and jolly Santas. This season, however, two theater companies are presenting tales by a Dickens contemporary who never wrote a holiday story but still has much to say about greed and goodness.

That’s Hans Christian Andersen, whose work appears in adaptations being performed next door to each other at Theater Row in Manhattan. “The Emperor’s Nightingale,” from Pan Asian Repertory Theater, and “The Emperor’s New Clothes &amp; More Magical Stories by Hans Christian Andersen,” from New York City Children’s Theater, both offer inventive staging and stellar design, but only one transcends pure entertainment.

“The Emperor’s Nightingale,” at the Beckett Theater, combines Andersen’s “The Nightingale” with 18th-century Chinese politics. Damon Chua, the playwright, presents a power struggle between teenage half brothers, Prince Hongshi (Roger Yeh) and Prince Bao (Jonathan Frye), whose father, the emperor (Brian Kim), challenges them to prove who’s more worthy to succeed him.

Bao’s mother, the empress (Ya Han Chang), urges him to seek advice from the Nightingale, who’s more valued in this version for its knowledge of the Chinese people’s problems than for the beguiling song in Andersen’s story. Played by Leanne Cabrera, the Nightingale exhorts Bao to help the poor, but he focuses on winning the throne. The more venal Hongshi, allying himself with a scheming minister (Dinh James Doan), uses a mechanical bird, powered by a hidden human, to deceive his sibling into abandoning the living Nightingale’s counsel.

Chua introduces other characters, including a tiger whose halves (front and hind) talk to each other. Portrayed by two of the actors in an ingenious get-up (Karen Boyer designed the costumes), the beast is too silly to be scary. And that’s part of the problem. Many comic elements — gossiping pandas, a rap by the princes — are played so broadly that little seems at stake. Briskly directed by Chongren Fan, the show is fun, but watching it feels more like cheering pro wrestling than like witnessing a struggle for the soul of an empire.

“The Emperor’s New Clothes,” at the Clurman Theater, is as devoted to making children reflect as to making them laugh. Adapted by Barbara Zinn Krieger and devised and directed by Adrienne Kapstein, the play begins in the present in Central Park, where a girl, intent on texting, sits down next to Andersen’s famous statue. The statue (Emmanuel Elpenord) stirs to life, though the girl seems to think that he’s just a stranger, reading. After he persuades her to look at his book — she starts with “The Princess and the Pea” — he vanishes, and she’s swept into the world of his stories.

Portrayed as a bewildered but intrepid young soul by Ayla Bellamy, this nameless heroine becomes not just an onlooker, but a key player, in the tales that follow. At first taken into confidence by the crooks promising the emperor a fabulous new wardrobe, she also exposes that he’s, well, exposed. (Don’t worry, parents — he parades in his underwear.) She then finds herself as the helpful kitchen maid in another emperor’s court in “The Nightingale,” only to wind up among birds in “The Ugly Duckling.” To her shock, she discovers that she’s that story’s titular character — and what could be a weirder-looking duck than a human?

Elpenord, Laura Hankin, Tali Custer and Nadav Wiesel play multiple roles in the production, which more closely follows Andersen’s “Nightingale”: Here, a vain emperor prizes this forest bird (a puppet by Eric Wright) for its song, only to reject the living creature in favor of a shiny mechanical version whose music ultimately fails. (Charlie Greenberg is the show’s composer.) When Death comes for the grief-stricken ruler, and the real nightingale’s song revives him, the moment isn’t just happy — it is as poignant as Andersen might have wished.

Through Dec. 16 at the Beckett Theater at Theater Row, Manhattan; 212-239-6200, panasianrep.org. Running time: 55 minutes.

“The Emperor’s New Clothes &amp; More Magical Stories by Hans Christian Andersen”

Through Dec. 22 at the Clurman Theater at Theater Row, Manhattan; nycchildrenstheater.org. Running time: 50 minutes.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/10/theater/hans-christian-andersen-the-emperors-new-clothes.html" id="4facdb5f-5336-327f-a69c-fe6bf6958af8">The New York Times</a>.

(Critic’s Notebook)

Two Timely Takes on Hans Christian Andersen's Tales

<h1>(Critic's Pick): NEW YORK — You can find enough weird organ transplants, unscrupulous DNA editing and rogue science experiments in “Dog Man: The Musical” to keep medical ethics panels debating for decades. But I’d argue that in this context, these strange procedures are completely justified: They will also keep young audiences giggling for nearly 90 minutes.</h1>

This is, after all, the bizarro world of Dav Pilkey, author and illustrator of such bestselling graphic novels for children as the Dog Man series and the Captain Underpants books. Producer TheaterWorksUSA and the musical’s writers — Kevin Del Aguila (book and lyrics) and Brad Alexander (score) — have adeptly transferred Pilkey’s inventive, irreverent and mildly vulgar sensibilities to the Lucille Lortel Theater’s stage. Like “Dog Man: A Tale of Two Kitties,” the book that is its chief inspiration, the show is based on the premise that it is actually the work of fifth-grade boys. And you know fifth-grade boys.

The two here are George (Forest VanDyke) and Harold (Dan Rosales), who set out to turn one of the comic books they’ve written into a musical. The action, portrayed by a capable adult cast, centers on the boys’ hero, Dog Man, who has a human body and a dog’s head.

This odd anatomy is the result of surgeons’ attempts to make the best of an on-the-job disaster that gravely wounded a police officer and his canine companion. (Shades of “RoboCop,” but far less gruesome, though some parents may object that a bomb is involved.) Convincingly played by Brian Owen, Dog Man proves to be a dedicated cop, except for annoying habits like drinking from the toilet and sniffing his colleagues’ behinds.

He has his work cut out for him. The villains here are a diabolical cat, Petey (Jamie LaVerdiere, in full mustache-twirling, or I should say whisker-twirling, mode), and an evil bionic fish with psychokinetic abilities named Flippy (Crystal Sha’nae, who expertly channels Donna Summer in a rousing disco number). Petey tries to augment his own power by duplicating himself but is shocked to discover that his clone, L’il Petey (L.R. Davidson), emerges as a sweet-natured kitten with a toddler’s inquisitiveness.

They’re an amusing lot, and my only quibble is the same one I have with the novel: All the really interesting characters are male. Although the production features women in two major roles, they’re still playing guys.

Otherwise, the creative team shines. Breezily directed and choreographed by Jen Wineman, the show benefits from Tim Mackabee’s designs for the set and some small puppets, which preserve the novel’s comic-book feel. Alexander has deftly attuned his high-energy score to the characters’ personalities, infusing Flippy’s anthem with rafter-ringing soul and L’il Petey’s signature song with a nursery rhyme’s lilt.

Del Aguila, who has given the lyrics his own imaginative flourishes, has preserved the novel’s wry parody of Charles Dickens. At a recent performance, when a contrite and newly generous Petey intoned, “It is a far, far better thing that I do … ” the grown-ups in the audience started howling. You have to love a family show that makes adults laugh, too.

‘Dog Man: The Musical’

Through Aug. 4 at the Lucille Lortel Theater, Manhattan; 866-811-4111, twusa.org. Running time: 1 hour 25 minutes.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/08/theater/review-dog-man-the-musical-celebrates-a-cop-who-sniffs-out-crime.html" link="null" target="_blank">The New York Times</a>.

Review: 'Dog Man: The Musical' celebrates a cop who sniffs out crime

This is, after all, the bizarro world of Dav Pilkey, author and illustrator of such bestselling graphic novels for children as the Dog Man series and the Captain Underpants books.

<h1>NEW YORK — Like many famous and wealthy New Yorkers, the city’s most celebrated museums often have lesser-known, more approachable relatives. These kindred spirits do not reside on Fifth Avenue, but they will usually welcome you without delays or demands for exorbitant fees.</h1>

Out of the way, offbeat or small — and sometimes all three — these institutions may offer a more detailed or focused view of a period or an unusual collection. Here are six to explore.

— City Reliquary

I never expected to be asked to donate objects to a museum — especially not two 1978 paper bus transfers that I mentioned finding in an old jacket.

Dave Herman, however, specializes in collecting what others throw away: subway tokens, signs, building bricks, seltzer bottles, door stops. He also has city “wildlife” — a rat skeleton and a taxidermied pigeon. Such bits of urban history make up City Reliquary, which Herman founded in 2002 in his apartment window and which now occupies a Williamsburg, Brooklyn, storefront. It is as quirky as the New York it celebrates.

“It was inspired by my appreciation of what I refer to as unsung landmarks,” Herman explained, “these places that have historic significance but are often overlooked.”

The museum, for instance, has reconstructed Petrella’s Point, a Chinatown newsstand named after its owner, Adam Petrella, now deceased, who used to decorate it with his artwork. It has also recently acquired the lobby directory of the St. Denis, an 1853 hotel turned into an office building, which developers plan to replace.

Herman has devoted his back room to “Making a Museum,” an unfolding exhibition about his operation. Its most striking object, lent by author Sarah Murray, is a coffin in the shape of the Empire State Building that she commissioned from Ghanaian artist Eric Kpakpo Adotey.

This is not a collection you would find at the New-York Historical Society. But, Herman said, “we are able to connect with people on a much more relatable level.”

— Fraunces Tavern Museum

American taverns offer food, drink and company. More than 200 years ago, however, some also helped cook up a revolution.

Fraunces Tavern was one of them. Now a museum devoted to Revolutionary America, this 1719 building still has a thriving restaurant.

“Samuel Fraunces pioneered some of the first takeout in New York,” said Jacqueline Masseo, the museum’s director, referring to the tavern’s colonial proprietor. “And he became George Washington’s steward.”

Washington memorabilia is scattered throughout the lower Manhattan museum, including a lock of his hair, a fragment of a tooth and a shoe worn by Martha Washington that she gave away as a gift. Masseo compared that gesture to a rock star’s throwing drumsticks into an enthusiastic crowd. In America, the couple “were the first celebrities,” she said.

But the space that most evokes Washington is the Long Room, where he bade a tearful farewell to his officers on Dec. 4, 1783. (The museum re-enacts the event annually.) A new railing has been installed there with a button visitors can press to hear his speech.

The museum also honors less famous patriots, including women. Two paintings illustrate the exploits of Mary Ludwig Hayes, aka Molly Pitcher, who carried water for the troops at the Battle of Monmouth in 1778 and took over firing a cannon after she saw its gunner — her husband — fall. And one current exhibition, “Confidential: The American Revolution’s Agents of Espionage,” celebrates many ordinary people who spied for the cause.

Some of them undoubtedly drank here.

— Morris-Jumel Mansion

This is another building that famously enticed George Washington. And it also lured Lin-Manuel Miranda.

The mansion, Manhattan’s oldest, was built in 1765 by Roger Morris, a Tory who fled after the Revolution started. Because the residence offered panoramic city views, Washington briefly commandeered it as his military headquarters in 1776. An informal parlor, labeled Washington’s War Room, is done in 18th-century style. Most of the furnishings, however, reflect the French Empire tastes of a wealthy later occupant, imperious Eliza Jumel (1775-1865), who married Aaron Burr in 1833.

“She was a force to be reckoned with,” said James W. Tottis, a consultant to the museum. But though she filed for divorce in less than a year, Morris-Jumel still has a room with a desk and other pieces of Burr’s. And that’s how Miranda, creator of “Hamilton,” enters the story.

“He sat in that chair and wrote at least two of the songs,” said Tottis, pointing to an unassuming reproduction piece with a striped slipcover. Miranda even tweeted a photo of himself sitting in the chair.

Famous associations, though, are not the only way the Morris-Jumel draws visitors. It offers tours, family days, plays and art shows and, at least once a month, paranormal investigations.

“There is some thought that Eliza is here,” Tottis said. And Burr? He laughed. “We don’t think that Eliza would let him come back.”

— Edgar Allan Poe Cottage

Unfortunately, the bird is not alive — stuffed, it occupies a glass cabinet — but it does add atmosphere to this tiny early 19th-century dwelling, which Poe rented during his final years. Perched on a small swath of greenery (Poe Park) in the Bronx, it looks as if it had dropped from the sky like Dorothy’s Kansas farmhouse.

“It gives us a glimpse of where the common person lived,” said Vivian E. Davis, the museum’s education coordinator. Not that Poe was common, but he was poor. “It’s good for people to see the human side of him,” she added. “He was trying to make a living like everyone else.”

Poe moved to this formerly rural spot in 1846 with his young wife, Virginia; his mother-in-law, Maria Clemm; and their cat, Catterina. Poe hoped the country air would cure his wife’s tuberculosis, but she survived only six more months. A small first-floor chamber has the bed where she died. That macabre furnishing, a framed mirror and a rocking chair are the museum’s only pieces that actually belonged to Poe, Davis said, but memorabilia on the walls reveals his life, as do an audio tour and a video. The works he wrote here include “Annabel Lee” and “The Bells” (but not “The Raven”).

The place is eerie but “not haunted,” Davis said. Still, while upstairs, I felt the presence of someone behind me. It was Poe, all right — in the form of a life-size cutout.

— Queens County Farm Museum

I recently got acquainted with several friendly city residents I wouldn’t have anticipated encountering off a Queens parkway: eight goats and two alpacas.

Along with six sheep, two steers, 150 hens and 14 hives’ worth of honeybees (two visiting pigs are soon to arrive), they live at the Queens County Farm Museum, which, though far from small — 47 acres — is certainly extraordinary.

It is “the longest continually farmed site in New York state,” said Jennifer Walden Weprin, the museum’s executive director. “Your assumption would be that it’s somewhere else, not in New York City.”

The property, which dates to 1697, has a historic 1772 farmhouse and a detached 1797 summer kitchen. (Other buildings are from later years.) A sustainable working farm, the site sells its eggs, produce, honey and wool on the premises while also serving as an educational campus. Young visitors can feed animals, harvest in a children’s garden, learn about composting and practice science and math skills. And gain a little insight: “Peas are awful good when they’re freshly picked,” Walden Weprin said.

She plans to expand that teaching mission by turning the Summer Kitchen into a reading room — a cozy refuge in winter — and is raising funds for a $25 million education center. In the meantime, the museum offers spring hayrides and festivals, an Earth Day program and a chance to really lose yourself here in the fall: It builds a very popular corn maze.

— Sandy Ground Historical Society Museum

The most resonant and wrenching object here is a bill of sale. Yellowed with age, it is no ordinary retail receipt.

“This is for a 13-year-old girl named Nan who was sold right here on Staten Island,” said Sylvia Moody D’Alessandro, executive director of the Sandy Ground Historical Society.

On the island’s southwest tip, Sandy Ground earned its name from its gritty, infertile soil. But the site is rich in African-American history. Some of the museum’s pieces, like that 1812 bill of sale, document slavery. But most commemorate the area’s triumphant past as one of the oldest continuously inhabited free black communities in the country, settled not long after New York state abolished slavery in 1827.

“We didn’t want this history, like so much of African-American history, to get lost,” said D’Alessandro, herself a Sandy Ground descendant.

The society, established in 1979, maintains its museum in an unassuming house filled with African masks, exhibits on past community residents and “Binding Ancestry: The Heritage &amp; Artistry of Handmade Quilts,” an exhibition to which D’Alessandro and other local artists have contributed. The quilts’ motifs include the oyster industry (it drew many free black workers), family trees and the historic local 1850 Rossville AME Zion Church.

The other current show, “Faces of the Underground Railroad,” displays contemporary quilt squares portraying figures like Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman. D’Alessandro encourages visiting schoolchildren to draw a historic face on a doorknob hanger to take home.

She said she tells them, “The person on your doorknob helped open the door for somebody else to get freedom.”

This article originally appeared in <a id="8225de3d-95da-4114-aa68-c16d451ea417" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/12/arts/lesser-known-museums-nyc.html">The New York Times</a>.

Out of the way, offbeat or small — and sometimes all three — these institutions may offer a more detailed or focused view of a period or an unusual collection. Here are six to explore.

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Laurel Graeber

Articles written by the author

This Weekend, All Roads Lead to the Moon

Two Timely Takes on Hans Christian Andersen's Tales

Review: 'Dog Man: The Musical' celebrates a cop who sniffs out crime

Offbeat history, off the beaten path