DON’T MISS!: IT’S GOT LEGS!
WATCH your back, Peter Parker. The American Museum of Natural History opens its “Spiders Alive!” exhibit tomorrow, curated by a real Spider-Man: scientist Norman Platnick.
Platnick assures us there are no “Arachnophobia”-like scenes here, quipping, “[A spider’s] instinct is to get as far away and quickly away from anything as large, loud and obnoxious as a human being.”
On display are about 20 species of live spiders — safely enclosed, of course — ranging from three types of tarantulas to the large-and-in-charge Goliath bird eater. Kids can also climb around on a model of a trapdoor spider that’s 50 times life-size.
“A fair percentage of our visitors, especially the kids, really have little or no contact with the natural world,” says Platnick. “So we want to show people that there is an astonishing diversity of animals on the planet.”
79th Street at Central Park West; 212-769-5100, amnh.org. Suggested admission: $19, adults; $10.50, kids.
— Gregory E. Miller
2 of 5
LAST CHANCE!: TICK TOCK
Time is running out to see the Lincoln Center Festival’s presentation of “The Clock,” a 24-hour movie by Christian Marclay. It’s a montage of time-themed excerpts from 3,000 films — among them “Gone With the Wind” and “Moonstruck” — across a variety of periods, genres and scenes, which range from bank robberies to silent comedies. The film unfolds in real time, so if you visit at 3:45 a.m., that’s the time you’ll see in the clip.
“It leaves you reflective, it leaves you anxious, and there are moments of enlightenment and discovery,” says Lincoln Center president Reynold Levy. “There’s another level of enjoyment because the focus is on the passage of time in so many different situations — at work, at home, with friends, with lovers, with colleagues.”
David Rubenstein Atrium at Lincoln Center, Broadway between 62nd and 63rd streets; through Wednesday. Schedule details at lincolncenterfestival.org
— Christina Amoroso
Todd-White Art Photography
3 of 5
NOW HEAR THIS!: ISLE BE THERE
Concert producer Dave Foran cites the “quirky left-field elements that give an event its own life beyond the music” as an essential draw to this weekend’s inaugural Catalpa Festival on Randalls Island. It certainly helps to have headliners such as Snoop Dogg and the Black Keys. But with a flame-throwing DJ sound system, a silent disco tent (dancers get headphones) and a 60-foot inflatable Church of Sham Marriages, the festival — named for the daring 1876 rescue, and relocation to New York, of a handful of Irish rebels imprisoned in Australia — has something extra. Citing some festivals in Europe he calls “different, eclectic, even a bit weird,” native Dubliner Foran says, “Weird is good. I want to give people a real experience that they’ll talk about afterwards.” Tomorrow and Sunday; gates open at 12:30 p.m. Day passes are $100. Details at catalpanyc.com
— Bill Murphy
4 of 5
GET CULTURE!: GOOD IN THE ’HOOD
‘‘Harlem has become the cultural mecca of NYC,” says Ray Chew, musical director of Sunday’s “A Great Day in Harlem,” part of the 38th annual Harlem Week. The all-day festival features the music, food, dance, fashion, crafts and more of the neighborhood — with tributes to recently deceased icons Hal Jackson, the color-barrier-breaking DJ whose show “Sunday Classics” filled NYC airwaves for more than 50 years; and Sylvia Woods, whose soul-food restaurant, Sylvia’s, has been a Lenox Avenue fixture since 1962. “At one point Harlem was Dutch, at one point it was rich and white, then it became black and Puerto Rican,” says Chew, whose band will play alongside Freddie Jackson, Alyson Williams, Cuba Gooding Sr., and others, “and now every culture has a stake, because this is the renaissance of Harlem.”
U.S. Grant National Memorial Park, 122nd Street and Riverside Drive; harlemweek.com. The free festivites begin at 1 p.m.
— Charlie Heller
5 of 5
BE A PLAYER!: LET’S GET SMALL
Mr. Potato Head missed the boat, but Slinky, Barbie’s Dreamhouse and even parts of Pee-wee’s Playhouse — hi, Globey! — made it into MoMA’s “Century of the Child” show. Opening Sunday, it’s a chronological stroll through 10 decades of child-inspired designs, from Montessori blocks to Marimekko overalls. What’s surprising is how many big names tried their hand at child’s play, some more successfully than others: Thonet designed a cute mini-bentwood chair, but Noguchi’s swing set looks more like a scaffold. Let your inner child out by climbing onto two giant-sized chairs that will make you feel like Lily Tomlin’s Edith Ann — or stand in front of a projector that, courtesy of Philip Worthington’s “Blob,” turns your hands and legs into “shadow monsters.” Supersize your $25 admission fee by catching “The 400 Blows” or other child-centric flicks through Aug. 14 at MoMA’s Titus theater. 11 W. 53rd St., moma.org
— Barbara Hoffman
