Visit 7 of NYC's Top Cultural Institutions Free at 39th Annual Museum Mile Festival

Now celebrating its 39th year, the annual Museum Mile Festival takes place rain or shine on Tuesday, June 13, 2017, 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 (Fifth Avenue at 104th Street). Traditionally, the Commissioner of Cultural Affairs and other city and state dignitaries open the Festival. Details on the Festival's offerings can be found at MuseumMileFestival.org.

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 are the seven institutions participating in this highly successful collaboration.

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 and live music from jazz to Broadway tunes to string quartets is featured in front of several of the museums (see below for list of entertainers).

Exhibitions on view at each museum include:

El Museo del Barrio: Belkis Ayón: NKAME, a landmark retrospective of the work of this Cuban artist who mined the founding myth of the Afro-Cuban fraternal society Abakuá to create an independent and powerful visual iconography.

El Museo del Barrio and The Wallach Art Gallery present UPTOWN: nasty women/bad hombres, featuring the work of artists engaging with the legacies of sexism, racism, homophobia, the power of the media, and violence in various ways.

Museum of the City of New York: Rhythm & Power: Salsa in New York illuminates salsa as a social movement from the 1960s to the present and explores how immigrant and migrant communities in New York City developed salsa into a global phenomenon. Rhythm and Power opens to the public on Wednesday, June 14th, so Museum Mile guests will be the first to experience salsa as a Museum exhibition.

The Jewish Museum: Florine Stettheimer: Painting Poetry, the first major U.S. exhibition in over 20 years focused on this influential American painter, showcases over 50 paintings and drawings in addition to costume and theater designs, photographs, and ephemera.

Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum: The Jazz Age: American Style in the 1920s, the first major museum exhibition to focus on American taste during the creative explosion of the 1920s, featuring interior and industrial design, decorative art, jewelry, fashion, architecture, music, and film.

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum: Visionaries: Creating a Modern Guggenheim explores the collections of six early patrons who brought to light some of the most significant artists of their day, including Picasso, Kandinsky, Pollock, Mondrian, and Brancusi.

Neue Galerie New York: Austrian Masterworks from the Neue Galerie New York celebrates the fifteenth anniversary of the museum's founding, with highlights from the collection including major paintings and works on paper by Gustav Klimt, Oskar Kokoschka, Alfred Kubin, and Egon Schiele.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons: Art of the In-Between examines the designer's revolutionary experiments in interstitiality through approximately 120 examples of womenswear from 1981 to the present. Also open for the festival are: Age of Empires: Chinese Arts of the Qin and Han Dynasties (221 B.C.-A.D. 220); Irving Penn: Centennial; The Roof Garden Commission: Adrián Villar Rojas, The Theater of Disappearance (weather permitting); and P.S. Art 2017: Celebrating the Creative Spirit of NYC Kids.

Participating museums offer programs and services for visitors with disabilities. Please contact the museums you plan to visit to arrange access accommodations and for further information.

ENTERTAINERS will perform in front of these participating institutions:

104th Street El Museo del Barrio - Fogo Azul Bateria Feminina, DJ Shabbakano, street performance by Carlos Jesus Martinez Dominguez & Leslie Jimenez

103rd Street Museum of the City of New York - salsa performance and dance lesson by Carlos Mateu

92nd Street The Jewish Museum - Banda de Los Muertos, in collaboration with Bang on a Can

89th Street Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum - Sarah King and the Smoke Rings

82nd Street Metropolitan Museum of Art - Sidra Bell Dance New York

In addition, Silly Billy the Very Funny Clown and Sammie & Tudie's Imagination Playhouse will be featured on Museum Mile that evening.

There will also be an array of ACTIVITIES for Museum Mile Festival attendees:

- The Metropolitan Museum of Art will offer drawing with a live model.
- Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum will present hands-on design activities for families with Imagination Playground.
- Families visiting the Jewish Museum can incorporate themselves into theatrical scenes inspired by the paintings on view in Florine Stettheimer: Painting Poetry.
- Young visitors to El Museo del Barrio can create musical instruments with the Little Orchestra Society.
- The Museum of the City of New York will offer street art activities and salsa dance lessons for children.

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 call 212-606-2296 or visit MuseumMileFestival.org.