NYC Arts: The Complete Guide to Art and Culture

Governors Island

Manhattan

Harlem Stage Gatehouse

Manhattan

Harlem Stage is Harlem's principal performing arts center. Its two venues, the Gatehouse and the three-theater Aaron Davis Hall complex, serve ethnically diverse audiences with performances that are multicultural in focus, including classical, jazz and Latin music, dance, theater, literary readings and performance art.

Henry Street Settlement—Abrons Arts Center

Manhattan

Henry Street Settlement was founded in 1893 to provide health and human services to immigrant populations on Manhattan's Lower East Side. Similarly, its arts program was started to cultivate the aesthetic sensibilities of disadvantaged persons and thereby improve their lives. Today, in addition to individual and family counseling services, Henry Street Settlement offers performances, exhibitions and arts classes to a diverse, underprivileged community. The Louis Abrons Arts Center, which opened in 1975 at 466 Grand Street, was designed to serve a diverse lower-income population. It presents exhibitions in all media by artists-in-residence, faculty and local artists. Shows have included photographs of the Lower East Side from the 1940s and 1950s; On the Way Home, works by homeless women in collaboration with their artist instructors; and Voices of Henry Street, photographic portraits of people helped by the organization over the past 75 years. Theater performances have included a selection of new works by young playwrights and readings of stories set on the Lower East Side. Professional artists, students, children and adults converge at the center for instruction in the arts. Current instructional offerings include instrumental music, modern dance, creative writing and cartooning. Henry Street Settlement also offers the Arts for Family Series and the Family Literacy Program and sponsors various ethnic arts festivals.

Hispanic Society of America

Manhattan

Jamaica Performing Arts Center

Queens

Situated in the restored Queens Registry building on bustling Jamaica Avenue, this space is a community school of the arts, a professional arts center and an integral part of the city's multicultural arts scene.