NYC

There’s a free art gallery on the third floor of NYC Parks’ own headquarters at 830 Fifth Avenue, at 64th Street, and most people who walk past the Arsenal every day have never been inside. Through Friday, Nov. 6, it’s holding New Dendrology — a group exhibition of eleven artists on the subject of trees. The practical details: What: New Dendrology, group show — eleven artists studying trees and the human relationship to them Where: Arsenal Gallery, Central Park, 830 Fifth Ave. at 64th St., third floor When: Weekdays, 9:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m., Sept. 11 – Nov. 6, 2026; closed holidays Cost: Free admission Artists: Mariel Collard, Karin Giusti, Mark Heller, Anya Hoyer, Ekene Ijeoma, Gail Karlsson, sTo Len, Anthoula Lelekidis, Matthew López-Jensen, Amanda Lovelee, Laura Nova Questions: ArtandAntiquities@parks.nyc.gov or 212-360-8143 What separates this from a standard group show is how participatory some of it is. Matthew López-Jensen’s contribution involves readings with The New York City Street Tree Tarot, a deck-and-book project published by Simon & Schuster; Laura Nova’s involves commitment ceremonies officiated for trees. Both are the sort of strange, civic-minded gestures that make a city-run gallery more interesting than its address suggests — and they invite an actual relationship with the street trees you already walk past. ...

Molière in the Park has been putting on free, professionally staged Molière in Brooklyn for years, and this season’s closer is Don Juan — the playwright’s most subversive script, staged outdoors at the Lefrak Center at Lakeside in Prospect Park. The run is five nights long and nearly over: Sunday Sept. 13, Monday Sept. 14, and Tuesday Sept. 15 are what’s left, 7:00–9:00 p.m. each night. The practical details: Where: Lefrak Center at Lakeside, Prospect Park, Brooklyn When: Nightly through Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2026, 7:00–9:00 p.m. Cost: Free RSVP: Encouraged — sign up through the Parks listing or the Eventbrite page; questions to info@moliereinthepark.org Production: Translated by Stephen Wadsworth, directed by Drama Desk nominee Lucie Tiberghien Live music: Original cello score by Drama Desk–nominated composer Johnathan Moore The play itself is a single day in the life of a man who has already ruined several people’s lives. Don Juan has abandoned Elvira, whom he seduced into breaking her vows and marrying him; he and his sidekick Sganarelle then spend the day running into everyone he’s betrayed, while he keeps seducing, mocking religion, and daring the universe to respond. It ends in a reckoning, and the script mixes comedy and the supernatural on the way there — which is exactly the kind of material that reads well under open sky at dusk. ...

GreenThumb is the parks department program behind the city’s community gardens, and once a year it throws a harvest fair that is less a festival about gardening than a festival you garden at. The 46th edition is in Bed-Stuy. When — Saturday, October 3, 2026, 12:00 to 4:00 p.m. Where — Herbert Von King Park, Greene Avenue and Marcy Avenue, Brooklyn, plus the adjoining Hattie Carthan Community Garden. Cost — Free. The site is listed as an accessible location. Take something home — Free daffodil bulbs and seedlings, and a pumpkin you pick from the harvest patch and decorate (carving too, if you want it messy). Workshops and tours — Educational gardening workshops and plant-based creative workshops like flora printing, community garden tours, and storytelling. Games and hands-on stuff — Scarecrow building for your garden, arts and crafts, face painting, lawn games (cornhole, sack race, tic-tac-toe, corn toss, jumbo games), and fitness classes. Who else is there — Tabling from NYC botanical gardens, community-based programs, and city agencies, answering questions about their own programming. The centerpiece is the GreenThumb Fresh Chef Contest. Guest chef Hisham “Ham” El-Waylly — Brooklyn chef, recipe developer, and co-owner of Strange Delight — demonstrates a surprise dish, then contestants race to make their own version of it while Marlon Rice of the Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation MCs. A panel of VIP chefs including El-Waylly picks the top three. Ages 16 and up can compete, but pre-registration is required and closes once the contest hits capacity. ...

Once a year the Urban Park Rangers put New York’s aerial predators on an open field and let you stand close enough to count feathers. It is called Raptor Fest, and this year it is in southeast Queens. When — Sunday, September 20, 2026, 12:00 to 3:00 p.m. Where — Baisley Pond Park, Queens. Enter at Foch Boulevard and 155th Street; the event runs on the open field along Foch between 155th and 157th. Cost — Free. No ticket, no lottery, no advance registration. What you’ll see — Eagles, falcons, hawks, and owls, live and up close, plus flight demonstrations and education/activity stations around the field. Who brings the birds — Masters of the Skies Falconry, and Wildlife in Need of Rescue and Rehabilitation, the rehab outfit that handles non-releasable raptors. Contact — NYC Parks Urban Park Rangers, (212) 360-2774. It is a family-friendly event by design, which mostly means the demonstrations are paced for short attention spans: birds flying, handlers talking, stations to walk between. Three hours is the full window, and there is nothing to sign up for, so the only real planning is getting there. ...

Leslie Wayne is best known for heavily dimensional abstract paintings built up out of oil and plastic, layered like geology. Her new show turns that same sensibility on the landscape itself: The Unintended Blues is a set of aerial paintings documenting rising sea levels — vulnerable US shorelines seen from above, and icebergs melting in the Arctic Circle — installed in the Upper Gallery at the Arts Center at Governors Island. ...

Asase Yaa Cultural Arts Foundation has been teaching West African dance and drumming in Bed-Stuy for 25 years, and its Art Is Alive Festival is now in its 10th — a free, all-ages week of classes at the School of the Arts on Macdonough Street, ending with a block party. The theme this year is “Rooted 10 Years Deep,” and everything happens at one address: 506 Macdonough St., between Patchen Ave. and Malcolm X Blvd. ...

A free, mostly-outdoors Sunday: Ralph Ellison’s jazz series is back in Hamilton Heights 2–5pm, the Creative Time sandcastle competition is on the Rockaway sand 1–4pm, Bed-Stuy’s Art Is Alive opens a week of free dance and drum classes, and tonight there’s the year’s last Crafternoon on the LIC waterfront plus $20 stand-up in Greenpoint. The rest of the week still holds BYO Book (Mon), ShoutHouse at Nublu (Tue) and The Space Lady in a hidden East Village garden (Wed). ...

Twenty-five years after the attacks, the federal World Trade Center Health Program is trying to find the survivors who were children and young adults on Sept. 11, 2001 — the kids who lived in or went to school in Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn, breathed the air for months afterward, and mostly assumed they were fine. Of the roughly 150,000 patients now enrolled, only about 3,000 — 2% — were under 21 on 9/11, even though city health researchers estimate close to 100,000 children were potentially exposed. The conditions tied to that exposure (asthma, COPD, cancer, PTSD) can take decades to surface, which is exactly why so many people never connect the dots. ...

Fort Totten Park is about 60 acres of northeast Queens waterfront — earthwork batteries, brick barracks, a lawn, a pool, and the Commanding Officer’s House, which everyone calls the Castle. The Bayside Historical Society runs programming out of the Castle, and almost all of it is free. Nature Puppet Show — Sat Sept 12, 1:00–2:00 p.m., Fort Totten Park Visitors Center. Urban Park Rangers, best for kids. Free. Second Sunday Castle Tours — Sun Sept 13, 1:00–3:00 p.m., Bayside Historical Society. Free guided look inside the Castle. Oktoberfest at The Castle — Sun Sept 20, 1:00–4:00 p.m., Bayside Historical Society. Festival with food. Free. Fort Totten Fall Festival — Sat Oct 3, 1:00–4:00 p.m., Fort Totten Front Gate. Best for kids. Free. Open House New York: Fort Totten and the Battery — Sat Oct 17 and Sun Oct 18, 11:00 a.m.–12:30 p.m. (grounds) and 1:00–3:00 p.m. (battery). Free. Totten Trot 5K — Sun Oct 25, 9:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m., Bayside Historical Society. The one event on the fall calendar not listed as free. The Second Sunday tours are the recurring one — every second Sunday of the month, 1 to 3 p.m., no ticket. Open House New York weekend in mid-October is the broader one: the fort grounds and the battery both open with ranger tours, which is the only time most of that brickwork is publicly walkable. ...

Marcus Garvey Park, the 20-acre outcrop between 120th and 124th Streets in Harlem, runs a free September calendar out of its Recreation Center rooms. Every event listed here costs nothing — no ticket, no cover, no membership. Hula Hoop Aerobics — Sat Sept 12 and Sat Sept 19, 12:30–1:30 p.m., Multi-Use Room B. Shape Up NYC dance-fitness with hoops. FREE Haitian Folkloric Dance Summer Performance Intensive — Sat Sept 12, 1:00–3:30 p.m., Multi-Use Room B. A half-day of Haitian folkloric dance, staged as a free public performance. Harlem Run: Monday Night Run — Mondays Sept 14, 21, and 28 (continues Oct 5 and 12), 6:45–8:30 p.m., in the park. Free group run, walking pace welcome. Hispanic Heritage Month Paint Night — Fri Sept 18, 5:00–8:30 p.m., Multi-Use Room A. Free arts-and-crafts evening. MOTHERSHIP EIGHT Dance & Music Festival — Sat Sept 19, 3:00–7:00 p.m., Multi-Use Room B. Free dance and music festival. The park is the one with the schist outcrop you can see from the 2/3 train and the Richard Rodgers Amphitheater tucked behind it. It was called Mount Morris Park until 1973, when it was renamed for the Jamaican-born organizer whose parade has come up Malcolm X Boulevard past its gates for decades. ...

A busy Saturday with everything free: three shows today — the outdoor opera in the Old Stone House gardens at 2pm, the West Harlem jazz festival at the Morningside Park waterfall at 5pm, and the first day of the new Saturday Greenmarket at MoMA PS1 — plus two big free opens tomorrow (the Rockaway sandcastle competition and Bed-Stuy’s weeklong Art Is Alive). The freshest finds ahead are The Space Lady’s free garden set Wednesday in the East Village and ShoutHouse’s nine-piece hip-hop/orchestral night at Nublu Tuesday. Ralph Ellison jazz is back in Harlem tomorrow 2–5pm. ...

The United Lenape/Lunáapeew Nations Pow Wow comes back to Prospect Park for a third year on Oct. 3–4, at the LeFrak Center at Lakeside. Two days of dancers, drummers, artists and food makers. Admission is free, though organizers ask you to RSVP — no ticket needed. Dates: Saturday, Oct. 3 and Sunday, Oct. 4, 2026. Hours: 10 a.m.–7 p.m. Saturday; 10 a.m.–4 p.m. Sunday. Where: LeFrak Center at Lakeside, Prospect Park, Brooklyn. Cost: free; RSVP requested through Prospect Park Alliance on Eventbrite. Who runs it: Prospect Park Alliance, the Éenda-Lŭnaapeewáhkiing (EL) Collective and American Indian Community House. What is there: drumming and dance, artisans, food makers, and a Youth Spotlight featuring performers aged 6 to 17. Also free: the companion exhibit Eelunaapéewi Ehaptoonáakanal: Voices of Lunáapeew/Lenape at Lefferts Historic House, with video interviews of Lunáapeew/Lenape knowledge-keepers — it runs alongside the Pow Wow. The history is the part worth knowing. Prospect Park hosted intertribal Pow Wows from 1916 until 1972; the modern revival started with a Pow Wow at the Park Avenue Armory in 2018, followed by a culture fair in 2024 and the first full Pow Wow back at LeFrak in 2025. This year the organizers put youth at the center — two young Lunáapeew/Lenape adults were hired as coordinators, mentored by older relatives, alongside the 6-to-17 performers’ spotlight. ...

A full Friday: two free 9/11 programs tonight — the 2,753-chair tribute and American Symphony Orchestra memorial concert on the Bryant Park lawn, plus a free doc screening at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine — and a free Dracula screening in Astoria; the weekend brings free outdoor opera in Brooklyn (Sat 2pm), West Harlem jazz at the Morningside Park waterfall (Sat 5pm), a brand-new Saturday Greenmarket at MoMA PS1, the return of the Rockaway sandcastle competition (Sun) and Bed-Stuy’s free weeklong Art Is Alive festival — with Ralph Ellison jazz back in Harlem Sunday 2pm. ...

Open House New York Weekend is the one weekend a year when the city opens buildings it normally keeps shut. The 24th edition runs Oct. 16–18, 2026, with about 300 sites across all five boroughs open 10 a.m.–6 p.m. each day. Most of them are free. Dates: Friday, Oct. 16 – Sunday, Oct. 18, 2026. Hours: 10 a.m.–6 p.m. daily; exact hours vary by site. Cost: free at most sites. Some are ticketed for capacity or security, and those are ticket-holders-only. How it works: many locations are “Drop-In” — show up during open hours, no reservation. Ticketed sites need a reserved slot. What you get into: new buildings reshaping the skyline, infrastructure facilities that keep the city running, parks, performance spaces, manufacturing workshops, and behind-the-scenes tours and talks, including places normally closed to the public. Follow-up dates to watch: the full festival lineup and ticketing information are released in September 2026 at ohny.org. Boroughs: sites are spread citywide, so the realistic plan is to pick one subway line and a handful of sites rather than chase all 300. With three days and 300 sites, treating this as a checklist is the fastest way to enjoy none of it. Pick a borough, pick a line, and plan to actually spend time inside two or three buildings — then let the ticketed sites be the one thing you reserve the moment tickets drop. Everything else is walk-up.

The Atlantic Antic is back for year 51 on Sunday, Sept. 27, noon to 6 p.m., rain or shine. It runs more than a mile along Atlantic Avenue — ten blocks from Hicks Street to Fourth Avenue — through Boerum Hill, Cobble Hill, Brooklyn Heights and Downtown Brooklyn. Admission is free, there is no ticket, and the music stages are free too. When: Sunday, Sept. 27, 2026, 12–6 p.m. Rain or shine. Where: Atlantic Avenue from Hicks Street to Fourth Avenue, Brooklyn. Cost: free — no tickets for the festival or the stages. Music: Middle Eastern musicians on the Clinton Street Stage (an Antic tradition), Kids Rock for Kids at Nevins Street, mixed bill on the Community Stage between Third and Fourth Avenues. Antic Sing: second year of the singing competition, now with 1970s/80s/90s/2000s categories; sign up in advance via the AALDC Google Form. Kids: three kids’ areas — Mommy Poppins at Hicks Street, Brooklyn Bridge Parents at Boerum Place — with bounce houses, pony rides and face painting. Subway: Hoyt St (2/3); Hoyt–Schermerhorn (A/C/G); Atlantic Ave–Barclays Center (2/3/4/5/D/N/Q/R). Bus/bike/ferry: B61 and B63 (plus B41, B99); 8 nearby Citi Bike stations; NYC Ferry South Brooklyn route to Brooklyn Bridge Park Pier 6. LIRR to Atlantic Terminal. Food and vendors: hundreds of food and craft vendors across the footprint. Vendor applications run until Sept. 21 if you want a booth rather than a browse. ...

New York City keeps building free outdoor gyms and most of us walk past them. Gothamist’s James Ramsay spent a session at the calisthenics playground in Chelsea Park with trainer and author Danny Kavadlo, who cut the whole thing down to three movements — no membership, no equipment, no booking. The program: push-ups, squats, pull-ups. That’s it. Two to three times a week. Where: any park or playground with a pull-up bar, monkey bars or a calisthenics setup. The article’s workout happens at the Chelsea Park calisthenics playground (W 27th–28th Sts., between 9th and 10th Aves.). Tompkins Square Park has its own set of pull-up bars, and Owls Head Park in Brooklyn just got a renovated playground. Cost: free. Show up and use the bars. Pull-ups, scaled: hang from the bar first — that alone is a workout. Then chin-ups (palms facing you) are slightly easier than pull-ups. For a much lower bar, use the Australian pull-up: find a waist-high bar, get underneath it, keep your feet on the ground, pull your chest to the bar. Squats, scaled: feet close or wide, arms out for balance or hands behind the head, full depth or onto a low platform so you get a short sit-down between reps. Why it works: calisthenics trains arms, chest, abs and glutes in every rep instead of isolating one muscle, so ten reps earns its time. And with no weight over your head, the injury risk is low. Who’s there: on a weekday at Chelsea Park, a delivery driver on his lunch break, some seniors, a couple who came through for 90 seconds, and a 13-year-old who learned by copying everyone else. The appeal is the missing friction. No fee, no front desk, no mirrors telling you your form is wrong, nothing to learn before you start. Every exercise has a version you can do today — hanging counts, two chin-ups counts, squatting onto a bench counts. ...

Free live jazz on a Brooklyn lawn this Saturday: the Fort Greene Park Jazz Festival runs Sept. 12 from 3 to 7 p.m., with a rain date the next day. It has been a neighborhood fixture since 2010, usually landing the first Saturday after Labor Day, and it is organized by founder Dr. Eric Frazier with the Fort Greene Park Conservancy and NYC Parks. When: Saturday, Sept. 12, 3–7 p.m. Rain date Sunday, Sept. 13. Where: Fort Greene Park, near the central lawn and the Washington Park entrance (around 100 Washington Park). Cost: free, no ticket. Lineup: the Dr. Eric Frazier Quintet — Frazier on vocals, tap and percussion, with Steve Cromity, Eddie Allen, Lou Vega, Kiyoko Layne and Don Nicks — plus the Eric Person Quartet. Bring: a blanket and friends, per the Conservancy. Transit: A/C to Lafayette Ave; G to Fulton St; B/D/M/N/Q/R to DeKalb Ave; 2/3/4/5 to Barclays Center. The park has the résumé for it: Fort Greene and Clinton Hill housed Max Roach, Randy Weston, the Marsalis brothers, Betty Carter, Cecil Taylor and Slide Hampton, and Walt Whitman helped get the park created in the first place. Worth four hours of a Saturday afternoon.

Brooklyn Public Library opened its first Craft Supply Library on Sept. 9, letting adult cardholders borrow the actual equipment for screen printing, bookbinding, metal stamping, hand embroidery and more. It grew out of one librarian’s failed needle felting hobby — Jess Harwick bought the wool and the tools, it did not click, and her exact kit is now in the circulating collection. The collection lives alongside BPL’s broader “Library of Things”: vinyl records, board games, museum passes, musical instruments, telescopes. ...

Thursday is stacked and almost all free: free ragtime at Bryant Park lunchtime, a sunset Americana/jazz festival on Greeley Square, swing-then-salsa on the Bryant Park lawn and a free jazz-photography opening reception at The Jazz Gallery tonight — plus a $10 magic show in Astoria and a free drag-bingo night in Bushwick; the weekend brings free public art on the Rockaways shoreline Sunday and a week of free West African/Haitian dance and drum classes in Bed-Stuy. ...

If the weather holds this weekend, there is a free way to mark the start of autumn: the Urban Park Rangers lead Heather Garden Highlights at Fort Tryon Park on Sunday, September 13, a 90-minute stroll through flowers, park history, and bird activity above the Hudson. It is free, outdoors, and needs no registration — just show up. When: Sunday, Sept 13, 1–2:30 p.m. Where: meet at Margaret Corbin Circle, Fort Tryon Park (A train to 190th Street) Cost: free, no registration or RSVP Why it is worth it: the Heather Garden is about 3 acres — the largest public garden with unrestricted access in New York City — planted with more than 500 varieties on a bluff overlooking the river, just below the Cloisters Ranger walks are a reliably good free New York program, and this one happens to be in one of Manhattan’s most underrated parks. Show up a little early, enjoy the view from the circle, and you can turn it into a full afternoon with the Cloisters or the rest of Fort Tryon.