UWS Weekend: Great Things to do In (and Around) the Neighborhood

By Tracy Zwick

Spend some time in Central Park’s stunning new Davis Center or see work by emerging artists at Barnard this weekend. If it rains, I’ll be baking from the just-released cookbook of the UWS’s own Bobbie Lloyd – Chief Baking Officer and CEO at Magnolia Bakery. Or you could check out a classic film at New Plaza Cinema.

Let’s Weekend!

April 25th to 28th, 2025

Davis Center Unveiling and Celebration: Saturday April 26th from noon to 4 p.m.; Central Park near Harlem Meer around West 110th Street and Lenox Avenue; Free

If you’ve walked or biked or jogged through northern Central Park anytime in the last few years, you’ve likely noticed the orange netting, fencing, and construction equipment at the erstwhile Lasker Rink. It’s been a blight. But there’s great news. The Davis Center, a $180 million, 8-acre project led by the Central Park Conservancy, is finished.

And it is magnificent. It’ll open to the public this Saturday with music, food and drink, and hourly tours (rain date for the festivities is Sunday, but the center will be open Saturday, rain or shine). Bring a blanket or a ball and hang out on the gorgeous, newly green “Harlem Oval” where Lasker used to sit, which will soon be transformed into a public pool with free swimming in the summer. In the winter it’ll be an ice rink offering skating. But in the shoulder seasons, like right now, it’ll be a place to relax in the wildest, most topographically rich part of Central Park.

Sustainability was the touchstone of the project: there’s a blanket of earth covering the building, so it blends into the landscape and requires less heat and cooling. It’s passively ventilated, with floor-to-ceiling glass paneling that can be fully opened to make the space into a sort of indoor-outdoor patio. (There’s bird-safe coating on all the glass.) Inside you’ll find beautiful modern picnic-style tables in an airy-skylight space that includes brand new bathrooms and a changing room with lockers. Soon, food and beverages will be offered by a local Harlem restaurant. Free and low-cost programming will be offered year-round. It cost more than any project the Conservancy has ever undertaken, and the results are glorious – read New York Times architecture critic Michael Kimmelman’s take — HERE.

“Residual Traces” and “How Did You Get Here?” exhibitions of visual art at Barnard College’s Diana Center, 4th floor; 3009 Broadway; Open through May 1st; email for free access to the exhibitions and hours

If you’re interested in contemporary art, it doesn’t get much more of-the-moment than this: an exhibition of senior thesis work by Barnard art concentrators and adjacent hangings of work by their underclass peers. At the opening Wednesday evening, a friend and I were drawn to a time-lapse video by Reece Ollivierre, who methodically blacks out most of the text in Sheila Heti’s Alphabetical Diaries, leaving only select words that coalesce into the artist’s own personal narrative. The redacted book is exhibited nearby. We also admired Lixin Yan’s first foray into embroidery, onto which she inscribed an abstract graphical score we heard performed by the show’s polymath curator, Landon Wilson, a post-baccalaureate student at Columbia who completed his undergraduate studies at Manhattan School of Music.

“Paris Blues” and double feature “Bananas/Did You Know My Husband” at New Plaza Cinema, Saturday, April 26th at 2 p.m. and Sunday, April 27th at 2 p.m. with Q&As after each; 35 West 67th Street at Macaulay Honors College; tickets start at $13

See either of these classic film screenings at New Plaza Cinema this weekend and stay for talkbacks. After the Paul Newman-Sidney Poitier-Joanne Woodward-Diahann Carroll “Paris Blues” screening on Saturday, Wayne Winbourne, executive director of the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers, will chat with vocalist and teacher Melissa Newman about whether the film succeeds in representing jazz musicians and the post-WWII black artistic experience. Woody Allen’s “Bananas” will be shown Sunday with “Did You Know My Husband?” A discussion with Louise Lasser, who stars in both, will follow.

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