NYC Labor Day Weekend: What to Do

POSTED BY
Evelyn Kanter

What are your plans for the three day Labor Day Weekend that marks the official end of summer? Here are four suggestions for things to do in NYC without busting your budget. As always, we feature events for grown-ups, including family-friendly events for grown-ups with kids. No bar crawls, no “dope” events here on NYC on the Cheap.

Museum exhibits ending soon

Through Monday – This is your last chance to see NYC in the days after World War II. The Museum of the City of New York presents A City Seen: Todd Webb’s Postwar New York 1945-1960, a photography exhibition highlighting Todd Webb’s personal exploration of the city that enthralled him while providing an expansive visual documentation of New York in the years following World War II. A City Seen opens to the public on Thursday, April 20 and will remain on view through Monday, September 4, 2017.

photo courtesy Todd Webb Foundation and the Museum of the City of New York Archives

Through Sept. 15 – Ever wanted to sit on a throne of 18k gold ? Thousands of visitors have waited patiently for the chance to combine art and personal business at the Guggenheim Museum, where the fully functional, normal-size golden art installation by Italian sculptor Mauirizio Cattelan, has been on display since last September. It’s a private experience, in a one-person bathroom at the museum. The golden john is named “America”, and is a comment on income inequality around the world, where some live in gilded towers while their neighbors might be starving.

photo courtesy Guggenheim Museum

Free and fun

FordHub City of Tomorrow – See the future of mobility – that’s the new word for “transportation” – including self-driving and autonomous cars, ride-sharing, shared ownership, managing congestion and pollution, and more, at this FREE exhibit that includes interactive games to learn green technology, and more, including thousands of miniature vehicles lining the walls. In the Westfield World Trade Center, which we all call the Oculus.

Washington Square Outdoor Art Exhibit – This annual exhibit of paintings, mixed media, sculptures, ceramics, woodwork, metalwork, photograpy and jewelry turns Greenwich Village into a veersion of Paris, featuring artworks far better than the schlock you see at street fairs. The show takes place on University Place, starting at East 13th Street and continuing south along the east side of Washington Square Park to West 3rd Street. The southern end of the show encompasses Schwartz Plaza, (aka Bobkin Lane), between NYU’s Shimkin Hall and Bobst Library, Saturday, Sunday and Monday, and again next wekend, Sept. 8/9.