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Friday 2pm - 6pm Saturday 12pm - 6pm Sunday 12pm - 6pm

City Lore

The Art of Everyday Life - Since 1985

05/21/2026

Algerian dance workshop with live percussion!

Join us for a pop-up workshop at City Lore hosted by Esraa Warda and her musican collective, The Châab Lab, for an Algerian Rai Dance Workshop. We'll be exploring the "3roubi" (rural) style of Rai and 6/8 rhythms.

Event is free! (We are open to donations to the drummer, if you feel so inclined.)

There are very few spots open because of space limitations, so please RSVP if you are sure you are coming so you can hold your spot. https://www.eventbrite.com/e/pop-up-algerian-rai-dance-workshop-city-lore-tickets-1990066527555

This event is a part of a series of events around the exhibit" emBLADy - Embodying the Blad " curated by Esraa Warda. It is open for view every weekend until June 7th. More info on exhibit please click here! https://citylore.org/about-the-gallery/current-exhibition/

For more info about the artist and The Chaab Lab: www.esraawarda.com

Info to know:

Please dress comfortably and prepare to either be barefooted or wear indoor shoes

The space is accessible on the first floor with a small ramp in entry

You do not need any prior experience

Please come early or stay after to enjoy the exhibition!

05/17/2026

"Do we want to simply retreat to our studios and make art, or do we want to jump in and try to do something about this?”

Hysterical Coney Island is a unique, personal story of how two artists and their colleagues made an impact on the cultural life of New York City, and helped pull America’s great historic amusement beach out of a nosedive. It is a chronicle of a “handmade” time in the worlds of art and amusement that will never be seen again.

As the 1970s came to an end, Coney Island was at its worst—the old timers were retiring or dying, and the beloved Pavilion of Fun at Steeplechase Park had been torn down by speculator Fred Trump in his race against the Landmarks Commission.

The authors, both native Brooklyn visual artists, formed the Coney Island Hysterical Society in 1981 as a response to this community in crisis. In concert with Dick Zigun’s Coney Island USA, the Hysterical Society struck a spark that would grow to become what historian Charles Denson calls “The Artists’ Renaissance” in Coney Island.

With contributions from playwright Harvey Fierstein, historian Richard Snow, and critic/curators Ann Aptaker and Aaron Beebe, Hysterical Coney Island is a personal account of the authors’ years working in both Coney Island and in the studio-work that took on greater depth and resonance for having been seasoned in the daily life of Coney Island itself.

05/14/2026

Join us for the Closing Celebration of Lower East Side History Month 2026!

Saturday May 30th | FREE
at "The Pit", Sara D Roosevelt Park
between Delancey and Broome

4:30PM "TONGUES" by Yibin Wang
Storytelling and interactive games about native languages
5:30PM BOMBAYO
A joyous session of bomba, Puerto Rican, & African influenced song-drum-dance
6:45PM DASO
Brings Loisaida to the dance floor, blending salsa, reggae, bomba, jibaro, and hip hop

PLUS hands-on art making and community info tables!

Organized by FABnyc with the Performance Project at University Settlement

Co-sponsored by City Councilmember Christoper Marte, State Assemblymember Grace Lee, Sara Roosevelt Park Community Coalition, Sara D. Roosevelt Park Alliance, 8-Ball Community, Abrons Arts Center, Chinese Progressive Association, City Lore, The Clemente, Henry Street Settlement, Lower East Side Yearbook, M'Finda Kalunga Garden, New Museum, and the Tenement Museum.

This program is supported in part by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, and City Councilmember Christopher Marte.

05/06/2026

This Friday! Free but RSVP required!
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/1988129105674?aff=oddtdtcreator

04/27/2026

Join us this Wednesday, April 29th for the launch of author John Strausbaugh's new book, Duchamp Takes New York!

6:30p at City Lore Gallery

Artist, anti-artist, joker, trickster, shape-shifter: Marcel Duchamp broke with tradition and pushed the avant-garde decisively forward. When his work exploded like an art bomb in New York in the 1910s, American art was still mired in the nineteenth century. Duchamp, bored with tradition, reimagined what art could be, what it was for, and how it might be made—hanging a snow shovel from the ceiling, inverting a urinal, “painting” with dust and bits of string between panes of glass, and reducing his entire oeuvre into a briefcase of miniatures. Duchamp Takes New York traces this bold, playful energy, showing how the city inspired and staged his avant-garde experiments.

Duchamp’s offhand gestures reshaped the course of twentieth-century American art, laying the groundwork for nearly every major movement that followed. And then, at the height of his influence, Duchamp appeared to walk away—declaring himself finished with art and devoting his energies to becoming a chess champion instead. Only after his death did it emerge that he had spent two decades secretly working on one final, unsettling work, leaving the world to try to comprehend it without explanation—his ultimate prank.

John Strausbaugh, a longtime chronicler of the city, puts New York at the center of Duchamp’s story. Fleeing the comforts of French bourgeois life—“wives, three children, a country house, three cars!”—Duchamp found New York instantly liberating. It was here that he produced much of his most radical work and eventually settled for good, once declaring, “New York itself is a complete work of art.” Duchamp’s art simply can’t be pinned down, without first recognizing his relationship to New York.

Bio: John Strausbaugh is an author, historiographer and journalist. His most recent books include three deep explorations of New York City history. The Village, his epic history of Greenwich Village, was hailed as “rare and refreshing” in the New York Times. City of Sedition (2016), his history of New York City during the Civil War, won the Fletcher Pratt Award and the Eugene Feit Award in Civil War Studies. Victory City (2018), was praised as “a compulsively engaging read” (Washington Post). He is a former editor of the legendary downtown weekly New York Press, and has been a contributing writer for the New York Times, the Washington Post, and elsewhere.

04/06/2026

⭐️⭐️⭐️ NYC - APRIL 17 - 6PM till 8PM ⭐️⭐️⭐️

EXHIBITION OPENING EVENT

RSVP recommended (link in comments!)

In the exhibit emBLADy: embodying the blad {homeland}, Algerian-American dance artist Esraa Warda examines the questions: What can we learn about a person’s story and their people, culture, and history from observing their dance and movements? Can the knowledge stored in the body be preserved as an artifact as meaningfully as a written record?

In collaboration with multidisciplinary artist Muyassar Kurdi, they film and photograph six Algerian women dancing in their homes, revealing intimate embodied stories presented as an installation in CityLore gallery. Viewers will also have the opportunity to learn Algerian traditional dance forms through Warda’s video tutorials within the space.

You are invited to observe the power of muscle memory as a practice of cultural remembrance in New York City.

Opening event: April 17, 2026 - 6 - 8pm

On view: April 17- June 07, 2026 - Every weekend from 12-6pm

Location: CityLore Gallery, 56 E 1st St, New York, NY 10003

35mm Film Photography
Exhibition Design and digital assets
Exhibition Assistant .yousifzebarint

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56 E 1st Street
New York, NY
10003

Opening Hours

Friday	2pm - 6pm
Saturday	12pm - 6pm
Sunday	12pm - 6pm

Telephone

+12125291955

Website

http://www.citylore.org/

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