The Annual Museum Mile Festival Celebrates its 41st Year

Now celebrating its 41st year, the annual Museum Mile Festival takes place rain or shine on Tuesday, June 11, 2019, from 6:00 pm to 9:00 pm. Over 1.5 million people have taken part in this annual celebration since its inception. Festival attendees can walk the Mile on Fifth Avenue between 82nd Street and 105th Street while visiting seven of New York City's finest cultural institutions, which are open free to the public throughout the evening. The Museum Mile Festival's opening ceremony takes place at 5:45pm at El Museo del Barrio, 1230 Fifth Avenue at 105th Street. Traditionally, the Commissioner of Cultural Affairs and other city and state dignitaries open the Festival.

The seven institutions participating in this highly successful collaboration are The Metropolitan Museum of Art; Neue Galerie New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum; The Jewish Museum; Museum of the City of New York; and El Museo del Barrio.

Fifth Avenue is closed to traffic and becomes New York City's biggest block party. There is something for everyone at each of the venues. Special exhibitions and works from permanent collections are on view inside the museums' galleries, with live music and art-making workshops on Fifth Avenue at selected museums.

Exhibitions on view at each museum include:

El Museo del Barrio: In celebration of its 50th anniversary, El Museo del Barrio presents Culture and the People: El Museo del Barrio, 1969-2019, a two-part exhibition featuring selections from the Permanent Collection and a timeline contextualizing the history of the institution with related archival materials. Featuring over 80 artists, the exhibition will reflect on the institution's activist origins and pioneering role as an organization dedicated to presenting and preserving Puerto Rican, Latinx, and Latin American art and culture.

Museum of the City of New York: In recognition of the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, a watershed moment in the modern LGBTQ rights movement, the Museum of the City of New York presents Pride = Power! This series of exhibitions and events invites New Yorkers and visitors from around the world to discover and celebrate LGBTQ history and culture.

The Jewish Museum: Leonard Cohen: A Crack in Everything, the first exhibition devoted to the imagination and legacy of the influential singer/songwriter, poet, and global icon from Montreal, features large-scale, immersive contemporary artworks inspired by Leonard Cohen's life, work, and legacy. The exhibition also includes a video projection showcasing Cohen's own drawings, and an innovative multimedia gallery where visitors can hear covers of Cohen's songs by various musicians.

Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum: Nature-Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial will feature over 60 innovative projects that highlight the ways designers are collaborating with scientists, engineers, farmers, environmentalists, and nature itself to design a more harmonious and regenerative future.

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum: Artistic License: Six Takes on the Guggenheim Collection celebrates the institution's extensive 20th-century holdings through the intervention of six contemporary artists: Paul Chan, Cai Guo-Qiang, Jenny Holzer, Julie Mehretu, Richard Prince, and Carrie Mae Weems. Implicit Tensions: Mapplethorpe Now honors the legacy of the critically acclaimed yet controversial American artist Robert Mapplethorpe.

Neue Galerie New York: The Self-Portrait, from Schiele to Beckmann examines works primarily from Austria and Germany made between 1900 and 1945. Approximately 70 self-portraits by more than 30 artists-both well-known figures and others who deserve greater recognition-are united in the presentation, which is comprised of loans from public and private collections worldwide.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Play It Loud: Instruments of Rock & Roll explores one of the most influential artistic movements of the 20th century through more than 130 instruments that made the music possible.

Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC) is a Cultural Partner for the Museum Mile Festival. LMCC empowers artists by providing them with networks, resources, and support to create vibrant, sustainable communities in Manhattan and beyond, and presents the 18th Annual River To River Festival of free arts and culture in June 2019.

Established in 1978 to increase public awareness of its member institutions and promote public support of the arts, the Museum Mile Festival serves as a model for similar events across the country. For details on the Festival's offerings, the public may visit MuseumMileFestival.org.