This is a quieter week than the last few — no festival anchor, no design-week sprawl, no major museum opening. But Valentina Magaletti is at Public Records for a two-night residency I've been waiting on since she announced it, and Powerhouse Arts opens BWAC's first in-person group show since the September 2025 fire forced them out of Red Hook. There's still a good mix of events below.
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Field Notes is Car Part Time's public programming series, and the second edition lands on what would have been Miles Davis's 100th birthday. TADDEO (Sound Voyager) walks the room through Miles's eras — from bebop through In a Silent Way to On the Corner — with archival footage and a curated listening session. Car Part Time is the automotive concept space on Grand; I've been to one of their nights before and would recommend it.
Tue May 26 -
Body Language opens to the public this week at Mociun on Driggs — Bower Studios's group show, running daily 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. through June 27. The roster is what to come for: Caitlin Mociun, Chen Chen & Kai Williams, Chris Wolston, Pat Kim, Nick van Woert, Farrah Sit, Robin Francis Williams, Nassi Lamps, David Benjamin Sherry, and more than fifteen artists working across furniture, lighting, sculpture, painting, photography, ceramics, and fine jewelry. The brief is what objects do when they communicate through gesture and form.
Opens Tue May 19 · through June 27 -
NYC Resistor is the Brooklyn hackerspace that's been running since 2008, and this Saturday they're teaching the first class in a new series focused on practical fix-it skills — finding existing 3D models, modifying them, preparing them to print. The space pulls makers from across Brooklyn, and the format is hands-on rather than lecture-shaped. Tickets through Eventbrite.
Sat May 23, 2–5p -
Syreeta headlines the main room at Silo Saturday — chunky basslines, hypnotic grooves, the kind of set that translates between Tomorrowland and a Bushwick warehouse equally well. The night is presented by Support Women DJs, the recurring all-femme series running at Silo and Nowadays, with GALS, msunicornmusic, sarindipitysounds, and slaycey on the supporting bill. Doors at 10.
Sat May 23 -
Grace Ives plays Music Hall of Williamsburg Thursday — Brooklyn-based pop with the kind of dry, slightly distant vocal delivery that makes the production decisions feel more deliberate. Her last full-length was 2022's Janky Star, which Pitchfork named Best New Music; she's been circulating new material in DJ sets and a few one-off singles since. Tickets still available as of writing.
Thu May 21 -
Nia Archives brings her Up Ya Archives tour to Elsewhere Thursday with a multi-artist lineup that fills the venue across rooms: Jubilee, Jialing, Swami Sound, Moma Ready, gum.mp3, Kush Jones, ARCHANGEL, Dazegxd. Nia is the British DJ and producer responsible for a lot of the jungle revival that's been touring through North America this spring; her album Silence Is Loud picked up a Mercury Prize nomination last year. Tickets are moving.
Thu May 21
Valentina Magaletti is a London-based Italian drummer and composer. Her 2022 album Batterie Fragile was recorded entirely on a ceramic drum kit designed by Parisian artist Yves Chaudouët — an instrument she described to The Wire as totally fragile, conceptually the opposite of a macho one. The question underneath her work is what a drum sounds like when it refuses to be a macho instrument, and the answer keeps changing every record. This week she's at Public Records for a two-night residency — Friday with Moin, Saturday with the US debut of Holy Tongue. I'm going Saturday.
Read the full profile →See you out there,
Sam