Museum Mile Festival Returns In 2021 With Another Virtual Year

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — After being forced to go virtual last year, the Museum Mile Festival will return next month with more virtual programming, organizers announced Wednesday.

As it has in years past, the annual event will have eight institutions participating: the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Neue Galerie New York, the Guggenheim Museum, Cooper Hewitt/Smithsonian Design Museum, The Jewish Museum, Museum of the City of New York, El Museo del Barrio and The Africa Center.

The event will run from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. on June 8, consisting of live and pre-recorded virtual programs, virtual exhibition tours and live musical performances.

Past years' events have included a street fair that blocks off Fifth Avenue between 82nd and 110th streets, as well as free admission to a handful of museums. It does not appear that those components are included in this year's event.

The only planned in-person event — an outdoor performance by an Afro-Caribbean group San Simón at the Harlem Meer in Central Park — was canceled, organizers said after the initial announcement.

Virtual programs, meanwhile, include virtual silent exhibition tours of the Temple of Dendur and the new roof garden sculpture at the Met, or the livestreamed series "Curators from the Couch" at the Museum of the City of New York.

"The Museum Mile Festival has attracted joyful crowds of New Yorkers for more than 40 years," city cultural affairs commissioner Gonzalo Casals said in a news release. "This year, as our city recovers, Museum Mile will offer opportunities both to engage with live programming, and for people far and wide to participate online.

Read the full list of programming here