By Tracy Zwick
Let’s Weekend for the first time in 2025!
Many of us aren’t back to work or school yet and we’re done celebrating the holidays, so it’s a great time to catch up on culture. Here are some suggestions for these last few days of what for most of us has been a winter break from our ordinary routines.
January 3rd to 5th, 2025
Museum Shows
MoMA at 11 West 53rd; open every day 10:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. with late hours on Saturdays (open till 7:00 p.m.), tickets required for non-members; Whitney Museum of American Art, 99 Gansevoort Street; open every day but Tuesday 10:30 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. with late hours on Fridays (open till 10:00 p.m.); tickets are required, but visitors under the age of 25 are always free.
Earlier this week I took my 22-year-old and two of her pals to the MoMA on West 53rd Street to see one of my all-time favorite artworks, Christian Marclay’s 24-hour film “The Clock”. Depending on whether you spent New Year’s Eve focused on the countdown of hours and minutes till midnight, you may or may not be particularly attuned to the passage of time this time of year. Whatever time you walk in to watch “The Clock” is the exact time it’ll be on screen for the characters in each snippet Marclay collaged together to create this masterpiece. The twenty-somethings found it “hypnotic” and, after many viewings, I still do too.
Then we hit the Whitney. My daughter spent her afterschool hours during high school rushing to Alvin Ailey’s beautiful home base on West 55th Street where she studied dance for years. We loved “Edges of Ailey” at the Whitney, with its wraparound screens showing archival footage of Ailey’s dancers in action and all kinds of other media relevant to the life, dances, influences and enduring legacy of artist and choreographer Alvin Ailey. It closes on February 9th.
Movies
UWSers have great options for catching flicks in theaters, and I’ve even got one to recommend that you can watch at home. AMC Lincoln Square 13 is screening several films I’ve enjoyed lately, including “Babygirl” with Nicole Kidman as a corporate powerhouse with an intimate secret, the biopic “A Complete Unknown” and “Wicked”, which we’ve already discussed. My daughter and I have been listening to Dylan (and she’s been playing his tunes on the guitar) daily since we saw “A Complete Unknown” and we’ve got some related at-home watches on our itinerary, including “I’m Not There” and “Don’t Look Back”, both available on Prime.
There are more movies I want to see at Lincoln Square 13, including “September 5”, “Nickel Boys” and “The Brutalist”, which can’t seem to be mentioned without the word “Oscar” in the same sentence. Just a few blocks away there’s Film at Lincoln Center, where Pedro Almodóvar’s “The Room Next Door” with Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore is in rotation. Finally, you can purchase “A Real Pain” on Amazon Prime for under $20 and watch New Yorkers Kieran Culkin and Jesse Eisenberg as mismatched cousins on a Jewish group tour of Poland from your own couch. That’s what we did. Two thumbs up!
Performances
Related to the Ailey exhibition at the Whitney, this is the last week of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater at City Center. What a treat it’d be to see both the exhibition and a live performance the same day or week. The Ailey winter performance schedule includes new works, Ailey classics and family matinees. The last of this season’s shows are this Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights with matinees on Saturday and Sunday. Tickets start around $32.
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Don’t forget the New Plaza Cinema. Over the holidays, they’ve been open daily. They’re currently showing the new version of The Count of Monte Cristo three times a day.
Agree that New Plaza Cinema is a gift for the neighborhood! AMC’s price increases for matinees in my opinion are the nail in the coffin. It used to be fun to see films late mornings on weekdays, but $17 for a discounted ticket is ridiculous. Also the new fancy seats do not allow a woman to hang a handbag from the armrest.