From the outside, New York can seem like an intimidating megalopolis whose layers of history can be difficult to unpack, even for those who have lived here for years. But one arts festival has managed the impossible: to make a city of eight million people feel intimate and downright orderly by telling the idiosyncratic stories of its built environment in a single weekend.
From October 18 to 20, Open House New York (OHNY) is returning for its 22nd year, featuring 276 sites with (largely free) behind-the-scenes tours of historic landmarks, award-winning architecture studios, and 21st-century marvels of civil engineering in all five boroughs. Those of you who have never participated in OHNY may be wondering what the fuss is all about. But where else can you peek inside the city’s teeming municipal archives warehouse, pop into a Brooklyn seltzer factory, and get a hard-hat tour of a multimillion-dollar condo by the architects who designed it — all before brunch?
This year’s lineup has a lot to navigate. We at Hyperallergic have rounded up the art organizations and studios that are free to enter, or else require tickets you’ll need to reserve in advance of the three-day festival (as of October 10, 96 of OHNY’s sites are sold out, but $6 tickets are still available at many others).
Friday, October 18
Start your OHNY weekend in Midtown with a half-hour tour of the Institute of Classical Architecture and Art’s Cast Hall (20 West 44th Street), whose museum-quality collection of Ancient Roman sculpture and architecture plaster casts will make you think about the Roman Empire as much as some men do on TikTok.
Then head down to Poster House (119 West 23rd Street), a unique museum dedicated to contemporary visual communication. Its current exhibits include work by Croatian artist Boris Bućan, Lester Beall’s New Deal-era designs, and Nike’s 20th-century ads.
A few blocks south is the New York Studio School (8 West 8th Street), which is offering 45-minute tours of its landmarked West Village headquarters, the original home of the Whitney Museum of American Art. The school’s gallery is currently showing a selection of James Howell’s gray paintings. Then, head downtown to the Maya Lin-designed Museum of Chinese in America (215 Centre Street), which is offering two ticketed tours at 4 and 5pm of its special exhibition featuring the surge of Asian-American magazines in the 1990s.
Blink and you’ll miss Mmuseumm (4 Cortlandt Alley), a mini-museum of natural history in a former elevator shaft. It’s open until 6pm.
Finally, take the R train to Southern Brooklyn for the launch of Sunset Park Open Studios from 6 to 9 pm. Stop by the NARS Foundation (201 46th Street, 4th Floor) for lists and maps of locations.
Saturday, October 19
Get a head start on Saturday by sharpening your sketching skills at the Art Students League of New York (215 West 57th Street). You can even practice drawing a few still-life setups in the League’s Studio 13 room, which opens at 10am.
Then, trek to the Garment District and visit the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts’s Open Studios (323 West 39th Street), one of the city’s most prestigious studio programs and home to the esteemed Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop. Starting at 12pm, 73 studios will be open, with a performance by jazz double bassist Kuba Dworak at 5pm.
Ride out to Bedford Stuyvesant and visit Artshack Brooklyn (1131 Bedford Avenue), whose mission is to make ceramics accessible to people of all ages. The studio will feature apple bobbing, a Halloween piñata, and a Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) activity at 2pm.
Head north toward the Williamsburg Biannual (333 Kent Avenue), a brand new JAZ Architect-designed artist center that opened in September. Board members will be giving hour-long tours between 12 and 4pm.
Walk over to City Reliquary (370 Metropolitan Avenue), a 22-year-old museum of artifacts and collectibles of New York’s bygone eras. The reliquary’s current exhibition features vintage tattoo art, photographs, and relics of Lady Liberty.
Finish up at Amant (315 Maujer Street), the 21,000-square-foot contemporary art center in East Williamsburg. If you arrive by 4pm, New York-based photographer Dietmar Busse will lead a two-hour tour of his exhibition, Fairytales 1991–1999, and sign copies of his monograph.
Sunday, October 20
Get to Ocean Hill, Brooklyn, where a line may already be forming outside Noble Signs (2465 Atlantic Avenue), a studio and museum dedicated to the art of sign-making. The 11-year-old museum includes 40 rescued storefront signs in a pre-war factory building. The shop opens at 10am.
Over in Bushwick, Allison Eden Studios (164 Cook Street) is welcoming visitors inside its glass tile factory to learn about the mosaic-making process starting at noon.
Back in the West Village, Westbeth Artists Housing (155 Bank Street) is offering guided tours of the Richard Meier-designed artist community between 1 and 4pm. Some artist studios will be open for visits between 2 and 5pm, and a crafts fair is happening on-site.
Finally, finish up the weekend at the Brooklyn Army Terminal (140 58th Street), where you can visit BioBAT Art Space, Makerspace NYC, and ChaShaMa Open Studios inside the former military outpost. BioBAT’s gallery features an immersive exhibition about the history of waterfronts and coastlines, while Makerspace will include demonstrations of its industrial machines throughout the day. Both exhibitions close at 4pm, while ChaShaMa wraps up at 6pm.
