Summer Culture Preview

New York City’s summer entertainment spans outdoor and indoor experiences. Outdoor options include genre-skipping music festivals, plaza dance programming, free Shakespeare performances, and borough-hopping parks tours with fireworks. Indoor viewing features revamps of classics across eras, including streaming titles and cinema releases such as “Little House on the Prairie,” “Cape Fear,” and “Legally Blonde,” plus films about Odysseus and Robin Hood. Major attractions include pop-art at the Guggenheim, musical icons, and a Spielberg alien film. New and unusual offerings include an indie movie starring John Early in drag, Clubbed Thumb’s Summerworks series, and the Morgan Library’s tarot-focused exhibition. Plans can be made around these varied events.

"In the summer, New York City likes to play outside—quite literally—as with the genre-skipping, star-packed music festival Governors Ball; Lincoln Center's congenial "Summer for the City" dance programming on the plaza; the Public Theatre's always electrifying, free Shakespeare in the Park; and the New York Philharmonic's blissfully cultivated borough-hopping parks tour (complete with post-show fireworks), among many, many other outdoor performances."

"If you prefer a dark room with air-conditioning, there are revamps of classics from various eras on the small and big screens—including, streaming, "Little House on the Prairie," "Cape Fear," and "Legally Blonde," and, at the cinema, tales of Odysseus (Christopher Nolan's "The Odyssey") and Robin Hood (Hugh Jackman carries the quiver)."

"Blockbusters abound, among a murderers' row of musical icons, at the Guggenheim's Pop-art show, and in a movie that sees Steven Spielberg dabbling, once again, in aliens. But there's also plenty that is new and unusual: John Early in drag as an addled chef-influencer, in the indie flick "Maddie's Secret"; Clubbed Thumb's edifying Summerworks series; the Morgan Library's meditation on the history and mysteries of tarot."

Read at The New Yorker