Things to do on a Sunday in New York

This Friday, May 15, the Whitney Museum of American Art is hosting a special edition of its Free Friday Nights to honor the New York Liberty's historic 30th season. The two iconic New York City institutions will join forces a for high-energy evening of art, athletics and community. From 5pm to 10pm, the museum will transform into a hub of Liberty pride, and you're encouraged to wear your favorite Liberty gear and team colors to show your support.

The evening’s soundtrack will be courtesy of DJ Ty-Michelle, a New York City native known for her genre-spanning versatility and international acclaim. Starting at 6pm in the Museum’s lobby, Ty-Michelle will take visitors on a musical journey, accompanied by the legendary Timeless Torches. This beloved 40-and-over dance troupe, a staple of Liberty home games at the Barclays Center, will bring their signature moves to the dance floor. And yes, you can join the party.

For collectors of Liberty swag, there will be an exclusive New York Liberty mini print vending machine in the Whitney Shop. Featuring unique, risograph-printed art by Brooklyn-based artist Anastasia Inciardi, these prints are typically exclusive to the Barclays Center. For one night only, you'll have the rare chance to snag these limited-edition pieces of basketball-inspired art at the Whitney.

New York’s American Museum of Natural History is getting a serious dose of championship energy this spring. Opening May 15, “For The Win: Objects of Sports Excellence” will bring more than 70 glittering symbols of athletic glory—from Olympic medals to Super Bowl hardware—into the museum’s Melissa and Keith Meister Gallery, set inside the Allison and Roberto Mignone Halls of Gems and Minerals.

Among other items, that means the Vince Lombardi Trophy itself will be on view. The sterling silver prize, which has been handcrafted by Tiffany & Co. since 1967 and awarded annually to the Super Bowl champions, anchors an exhibition that spans more than 15 sports and nearly 150 years of competition. The show aims to trace how trophies, rings and medals evolved alongside modern sports culture.

Celebrate all things design at this annual festival that brings in the city’s top designers, makers, and manufacturers, along with cutting-edge design businesses and districts, and leading cultural and academic institutions. The festival covers all areas of design, from architecture and urban design to product design and entertainment design.

The week-long festival from May 14–20 will take place at different venues across the five boroughs, so make sure to check out their website for updates on programming. 

A landmark exhibition of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s earliest works is heading back to the borough where it all began—and for New York art obsessives, this is the kind of show that doesn’t come around often.

Opening during New York Art Week this May, Our Friend, Jean: Early Works of Jean-Michel Basquiat will take over Brooklyn’s Bishop Gallery, offering a rare look at the artist before the fame, the auctions and the mythology. The show runs May 13–17 and centers on a deeply personal collection that captures Basquiat in his formative years, when he was still hustling between downtown apartments and making work wherever he could.

Much of the work on view comes from the collection of Alexis Adler, who lived with Basquiat during a crucial stretch from 1979 to 1980. Her archive includes intimate photographs and pieces created on everything from doors to furniture, documenting the moment just before Basquiat’s meteoric rise.d.

If you’ve ever wondered what haute couture might look like at the bottom of the ocean, inside a mushroom spore or on a distant alien planet, the Brooklyn Museum has an answer—and it involves bioluminescent algae, laser-cut dresses and a whole lot of 3D printing.

Opening on Sunday, May 16, “Iris van Herpen: Sculpting the Senses” marks the North American debut of the Dutch designer’s sprawling retrospective, bringing more than 140 of her couture creations to Brooklyn along with contemporary art, scientific specimens, fossils, sound installations and immersive video works.

But honestly, calling these things “dresses” barely does them justice. Van Herpen has spent the past two decades becoming fashion’s reigning architect of the impossible, building garments that resemble frozen waterfalls, coral reefs, jellyfish and microscopic organisms more than anything you would traditionally see in Vogue. Her work mixes old-school couture craftsmanship with technologies like 3D printing, laser cutting and experimental biomaterials, often in partnership with scientists, architects and engineers.

Radiohead fans, prepare to willingly walk into the anxiety spiral. A massive immersive Radiohead installation called Motion Picture House featuring KID A MNESIA has officially opened at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, turning part of the industrial waterfront into a haunting, dreamlike fever vision inspired by two of the band’s most beloved albums: Kid A and Amnesiac.

The limited-run experience takes over the Agger Fish Building through June 28 with towering projected visuals, unsettling soundscapes, cryptic monsters and distorted architecture, all accompanied by the emotional sensation of staring out a rainy train window.

The installation expands on KID A MNESIA, the acclaimed virtual exhibition originally released through Epic Games in 2021. That digital version was created during the pandemic as an interactive exploration of artwork that Thom Yorke and longtime Radiohead collaborator Stanley Donwood developed while making Kid A and Amnesiac.

But according to the band, this physical installation was always the real goal. Now, visitors can wander through the project in actual three-dimensional space, complete with galleries of large-scale artwork by Yorke and Donwood, plus a fully immersive audiovisual experience powered by a custom six-point surround sound system. The soundtrack draws directly from original Radiohead multitrack recordings specially remixed for the installation.

You could easily mistake newcomer writer-director Curry Barker’s Obsession for a romcom. At least, for the first 20 minutes. Aside from the foreboding presence of a dead cat, it feels light, jaunty, quirky and fun, just another harmless tale of an imperfect twentysomething dude (Michael Johnstone’s Bear) who’s desperately in love with a girl in his social circle (Inde Navarrette’s Nikki), despite her firmly friend-zoning him. However, it all goes a bit monkey’s paw when Bear unboxes an apparent novelty gift called a ‘One-Wish Willow’ and wishes that Nikki would love him ‘more than anything else in the fucking world’. 

The resulting descent into passion-fuelled psycho-horror goes far, far beyond the bunny-boiling antics of Fatal Attraction. It is a love story in the nastiest possible way. With a pitch-black sense of humour and evident nourishment from the films of Ari Aster and Zach Cregger, Barker does not hold back in presenting the disturbing, distressing consequences of Bear’s ill-conceived romantic dream.

In cinemas worldwide May 15.

After more than a decade of drawing crowds to Brooklyn waterfronts and Prospect Park’s lawns, Smorgasburg is finally heading somewhere a little more central. Starting on May 14, the city’s best-known open-air food market will set up shop at Columbus Circle, bringing craveable eats to the southwest corner of Central Park.

For anyone who’s ever schlepped to Brooklyn for a bao bun and a soft-serve moment, this is big. The new outpost will feature more than 25 vendors—though the exact lineup hasn’t dropped yet, expect the usual Smorgasburg formula: plenty of newcomers, cult-favorite regulars and dishes engineered to go viral.And here’s the twist: you won’t have to wait for the weekend. The Central Park edition will run Thursday through Saturday from 12 pm to 8 pm, turning what used to be a once-a-week pilgrimage into an office-lunch-break option. Entry is free, you pay per bite and the rest is up to you. But the real appeal might be the setting. Instead of jostling for picnic tables, you can take your haul straight into the park.

The expansion comes as Smorgasburg enters its 16th season, already operating in Williamsburg, Prospect Park and the World Trade Center. This year’s broader roster includes more than 70 vendors across all the locations, so the Central Park addition feels like a natural next step (and arguably its most high-profile yet).

The new market will run May 14 through September 19 at the Columbus Circle entrance on West 59th Street. Show up hungry, bring friends and maybe a blanket.

A film festival dedicated entirely to Wallace Shawn is landing on the Lower East Side this month, and it’s exactly what it sounds like. Titled “Wallace Shawn: The Master Builder,” the series kicked off on May 8 at Metrograph, running through May 22 with a lineup that stretches beyond the actor’s most meme-able roles.

Shawn, now 82, has spent decades bouncing between worlds: beloved character actor, playwright, essayist and occasional leading man. There’s Clueless, where he plays the perpetually exasperated Mr. Hall, and yes, there’s The Princess Bride, the source of that immortal one-word catchphrase. But the real draw here is everything in between.

There’s Vanya on 42nd Street, where Shawn takes center stage in a Chekhov adaptation, and A Master Builder, his 2013 reworking of Ibsen that gives the festival its name. There’s also the rarely seen Marie and Bruce, starring Julianne Moore and Matthew Broderick, which never received a proper theatrical release and is being screened here with special permission.

New York’s latest wellness obsession has officially arrived and it involves voluntarily alternating between extreme heat and feeling like you accidentally fell into the Hudson in February.

Lore, a new members-based thermal bathing club opened this week in NoHo, bringing the increasingly trendy world of contrast therapy to downtown Manhattan in a setting that feels less like a medical spa and more like a very chic Scandinavian cave. The 6,200-square-foot space spans two floors and centers around a massive 700-square-foot dry sauna, a 46-degree cold plunge, an infrared sauna and a series of softly lit communal spaces designed for lingering and decompressing.

Unlike some of the city’s more touristy spa experiences, Lore is positioning itself as something people actually build into their weekly routines rather than a once-a-year “treat yourself” moment. The founders describe it more like a social club organized around bathing rituals, with memberships designed to encourage repeat visits.