All good things must come to an end. That applies to holiday decorations and light shows as well as to Broadway shows and museum exhibits.
This is your last chance for several things closing this weekend, so don’t delay.
Grouped in order of their closing date.
Holiday Light Show Closing Friday, Jan. 3rd
Luminaries
Luminaries is a FREE installation of glowing lanterns suspended from the canopy of the giant Winter Garden glass atrium, which change color and intensity at the direction of visitors, making this an interactive light show
There are three so-called Wishing Stations where touch-activated wishes can be sent to the canopy of lanterns above, activating a magical display of lights and colors.
Visitors are encouraged to watch light shows every hour and send wishes to the canopy above from the glowing wishing stations.
Once again, Brookfield Place will donate $1, up to $25,000, for each wish made during the holiday season to Cookies for Kids’ Cancer, a national non-profit that is committed to raising funds for research to develop new, improved and less toxic treatments for pediatric cancer.
Since Cookies for Kids’ Cancer launched in 2008, there have been more than 10,000 events in all 50 states and 16 countries. For more information, to sign up for a bake sale or purchase cookies, please visit www.cookiesforkidscancer.org.
- Luminaries is at the Winter Garden in Brookfield Place
Broadway Shows Closing Sunday, Jan. 5th
Reminder –
Get FREE tickets now for
Kids’ Night on Broadway 2020 in February
Tootsie
Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish
Oklahoma
Waitress
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
Radio City Rockettes Christmas Spectacular
The famous Great Stage is transformed into a magical winter wonderland with song and dance and fabulous costumes and the precision dancing of the Rockettes.
Everybody has to see this annual show at least once in their lives, if not more.
Click here to buy $40 Radio City Christmas Spectacular tickets
See Also
How to get FREE tickets to Late Night TV shows
Museum Exhibits Closing Sunday, Jan. 5th
Pierre Cardin: Future Fashion
This comprehensive exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum features more than 170 pieces dating from the 1950s to today—including haute couture, ready-to-wear, accessories, furniture, and more—showcasing the legendary French designer’s diverse innovative work and illustrating how his “bold, futuristic aesthetic” has influenced design over the years.
Drawn primarily from Pierre Cardin’s archive, the exhibition traverses the designer’s decades-long career at the forefront of fashion invention. Known today for his bold, futuristic looks of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, Cardin extended his design concepts from fashion to furniture, industrial design, and beyond.
Also, for the duration of the exhibit, the museum’s restaurant has been turned into a replica of the legendary Paris nightclub and restaurant, Maxim’s, which has been owned by Cardin since 1981.
A Dickens Christmas
The NY Public Library has been celebrating with a special installation featuring Dickens’s own heavily annotated texts, which he used in his public readings, of A Christmas Carol and other holiday books, including The Chimes and The Cricket on the Hearth. This FREE exhibition includes original photographs, first editions, and other items.
- FREE, through Jan. 5, at the NYPL main branch on Fifth Ave., now known as theStephen A. Schwarzman Building
Trolls the Experience
Make the kids happy by taking them to hang out with the cartoonish figures with neon hair.
It’s an interactive exhibit, complete with glitter and confetti, characters from the toy-inspired movie, and everybody wants to pose in Troll wigs and take photos for Grammie and for Instagram. Get Trollified!
- Exhibit is at 218 West 57th Street, which formerly housed the Downton Abbey exhibit
- Cost: Tickets have been reduced to $19 from $24 for the final days.
Holiday Light Shows Closing Jan. 10th to Jan. 12th
Saks Fifth Avenue
In addition to its famous holiday windows – this year featuring scenes from Disney’s Frozen 2 – there’s a grand sound and light show covering the entire facade of the landmark store.
Thousands of LED lights, in the shape of a magical castle, change shapes and colors to a soundtrack set to a soundtrack of “Frozen” songs and holiday favorites.
The light show is about five minutes long and plays daily from dusk to just before midnight, every 10 minutes until Jan. 10.
And it’s just one block from the word-famous Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree.
The Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree stays lit through Monday, Jan. 13th
Winter Lantern Festival
There’s plenty to see and snap among the 1,000 LED light displays at the NYC Winter Lantern Festival at Staten Island’s Snug Harbor Cultural Center.
There are magical creatures, some as much as 30 feet tall, including leaping dolphins, supersized fruit, colorful jellyfish, fabulous flowers, a cluster of dinosaurs, and a supersize dragon.
- Winter Lantern Festival is open Wed.-Sun. (closed Mon/Tues)
- Tickets are entry timed, but you can stay as long as you like
- Depending on day and time, prices are $23-$25 for adults, $18-$20 for Seniors/Military/Students with a valid ID, and $15-$17 for children ages 3-12.
- Parking is an additional $20 at the center, or $10 at the Empire Outlets
- Click here to book tickets with no service fee
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Museum Exhibits Closing Sunday, Jan. 26th
Art of the Brick
Experience the world’s largest display of LEGO® art.
Artist Nathan Sawaya created more than 100 pieces for this exhibition using only LEGO bricks. The collection features original pieces, as well as re-imagined versions of some of the world’s most famous art masterpieces, including the famous painting known as Scream.
More than one million LEGO bricks were used to create Sawaya’s sculptures.
In addition to the LEGO artworks on display, there are activity stations where kids of all ages can create and design their own.
- Art & Architecture – Recreate famous building, bridges and structures using LEGO bricks.
- Hidden Hands – Build a mystery object inside a covered box using only your sense of touch.
- Assistive Devices – Design a tool that will allow you to pick up an object on a post through a series of various sized windows.
- Describe It – Build a simple object out of view and describes the object to your friend. Then, see if your friend can build the same object based only on the description.
- Six Bricks – Find out how many different things you can build using only six LEGO Duplo bricks.
- LEGO Drag Race – Build a LEGO brick car and test it out on ramps of different inclines.
- Tilt Maze – Rearrange straight LEGO “bar” bricks to create a maze for a wooden ball to navigate through on a tilt-table.
- LEGO Music Box – Create your own unique song using a special LEGO baseplate. On the baseplate, horizontal lines represent different “tracks,” and vertical columns represent the eight “beats.” Use different colored LEGO bricks as instruments or notes/pitches to create your song. Then put the visual representation of your song under a camera, where simple image processing algorithms will turn it into music.
Art of the Brick is at the New York Hall of Science in Flushing Meadow Park.
- $7 per person, plus NYSCI admission.
- Take the 7 train to the 111th St. station.
Closing Early in February
Big Apple Circus – Through Feb. 2
Ladies and gentlemen and kids of all ages, the Big Apple Circus is bigger and better than ever and fascinating everybody under the big top, at Lincoln Center for its 42nd season, with thrilling new acts from around the world and more immersive than ever before. Best of all each seat is close to the action so you don’t miss a thing.
Discount tickets from $10 for various dates through Feb. 2nd
Evelyn Kanter is a native New Yorker who has written for the NY Times, NY Daily News, NY Post, New York Magazine, and is a former on-air reporter for WCBS Newsradio 88 and WABC-TV Eyewitness News.
Evelyn Kanter also is the author of several NYC and Hudson Valley guidebooks, including my latest, 100 Things to Do in NYC Before You Die.
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