What's to Do | New York City Edition

SAFE: Design Takes on Risk

Are children’s strollers and sports equipment art? Although we take these everyday items for granted, the Museum of Modern Art feels that they are aesthetically appealing as well. In its first major design exhibit, 300 works from nearly as many artists focus on objects associated with disaster, high stress situations and emergencies.

The exhibit forces us to look anew at what these ubiquitous objects symbolize. Partly as a response to rising tensions from terrorist threats and global instability, the items symbolize protection, safety and security. Part of the exhibit also represents less extreme human fears and worries.

The designs presented defy categorization. They range from the most mundane objects to Raúl Cárdenas Osuna’s Securitree, which arranges security cameras as sculpture. The show purports to raise awareness of the beauty in functionality, and establishes the necessity of good design, even in purely utilitarian objects.

—Marcella Veneziale, Arts Editor

Mt. Eerie, co. to open DUMBO festival

Hop the A or F train to Brooklyn for the ninth Annual DUMBO Art Under The Bridge Festival and start break with the largest free-arts festival in our fair country.

On Friday, Oct. 14, Mt. Eerie (formerly the Microphones), Thanksgiving, Wooden Wand and the Vanishing Voice, and the Good Good will perform Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass, kicking off the weekend with their grainy, moody Pacific Northwest music at 20 Jay Street, on the 11th floor.

Rather than green mountains and Pacific splendor, Phil Elverum (Mt. Eerie) and Adrian Orange (Thanksgiving) will rap steal drums and strum their nylon-string acoustics to the Lower Manhattan skyline and the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges.

The show, beginning at 8 p.m. and costing $7 (almost free), is just the tip of the Festival iceberg. Take the A or C train to High St. or the F to York St. for the show, as well as the weekend’s open studios, exhibitions, installations and sound and performance art.

—Freddy Deknatel, Arts Editor

Friday, Oct. 7
New York City:
Sufjan Stevens Symphony Space, 2537 Broadway, 8:30 p.m. and 10:30 p.m. $21

Vassar:
Actors from London Stage Visiting British actors perform Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. CDF 106, 7 p.m., free

Saturday, Oct. 8
New York City:
Wild Walls New York: A Series of Films in/on Architecture Rudy Burckhardt short film selection, including Under the Brooklyn Bridge and Square Times. Anthology Film Archives, 32 Second Ave., 6 p.m.

Vassar:
Happily Ever Laughter 10 sketches, two movies, and Mad Love. Shiva, 9 p.m.

Sunday, Oct. 9
New York City:
Kate Benson and Matt Briggs Reading A novelist and a short story writer, respectively, will read from their latest, highly-acclaimed works. KGB Bar, 85 East 4th St., 7 p.m., free

Vassar:
Summergroup Community artists’ exhibit. Palmer Gallery.