Fourth of July week has a specific texture in Brooklyn. The city thins out, and the programming that holds tends to feel more considered. BWAC has a new space. The Whale Building in Sunset Park is where they've landed after the September 2025 fire took their Red Hook warehouse. Thursday evening is the opening for their first members' show there, 5 to 8. I'd go. A Guy Called Gerald plays all night in Ridgewood Friday. The Sultan Room has the rooftop open Saturday afternoon.
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BWAC has been part of Brooklyn's waterfront art community since 1978. Their Red Hook warehouse was taken by a fire in September 2025. Thursday is the opening reception for 'Between Two Waterfronts: A Brooklyn Landscape,' the coalition's first members' show in the new Whale Building space in Sunset Park, with around sixty artists.
Thu Jul 2, 5–8p -
Everyday Afrique and Electrafrique co-present an Independence Weekend celebration at Nowadays in Ridgewood. Afrobeats, Soca, and Amapiano, with A Guy Called Gerald playing through the night. Gerald made Voodoo Ray in 1988. Ridgewood is a short ride from Williamsburg.
Fri Jul 3 -
Gasworks NYC opens an 8-week intermediate hand-building ceramics course starting Monday, taught by Hannah Salyer. The focus is animal forms and narrative sculpture. Full studio access is included. Registration is open now.
Starts Mon Jul 6 -
New acquisitions and rarely-seen objects from the Brooklyn Museum's permanent collection, organized around acts of everyday resistance. Sunday is the final day.
Closes Sun Jul 5 -
BKLYN CLAY offers wheel-throwing and hand-building at every level, from beginning to advanced, across studios in Prospect Heights and Tribeca. The curriculum includes a hand-building track focused on Latin American ceramic traditions. Enrollment is open.
Enrollment open -
The rooftop is open on Independence Day afternoon. DJs djjamcentral, baba_yako, and djouaga play with live percussion. The music runs Amapiano, Afrobeats, and Soca. 234 Starr Street, doors at 4.
Sat Jul 4, 4–10p -
Vivian Girls play Elsewhere's rooftop Wednesday July 8. They came up in the late-2000s Brooklyn indie scene with compressed guitars and harmony-drenched vocals. The rooftop is the right room for it.
Wed Jul 8, 7p
ReSolute's annual boat party runs Thursday evening on the Circle Line, five hours of house and minimal on the water with Sweely, Tomás Station, and Shvili. The boat boards at 6 and the city lights up around it. Independence Weekend fireworks are visible from the harbor as the night runs.
Apollinaria Broche builds botanical worlds out of bronze and ceramic: sinuous stems, ceramic flowers, cracking wings, small figures surfacing from the wrong places. The gardens look like escape. Trouble runs through all of them. She trained at ENSBA Paris, graduating in 2020, drawing on Fra Angelico's luminous paradise at one end and Dario Argento's dread at the other. 'Sorores Liquidae' at Carvalho New York in Bushwick is her New York debut. The show runs through August 8.
Read the full profile →See you out there,
Sam