Top Things to Do with Kids in Brooklyn this April
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Throughout April
Celebrate Earth Day
The weather lately has been strange, to say the least, making Earth Day feel more significant than ever. Many of Brooklyn and Staten Island’s major art and cultural institutions are catching the spirit:
April 14: Brooklyn Children’s Museum is saturated with Earth Day-related events throughout April. One in particular is the Celebrate Earth Festival, which uses the museum’s many exhibits to convey the importance of alternate energy sources and the necessity of protecting the Earth. Children will meet local “green” heroes and solve environmental puzzles. Click for details
April 22: Nothing says Earth Day like the beautiful surroundings of Prospect Park. The park’s B’Earthday event, which celebrates the holiday as well as the 10th anniversary of the park’s Audubon Center, features nature games, tours, performances, educational activities, and a volunteer cleanup of the park’s lakeshore. Click for details
April 22: A more zoological take on Earth Day happens at Staten Island Zoo, where visitors will learn about composting and recycling, make crafts, and encounter some of the zoo’s animal residents up close. Click for details
Through July 8
Art Goes Pop
New York City’s art scene in the 1980s marked a time when street art became fine art—when spray paint-inspired imagery that adorned subway trains and brick walls found its way onto canvases and plywood. Andy Warhol’s populism spearheaded the scene, and the icon was visible at dinner tables surrounded by adoring protégés like Jean-Michel Basquiat, Kenny Scharf, and of course, Keith Haring. Haring’s art first became noticeable in the late ‘70s as graffiti in the subway. His style was simple, bold—black and white representations of mood-lifting and joyful tranquility, such as a happily barking dog, people dancing, DJs and spinning turntables, and eventually political ideas and visual rhetoric in response to the AIDS epidemic—the disease from which Haring eventually died. Brooklyn Museum’s new exhibition, Keith Haring: 1978-1982, explores Haring’s earliest years in New York and is considered the first large-scale display of his early work. On display along with his art are relics from his life—sketchbooks, journals, notes, photos of Haring at work, and various ephemera from his life. Haring often celebrated children, and kids, in turn, have always marveled at his art. Click for details
For even more fun stuff to do in Brooklyn and the NYC area, head to our full, searchable calendar of events.
