A CELEBRATION OF 15 YEARS IN SOHO
The Puffin Room
435 Broome St. between Broadway & Crosby St.
Saturday, April 3, $5, 6:00 – 9:00
212-343-2881
www.puffinroom.org
After fifteen years, the Puffin Room will be saying goodbye to SoHo, but not without one last send-off. On Saturday night, their final exhibition, “The Last Loft Show,” which will indeed be the last show in the loft space, kicks off with special events celebrating the history of the alternative performance venue. Using as its guiding theme the Walt Whitman quote “Resist much, obey little,” the show will include photos from the Spanish Civil War, “Shocked and Awed” children’s drawings from Iraq, political posters, Dorothea Lange’s dramatic “Photos of the Japanese American Internment,” and pictures from Allan Tannenbaum’s “John Lennon in NYC” series. There will also be pieces by such loft artists as Barbara Thomas, Gene Thompson, Christa Grauer, Louis Mendez, Marion Pinto, and Puffin Room director and curator Carl Rosenstein. The opening party, on April 3 from 6:00 to 9:00, will feature live performances by Cui Fei, Ilse Schreiber-Noll, Irving Epstein, Margaret Silverman, Miriam Rosenstein, Song Xin, and Yana Schnitzler’s Human Kinetics troupe, which specializes in site-specific dance installations. On April 10, Steve Ben Israel, Michael Schwartz, Ngoma, and others will participate in “The Last Word,” while things promise to get funky on April 17 with “The Last Dance” party the day before the exhibit closes. The three Saturday events are $5 each, with proceeds benefiting Greenpeace. (Above photo by Harry Schnitzler: Human Kinetics will be performing the site-specific movement “Poem #3” at the opening party for the Puffin Room’s closing exhibition)