New York

The Best NYC Art Experiences You Can Enjoy From Home

Explore the city's cultural offerings from afar.

Diego Grandi/Shutterstock
Diego Grandi/Shutterstock
Diego Grandi/Shutterstock

Even when the lights are out on Broadway, NYC is still the cultural capital of the world. Lucky for those of us stuck at home, the city’s greatest artists and curators have moved quickly to bring New York’s unparalleled cultural offerings online.
 
When you need a break from WFH (or when you’re just bored of waiting for your new pigeon BFF to flap past your window), take some time to explore the city’s new socially distant art experiences. Whether you want to spend an afternoon lost in the Met, watch a Broadway show from the best seats in the house, or listen to a poet perform a personalized reading just for you — we’ve rounded up our favorite ways to explore art in NYC. And if you can, please consider donating to the city’s cultural institutions. They need us now more than ever.

Spend the day exploring NYC’s famous museums

At the American Museum of Natural History, you can take a virtual tour or follow a tour guide through their collection of Facebook Live streams. Explore the Metropolitan Museum of Art through their Met 360° Project or fall down an internet rabbithole of artist interviews. Over at the Guggenheim, they’ve produced a podcast about the iconic architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright that you can give a listen to while clicking through their collection online. The Frick has a virtual tour, too, along with hours of recorded lectures. If you’re more into the contemporary art scene, explore Virtual Views at the Museum of Modern Art or take courses to find your inner artist. At the Brooklyn Museum, you can click through their exhibitions or stream Virtual First Saturdays.

Check out NYC’s smaller (but just as mighty) museums

While you’re not riding the subway every day, you can still use the archives of the NY Transit Museum to learn more about your commute. At the Tenement Museum, they’ve created an online exhibition about the history of the Census. The Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts is offering the MoCADA experience online with lectures, podcasts, and videos; at El Museo Del Barrio, you can explore their permanent collection and watch discussions with artists on YouTube. The Merchant House Museum, Manhattan’s first landmarked building (and a common spot for ghost sightings), has moved their programming online, as has Williamsburg’s strange, tiny, and only-in-NYC City Reliquary.

Watch the Great White Way on the World Wide Web

While Broadway’s gone dark through at least June, the show must go on. To get your musical theater fix, you can stream full-length musicals on Broadway HD, the Broadway on PBS Collection, and Andrew Lloyd Weber’s The Shows Must Go On YouTube channel. If you want to welcome the stars of Broadway into your living room, watch Stars in the House, a daily livestream that supports The Actors Fund. Or belt showtunes yourself by joining the Marie’s Crisis Facebook group, where the pianists at the West Village piano bar stream their sets nightly.

Watch off-Broadway and alternative theater

This summer’s Shakespeare in the Park is canceled, but you can still stream last year’s performance of Much Ado About Nothing. Avant-garde theater La MaMa is streaming experimental theater; the social-change-focused Rattlestick Theater is hosting virtual salons on Zoom; and Playwrights Horizons, which champions up-and-coming playwrights, has created The Interview Project with their commissioned artists. If you could use a laugh (and who couldn’t?), head to the Magnet Theater’s Twitch stream to catch an online improv show.

Spend the afternoon strolling (or, um, clicking) through fine art galleries 

Even if you can’t afford the art, you can still admire it! Gagosian has posted their archive online, and David Zwirner has created Platform: New York, bringing 12 NYC galleries together to present individual artists from their rosters. Explore Romare Bearden’s collage paintings at DC Moore; work from young artists like Hayden Dunham and John Edmonds at Company’s Viewing Room; and self portraits from Frida Orupabo at Gavin Brown’s enterprise.

Jeremy Liebman/Shutterstock
Jeremy Liebman/Shutterstock
Jeremy Liebman/Shutterstock

Air-conduct an orchestra from the comfort of your couch 

The Metropolitan Opera’s Nightly Opera Streams bring a different opera to your home every day of the week. If you want to recreate a night at the orchestra, NY Phil Plays On is replaying video and radio broadcasts of your faves; Live With Carnegie Hall is live-streaming music and interviews; and Lincoln Center is uploading full performances to its Jazz at Lincoln Center YouTube. If you like your music a little more modern, tune into Live @ National Sawdust, where they’re releasing an archived performance every week, or ThingNY, where they’re streaming the modern opera Subtracttttttttt.

Get inspired to dance around your apartment

Already nailed the Toosie Slide? The Dance Theater of Harlem is offering free online dance classes so you can spend your quarantine learning some new moves. If you’ve got two left feet, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater is streaming full performances online, along with behind-the-scenes footage and conversations with their dancers on Instagram. If your tastes lean classical, the New York City Ballet has a podcast exploring the ballet’s history and repertory. And if you’d like to explore the world of emerging dance, spend some time on the Joyce Theater’s JoyceStream “digital stage” and watch selected works from BAM’s digital archives.

Stream films you can’t find on Netflix

Movie theaters are bringing their programming online for those of us who’d like to watch something that isn’t the view from our window. BAM and Film Forum are offering new and archival films to stream; Anthology Film Archives has curated “Helter Shelter,” a virtual film series that celebrates shelter-in-place; and IFC is presenting “Wish We Were Here,” a collection of short films made by their staff. If you want to go behind the movie screen, check out the Paley Center for Media‘s YouTube channel and quarantine-themed films and discussions from Museum of the Moving Image.

Get to know the city’s lit scene

If you’re using quarantine to curl up and read, spend an afternoon poking around the New York Public Library’s expansive digital collections. Or brush off that English degree and learn about poet and novelist Anne Brontë at the Morgan Library’s online exhibition. You can support indie bookstores by streaming readings and ordering new novels at Books Are Magic, Greenlight, or your favorite local shop. If you want to get right in the middle of the lit world during quarantine, sign up for Nuyorican Poets Cafe Online Open Mic or book a session with Poet Stream, which pairs you with a poet for a live video call and a personalized poetry reading.

Be inspired + make your own art 

Get creative by exploring Brooklyn Museum’s coloring pages, which let you color in pieces from their collection. If you want to start a social distancing diary, DIY a hand-bound journal with online classes from the Center for Book Arts. Perform and upload a star-making performance in the Shakespeare Sonnet Challenge; set aside time to work on your writing along with Suzan-Lori Parks; or become a part of history by sharing your quarantine story with the Tenement Museum.Sign up here for our daily NYC email and be the first to get all the food/drink/fun New York has to offer.

Rachel Pelz lives and writes in Brooklyn.

New York

Scavenge for Peeps Cookies and More Fun Treats in NYC This Easter

The best Easter desserts in NYC this spring include Easter Bunny Churros and Carrot Cake Macarons.

Photo courtesy of Funny Face Bakery
Photo courtesy of Funny Face Bakery
Photo courtesy of Funny Face Bakery

As spring makes its way through New York City, not only do we get to enjoy beautiful weather, stunning cherry blossoms, and cool activities priced at $Free.99, but it’s also the perfect time for some limited-edition desserts.

With Easter fast approaching, bakeries are filling their shops with tons of chocolate eggs, carrot cake-flavoured everything and all types of flavours that offer both nostalgia and innovation within the city’s dessert landscape. After you’ve picked up a cake from the city’s best new bakeries, from Easter Bunny Churros to Carrot Cake Macarons, here are 8 Easter desserts to try in NYC right now.

Photo courtesy of Magnolia Bakery
Photo courtesy of Magnolia Bakery
Photo courtesy of Magnolia Bakery

Magnolia Bakery

Throughout April
Various locations
There’s great news for devotees of Magnolia Bakery’s Classic Banana Pudding: For Easter, the spot is mixing up the iconic dessert’s vanilla pudding with some carrot cake. The Carrot Cake Pudding is filled with freshly grated carrots, coconuts, pineapples, raisins, and walnuts. And if both bananas and carrots aren’t your thing, they’ll be offering their Classic Vanilla Cupcakes in pastel colours with a Cadbury chocolate egg hidden inside.

Photo courtesy of Funny Face Bakery
Photo courtesy of Funny Face Bakery
Photo courtesy of Funny Face Bakery

Funny Face Bakery

Through Easter Sunday
NoHo and Seaport
Known for their celebrity face and meme-worthy decorated cookies, fans of Funny Face Bakery know that a new fun design is always just around the corner. For Easter, they’ve created the adorable Hoppy Easter decorated cookie that resembles a classic box of marshmallow Peeps. Along with that, they also have the return of their fan-favourite Caramel Pretzel Chip cookie flavour, plus a set of three mini-decorated cookies perfect for gifting.

The Doughnut Project

Friday, April 7 through Easter Sunday
West Village
With the ever-changing flavours at The Doughnut Project, it’s super easy to miss out on trying out a new debut. But this Easter weekend, there will be two new flavours available. One is of course, a carrot cake doughnut topped with a cream cheese glaze, and the other is known as the Doughnut Nest-a French cruller “nest” with a cream-filled doughnut hole “egg” in the centre.

Photo by Cole Saladino, courtesy of The Fragile Flour
Photo by Cole Saladino, courtesy of The Fragile Flour
Photo by Cole Saladino, courtesy of The Fragile Flour

The Fragile Flour

Wednesday, April 5 through Easter Sunday
East Village
For stellar vegan desserts this holiday, head to The Fragile Flour, a plant-based bakery and dessert wine bar. They’re known for going all out for each holiday with a variety of new pastry options that you can pair perfectly with a glass of wine. This Easter, they’ll have a whole dessert menu that’s both delicious and gorgeous for posting on IG. The menu includes Stuffed Carrot Cake Cookies, a Lemon Cake (whole or by the slice), some festive cupcakes, and specialty macarons.

Photo courtesy of Kreuther Handcrafted Chocolate
Photo courtesy of Kreuther Handcrafted Chocolate
Photo courtesy of Kreuther Handcrafted Chocolate

Kreuther Handcrafted Chocolate

Through mid April
Midtown
For a luxurious take on Easter chocolates, browse the selections available at Kreuther Handcrafted Chocolate. You can even pick the Easter Signature Chef’s Selection for a special box curated by award-winning chefs. For something other than chocolate, choose between the Carrot Cake Macarons or the cake flavored Easter Marshmallow Trio, both of which are almost too cute to eat.

La Churreria

Throughout April
Nolita
This churro-centric spot is putting the cutest Easter spin on their crispy cinnamon churros by twisting them up into bunnies and bunny ears. At Churreria, choose from a Bunny Churro Lollipop topped with your choice of chocolate or dulce de leche and sprinkles, or the bunny ear churros in the Ube and Matcha ice cream sundae or the Ube Milkshake, both of which are made with ice cream from il laboratorio del gelato.

Photo by Briana Balducci
Photo by Briana Balducci
Photo by Briana Balducci

Lafayette

Throughout April
NoHo
You’ve surely seen this croissant tons of times while scrolling through IG or TikTok, whether it’s the Pain au Chocolat one or the latest of the month. Known as Suprêmes, these filled croissants went viral and continue to live up to the hype each time a new flavour comes out. April’s flavour-sour cherry amaretto with a Luxardo custard and toasted almonds. While you’ll have to be super early and wait in line during one of their three drops of the day to get a taste, we promise you it’ll be worth it.

Photo courtesy of Levain
Photo courtesy of Levain
Photo courtesy of Levain

Levain

Seasonal
Various locations
We all know the iconic cookies from Levain-they’re gigantic, perfectly crispy and chewy, and well worth the long lines. For spring, the shop is launching a new flavour: Caramel Coconut Chocolate Chip. Filled with gooey caramel chips, fresh shredded coconut, and melty dark chocolate, it’s one you’ve got to try while it’s still around. To further celebrate the new season, all of Levain’s storefronts will be decked out in spring floral displays, serving as the perfect backdrop for pictures.

Get the latest from Thrillist Australia delivered straight to your inbox, subscribe here.

Alaina Cintron is an Editorial Assistant at Thrillist. Her work can also be found in Westchester Magazine, Girls’ Life, and Spoon University. When she’s not at her desk typing away, you can find her exploring a local coffee shop or baking a new recipe.

Related

Our Best Stories, Delivered Daily
The best decision you'll make all day.