FUN STUFF In Williamsburg |
Featured alongside Time Out New York · Brooklyn Paper · Billboard |
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NYCxDESIGN's main week doesn't start until May 14, but the first exhibitions are already opening — and this week has enough to fill four solid days. Three simultaneous shows open at Pioneer Works Friday, including a working pigeon coop on the roof. Brooklyn firm SO–IL opens its biggest project yet on Friday in Midtown. Mister Sunday comes back Sunday for the first outdoor party of the year. |
NYCxDESIGN runs May 14–20 and brings hundreds of events across the city. Over the next few issues we'll pull out what's actually worth going to — in Brooklyn and the surrounding neighborhoods — and cut through the noise. Consider this week the warm-up. |
Do you know someone who'd appreciate this? FUN STUFF is a free weekly edit of the best art, design, maker, and music events in Brooklyn. I write for people who are interested in supporting the local community. If someone in your circle would appreciate it, forward this their way. Forward this issue → |
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Don't Miss |
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| Bases Loaded + O.W.I. + Pigeoneer Works at Pioneer WorksFri May 8, 7–9pThree shows opening simultaneously at Pioneer Works Friday evening. Jordan Eagles' Bases Loaded suspends vials of blood — the artist's and his father's — in UV resin alongside archival baseball photography, examining blood-donation discrimination and belonging. In the adjacent gallery, Khajistan's Office of War Information is a decaying psyops print shop with a live printer running, loaded with U.S. propaganda leaflets from Afghanistan, Iraq, and WWII. Up on the roof, Duke Riley's Pigeoneer Works is a sculptural installation and a working pigeon coop — a continuation of his long study of urban ecology, interspecies collaboration, and the hidden histories embedded in city life. Riley draws from Brooklyn's deep pigeon-keeping traditions, repositioning the birds not as urban nuisances but as collaborators and ambassadors of the natural world. All three on view through August. The opening is free. |
This Week |
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| 1. PIT ROOMOpens Thu May 7An art, design, and architecture group exhibition opening in DUMBO on Thursday — one of the first official NYCxDESIGN 2026 shows to open before the main festival week. On view through June 11. Details and venue address at nycxdesign.org. |
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| 2. Issey Miyake at 45 MadisonOpens Fri May 8Brooklyn firm SO–IL — the architects behind Amant in East Williamsburg — opens the new Issey Miyake flagship inside Cass Gilbert's 1928 New York Life Building at 45 Madison. 13,000 square feet, with MADO at the back: Miyake's first dedicated gallery space outside Japan. Free to walk through. |
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| 3. Deportation Inc. at e-fluxThu May 7, 7pScreening and panel co-presented by e-flux, the Architectural League of New York, SITU Research, and Lawfare — examining the privatized infrastructure of immigration detention through spatial analysis and legal journalism. The Architectural League's involvement makes this the Design Week event most directly relevant to architects and urban practitioners. |
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| 4. Teksupport: BLOND:ISH at Industry City Open AirSat May 9, 4p–1aBLOND:ISH brings her Abracadabra project — house and techno with a psychedelic, mystical bent — to Industry City's open-air courtyard for a full afternoon-to-late-night run with Joshwa, Chinonegro, and Dedro b2b Rob The Bank. The first proper outdoor Teksupport of the season at Industry City. |
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| 5. Objekt All Night at NowadaysFri May 8, 10pObjekt plays an extended all-night set at Nowadays in Ridgewood — one of the stronger bookings that room has had this season. |
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| 6. Mister Sunday Season OpenerSun May 10, 3–9pMister Sunday opens its 2026 outdoor season at Nowadays with residents Eamon Harkin and Justin Carter. The first one of the year draws the crowd that's been waiting for it. This season's announced guests include Theo Parrish and Floating Points. |
Oh and... |
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CFGNY's Puddles Into Pond pop-up shop is inside Amant through Sunday — woven textiles and their culturally specific fashion practice, drop-in noon to six (Friday until nine) Amant's free outdoor SIX TO NINE series kicks off Friday evening with NYC collective Worlds Collide — a workable first stop before heading to the Pioneer Works opening HAAi plays six hours at Public Records Sunday afternoon to open the 2026 Nursery Sundays series |
A BROOKLYN STORY |
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Alice Wang |
Alice Wang is a Chinese-born artist based in New York and a 2026 Visual Arts resident at Pioneer Works. Her practice moves through sculpture, installation, and research, tracing structural patterns that recur across radically different scales: the hexagonal windstorm at Saturn's North Pole, basalt columns that form when magma cools, the molecular geometry of serotonin. Her first institutional solo show in New York — Windstorm on Saturn, Basalt Columns, MDMA, Serotonin — opened this winter at ISCP in Bushwick. She has open studio hours Sunday at Second Sundays, 2–4pm. |
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That's Issue 3. Got an event we should know about, or someone we should feature? Hit reply or write to hello@funstuffnyc.com. I read every email. See you out there,
-Sam
@fun.stuff.williamsburg |
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