Event Date: Saturday, February 4, 2012
Event Time: 11 a.m. – 4 p.m.
Location: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street, Manhattan
Visitors of all ages are invited to The Metropolitan Museum of Art on February 4 to join in a day-long festival, Lunar New Year: The Year of the Dragon, celebrating Chinese arts and culture. The Museum will welcome in the Year of the Dragon with interactive programs, art-making workshops, and lively performances. All Lunar New Year programs are free with Museum admission.
Lunar New Year: The Year of the Dragon is presented by the Museum’s Multicultural Audience Development Initiative and its Education Department.
This program is made possible by the Great Circle Foundation.
The festival begins with family programs, including a Sesame Street Puppet Show—featuring actor Alan Muraoka—about the Lunar New Year and Chinese traditions, in the Carson Family Hall; a Design a Dragon workshop to create a giant dragon on the Great Hall Balcony; and a program entitled Chinese Zodiac and Dragon Hunt in the Arts of Korea Gallery. These three programs begin at 11:00 a.m. Afternoon programs start with adramatic lion dance procession (featuring several fanciful dragons) up the Museum’s front steps and into the building at noon; a lantern-making workshop given by the Museum of Chinese in America in a Chinese garden (The Astor Court) and a demonstration of Chinese calligraphy in the Astor Forecourt at noon; fan and ribbon dances at 12:45 p.m. and 1:15 p.m.; and a youth orchestra performing on traditional Chinese instruments at 1 p.m. and 1:30 p.m. Celebrate Lunar New Year!, featuring traditional Chinese dance and music by all of the performers mentioned above and a lion dance group from the Chinese Cultural Center of Long Island, will take place in The Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium at 2 p.m.
Event Information
Lunar New Year Festival information will be available at the Information Desk inside the Museum’s main entrance at Fifth Avenue and 82nd Street, and in the Uris Center for Education, which is reached through the ground-floor entrance at Fifth Avenue and 81st Street. All Lunar New Year programs are free with Museum admission. Recommended Museum admission is $25 for adults, $17 for seniors (65 and over), and $12 for students. Children under 12 accompanied by an adult are free. A complete schedule of Lunar New Year programs can be found on the Museum’s website:www.metmuseum.org/lunarnewyear.
In addition, the Museum’s cafeteria will celebrate the Lunar New Year with a traditional Chinese menu including soy sauce chicken, pork buns, and napa cabbage with garlic and ginger. The regular menu will also be available.
Related Exhibition
Visitors are also invited to explore the special exhibition Chinese Art in an Age of Revolution: Fu Baoshi (1904-1965) , presenting a retrospective of works by Fu Baoshi—perhaps the greatest figure painter and landscapist of China’s modern period. Treating Fu’s 40-year career with some 70 paintings, the exhibition includes many of the artist’s recognized masterpieces, drawn from the preeminent holdings of China’s Nanjing Museum. The exhibition, augmented by superb works from a New York private collection, will be the most comprehensive treatment of the artist’s oeuvre ever presented outside of Asia.
The exhibition was organized by The Metropolitan Museum of Art with the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Nanjing Museum.
