new york travel expo

SEPT 10 - 12 . JAVITS CENTER . NYC

Exhibit at its 2024, connect . educate . network.

New! Targeted B2B-only show

Special all-inclusive booth packages

Matchmaking Appointment System

Pre-show promotion for all exhibitors & sponsors

6 major Summits by travel & tourism leaders

Sponsor packages for every budget

2 industry receptions

Industry fam trips

With a new focus, expanded programs, and a different format, ITS2024 addresses and tackles the needs of the travel, tourism and meetings industries

ITS 2024 FEATURES

An exciting schedule of informative and collaborative summits over three days

ITS 2024 SUMMITS

Join our ever growing roster of exhibitors .

LEADERSHIP SUMMIT

Travel Industry leaders discuss key global issues

EMERGING LEADERS SUMMIT

Under-35 travel & tourism professionals in leadership positions or aspiring to leadership positions

MEETINGS  SUMMIT

For corporate and independent Meeting Planners

Questions? Get in touch Call here . Email here

Show schedule.

Tuesday 9/10

Summits – 11am-4pm

Exhibition – 12 noon-6pm

Reception – 5pm-8pm

Wednesday 9/11

Summits – 9am-2pm

Exhibition – 12noon-7pm

Reception – 5pm-7pm

Thursday 9/11

Exhibition – 12noon-5pm

Six new Summits presented by leading travel industry organizations. The Summits will include Keynote Presentations, Panel Sessions and Round Table Discussions that will identify new ways to expand business opportunities for everyone.

. LEADERS . EMERGING LEADERS . MEETINGS . 

. MINDFUL TRAVEL . TRAVEL MEDIA . LGBTQ+ .

What's happening during the show?

MINDFUL TRAVEL SUMMIT

Active and adventure travel professionals and wellness developers discussing issues including responsible tourism, sustainability, experiential travel, and wellness

TRAVEL MEDIA  SUMMIT

For travel media and travel industry marketers to discuss new communications tools including targeted messaging solutions, AI, podcasting etc.

LGBTQ+  SUMMIT

Addressing key issues affecting the growth and development of the LGBTQ+ travel market

Six new Summits are being presented by leading travel industry organizations. The Summits will include Keynote Presentations, Panel Sessions and Round Table Discussions that will identify new ways to expand business opportunities for everyone.

Speakers from around the world will address worldwide issues and challenges and offer innovative solutions that promote changes in travel and tourism. All Summit sessions take place prior to the opening of the Exhibition.

Keep in touch...subscribe for updates

What's happening with its2024.

The NY INTERNATIONAL TRAVEL SHOW & SUMMITS (ITS)  is committed to creating a meaningful Show that serves the needs of the entire Travel Industry.

In recent discussions with our Industry Sponsors and supporting Associations, we have been asked to consider rescheduling the ITS  in order to best address the challenges and opportunities that exist within worldwide travel.

We listened and have agreed to postpone ITS in September 2024 and will collaborate with Travel Industry leaders to reschedule ITS for 2025.

Thank you for your continuing support and please stay tuned for further details of NY International Travel Show & Summits 2025.

ITS2024 EXHIBITOR SPOTLIGHT

TRAVEL BUREAU OF NEPAL

This is your Testimonial quote. Give your customers the stage to tell the world how great you are!

SWEET HOME ALABAMA

ITS2024 has expanded to include new features and new solutions for the travel and tourism industry.

ITS 2024  EXPANDED

Its 2024 exhibition.

Over 200 tourism destinations and travel suppliers from around the world will participate in the Exhibition. The Appointment System is used by over 5,000 travel professional attendees to meet with exhibitors in an exclusive business to business environment. The Exhibition is open to attendees after the Summit conference sessions conclude to maximize the time spent in the Exhibition Hall.

ITS 2024 NEW FEATURES

Additional features include Networking Receptions where the industry gather to engage with each other in an informal setting at the end of the day. Fam Trips for travel professionals have been created to help promote specific destinations and programs both pre and post ITS2024. Although consumer travelers can no longer attend ITS2024, an exclusive ITS Consumer Leads Program has been created that will supply consumer traveler leads to exhibitors both pre and post ITS2024.

Use this space to promote the business, its products or its services. Help people become familiar with the business and its offerings, creating a sense of connection and trust. Focus on what makes the business unique and how users can benefit from choosing it.

TRAVEL TWITCH DMC

Things to do with kids in NYC

Find the best upcoming events & activities for any age group

• Attractions
• Teens (13–18)

2024 New York Travel & Adventure Show

• Event website
• 212–216–2000

The New York Travel & Adventure Show is back and ready to give you the tools you need to make your travel decisions for 2024 and beyond. Explore the hottest destinations and travel providers from around the world that are open for travel now, and meet the experts who are on-hand to give you the most up to date information and new offerings, answer all of your travel related questions on where to go, what to do, how and when to get there and help you plan your itinerary based on your needs.

The top names in travel are all ready to teach you how to travel like a pro on 3 on-the-show-floor theaters. On the Travel Theater, you’ll receive advice from the top travel celebrities:

Rick Steves, Travel Writer, Host of Rick Steves’ Europe and Travel with Rick Steves

Pauline Frommer, Editorial Director of the Frommer’s Travel Guides and Publisher, Frommers.com

Peter Greenberg, Emmy Award Winning Investigative Reporter, Producer and CBS News Travel Editor

Phil Rosenthal, Host, Creator and Executive Producer, “Somebody Feed Phil”

On the Destination Theater, you’ll experience in-depth 30 minute workshops featuring the top locations from around the world, and the experts who represent them. You’ll receive information on where to go, how to get there, what to do and what you can do when you travel there now. The Savvy Traveler Theater features information from the experts who live on the road. From packing tips and how to maximize reward points to budget travel hacks and when to book airfare, you’ll acquire the knowledge you need to travel like a pro on your next trip.

Featured Events

Post an Event

STEAM n’ Snacks The Hampton Library

Empire State Fair Nassau Coliseum

Reading Rhythms at Backyard at Hudson Yards Backyard at Hudson Yards

Summer Series at Atlantic Terminal: Move & Groove Mondays Atlantic Terminal Mall

Alo Power Flow at Backyard at Hudson Yards with Serena Tom Backyard at Hudson Yards

Greenbelt Conservancy Ed Burke Bobblehead Night Staten Island University Hospital Community Park

View All Events…

Jobs in New York

Add your job.

• New York Power Authority VP Legislative Relations & Intergovernmental Affairs
• Treatment Action Group Administrative Coordinator
• Lawrence Public Schools Varias posiciones de empleo en escuela pública de Lawrence

View all jobs…

Submit an event.

Got a hot tip for our calendar? Tell us about it!

More from Around NYC

Forest Hills pharmacy owner sentenced for $18M COVID healthcare fraud and money laundering scheme: Feds

Red Bulls’ John Tolkin named to Team USA for 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris

Transgender, non-binary 1,500 runner Nikki Hiltz shines on and off track, earns spot at Paris Games

Affordable housing lottery opens in long-time-coming South Williamsburg development

🙌 Awesome, you're subscribed!

Thanks for subscribing! Look out for your first newsletter in your inbox soon!

Get us in your inbox

Sign up to our newsletter for the latest and greatest from your city and beyond

By entering your email address you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy and consent to receive emails from Time Out about news, events, offers and partner promotions.

Awesome, you're subscribed!

The best of New York for free.

Sign up for our email to enjoy New York without spending a thing (as well as some options when you’re feeling flush).

Déjà vu! We already have this email. Try another?

Love the mag?

Our newsletter hand-delivers the best bits to your inbox. Sign up to unlock our digital magazines and also receive the latest news, events, offers and partner promotions.

• Things to Do
• Food & Drink
• Time Out Market
• Coca-Cola Foodmarks
• Attractions
• Los Angeles

New York Travel & Adventure Show

Get exclusive information and travel deals, hear from celebrities about their travels, and meet the top destinations and travel suppliers.

Time Out says

Already got the travel itch this year? The New York Travel & Adventure Show is back on January 27 and 28 at the Javits Center where you make your travel decisions for 2024 and beyond, where you can get exclusive information and travel deals, hear from celebrities and experts about their travels, and meet the top destinations and travel suppliers.

Famed travel writer/host Rick Steves ( Rick Steves' Europe ,   Travel with Rick Steves ); Pauline Frommer, the editorial director of the Frommer's Travel Guides and Publisher of Frommers.com; Emmy Award-winning reporter and CBS News Travel Editor Peter Greenberg; and Phil Rosenthal, host-creator of   Somebody Feed Phil ,   will all speak about their experience.

You can also take part in in-depth, 30-minute workshops on where to go, how to get there and what to do at the top locations from around the world from the experts who represent them.

Been there, done that? Think again, my friend.

Discover Time Out original video

• Press office
• Investor relations
• Work for Time Out
• Editorial guidelines
• Privacy notice
• Do not sell my information
• Cookie policy
• Accessibility statement
• Terms of use
• Copyright agent
• Modern slavery statement
• Manage cookies
• Claim your listing
• Local Marketing Solutions
• Advertising

Time Out products

• Time Out Worldwide

Member Login

• Are you a Travel Agent?
• Are you a Travel Provider?
• Member Directory
• Travel Show Events
• How it Works
• Travel-show

2022 New York Travel & Adventure Show

• Adriana Travel
• Adventure Central Newfoundland
• Adventure to Africa Inc
• Aggressor Adventures LLC
• Alabama Tourism Department
• Alaska Land & Sea Adventures: Visit Anchorage
• Anguilla Tourist Board
• Anthony's Key Resort
• Antigua & Barbuda
• Aruba Tourism Authority
• Baltic Holidays
• Bay Ferries - The CAT
• Bermuda Tourism Authority
• Black Panther Safaris
• Born Park Adventures
• Cane Bay Dive St.Croix
• Cayman Islands
• Celebrity Cruises
• Chimu Adventures
• CroisiEurope Cruises
• Cruise Planners
• Czech Tourism USA & Canada
• Daytona Beach Area CVB
• Destination St. John's
• Discover Navajo
• Discover The Palm Beaches
• Donegal Hotel Collection
• Dutchess Tourism
• Ecuador & Galapagos Boutique Experiences - DANA DMC
• EGYPTAIR Airline Company
• Ephesus Port Tours
• Euphoric XpresSions
• Experience Sicily
• Explore Worldwide
• Flying to Greece - Mykonos Best Santorini Best
• Fort Myers-Islands, Beaches & Neighborhoods
• Galapagos by Metrojourneys
• Gilgit Baltistan Tourism Department
• Go Extra Mile Safaris
• Go Touch Down Travel & Tours
• Gosheni Safaris Africa & Serengeti Acacia Camps
• Goway Travel
• Grace's / Zeldiva - Maldives
• Greater Miami Convention & Visitors Bureau
• GREEN ZONES SAFARIS LLC
• Gutsy Women Travel
• Hammock Beach Golf Resort & Spa
• Happy Valley Adventure Bureau
• Hurtigruten
• Infinite Safari Adventures
• Jamaica Tourist Board
• Kaleo Marketing
• Katarina Line Incoming Croatia & Cruises
• Korea Tourism Organization
• Las Vegas Territory
• Let's Safari! Remote Recreation
• Los Cabos Tourism Board
• Martinique Tourism Authority
• Maxxim Vacations
• Monroe County Tourism Development Council
• Moroccan National Tourist Office
• Naples Marco Island Everglades CVB
• NJ Tourism Industry Association
• Onli Travel, LLC
• PASSPORT Magazine
• Pointers Travel Croatia / Europe
• Polish Tourism Organization
• Poseidon Expeditions
• Punta Gorda / Englewood Beach VCB
• Quest Dive Adventures
• Ranger Buck Safaris
• Riviera River Cruises
• Rockland County
• Rocky Mountaineer
• Sandals & Beaches Resorts
• Scenic Luxury Cruises & Tours
• Sheenco Travel
• South County Tourism Council
• SpectraSpray Global
• Sullivan County Visitors Association
• Sundance Vacations
• Sussex County Chamber of Commerce
• Tahiti Tourisme
• Taiwan Tourism Bureau
• The Springs & Peace Lodge - Costa Rica
• The Wander Adventures
• Toptours DMC
• Touch Croatia - Travel Agency
• Tour Azores
• Travel Insurance Center
• Travel Smart Vacations
• Travel The Guianas
• Ulster County Tourism
• US Event Photos
• US Virgin Islands Department of Tourism
• Visit Baja California Sur
• Visit Central Florida
• Visit Lauderdale
• Visit Myrtle Beach
• Visit North Carolina
• Visit Panama City Beach
• Visit Philadelphia
• Visit Sitka Alaska / Alaskan Dream Cruises
• Visit South Walton
• Visit St Pete Clearwater
• Westchester County Tourism & Film
• Where There Be Dragons Adult Travel
• Wyndham Destination
• Your Own Italy
• Zantium Travel

429 11th Ave, New York, NY 10018, USA

• The # 1 platform to do business in the Tourism Industry.
• How It Works
• Travel Agents & Advisors
• Travel Providers
• Travel Media

• Get Listed Today
• Connected Marketplace
• All Rights Reserved
• Terms of Use
• Privacy Policy
• Not a Registered Travel Advisor? Access your Free Trial
• Are You a Travel Provider? List Your Services Now

Join TAS Newsletter

Whitney Biennial 2024: Even Better Than the Real Thing

See the latest edition of the renowned contemporary art show.

Celebrate Brooklyn

Brooklyn’s free concert series takes place at Prospect Park's bandshell.

Hong Kong Dragon Boat Festival

Dragon boat teams from all over North America compete in fiberglass boat races.

Brooklyn Cyclones Baseball

The single-A minor league farm team for the New York Mets play in Maimonides Park on Coney Island, adjacent to the famed Coney Island Boardwalk.

The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism

Discover how Black artists portrayed everyday life in the early 20th century.

Floor Plans

Book an event, special events, palace lights, north javits 360° tour, javits guide, getting here, sustainability, procurement.

The convention center of the future is here

More than at any time since its opening in 1986, the Javits Center is fulfilling its mission to support New Yorkers. Operated by the New York Convention Center Operating Corporation (NYCCOC), a public benefit corporation, the Javits Center has played a critical role in New York’s recovery and resurgence, helping to create a safer and stronger future for the Empire State. With an historic expansion project completed and 850,000 square feet of flexible exhibition space along the scenic Hudson River, this iconic facility is continuing to drive the economies of New York State and New York City by hosting blockbuster events of all shapes and sizes. Nowhere in the country will you find a venue with the extensive resources, services and staff of elite professionals dedicated to making every trade show, convention and special event a success. It's no wonder that nearly 40,000 companies have chosen the Javits Center as their preferred venue every year, making it the busiest convention center in the country. And when you consider that the Javits Center sits at the nexus of Manhattan's resurgent West Side neighborhood, it's easy to see why whatever's happening, happens here.

Let us bring your event details together seamlessly

We are here to make your exhibitor planning effortless

Allow us to make your experience lasting and memorable

Upcoming Events

Jul 10 2024

Jul 16 - Jul 18 2024

APPAREL SOURCING NEW YORK CITY

Jul 16 - Jul 17 2024

Functional Fabric Fair powered by PERFORMANCE DAYS

Jul 17 - Jul 18 2024

THE QUIRKS EVENT

Jul 21 2024

Aug 04 - Aug 06 2024

CURVE NEW YORK

Aug 04 - Aug 07 2024

NY NOW SUMMER MARKETS

Aug 16 - Aug 18 2024

FANATICS FEST NYC

Aug 23 - Aug 25 2024

Sep 03 - Sep 05 2024

Sep 04 - Sep 06 2024

THE LEAD DEVELOPER CONFERENCE

Sep 05 2024

THE NEW YORK VENTURE SUMMIT

Sep 05 - Sep 08 2024

THE ARMORY SHOW

Sep 09 - Sep 13 2024

PLANT BASED WORLD CONFERENCE AND EXPO

Sep 10 - Sep 11 2024

TMANY'S NEW YORK CASH EXCHANGE 2024

Sep 18 - Sep 19 2024

MAKEUP IN NEW YORK

Sep 22 - Sep 24 2024

COTERIE NEW YORK

Magic new york.

Sep 29 2024

BIG APPLE COLLEGE FAIR

Oct 01 2024

SUNY College Fair

Oct 10 2024

BIG APPLE STARS AWARDS

Oct 10 - Oct 28 2024

DELL TECHNOLOGIES FORUM NYC

Oct 11 - Oct 12 2024

Yom Kippur Service

Oct 23 - Oct 24 2024

WORLD BUSINESS FORUM NEW YORK

Oct 26 2024

NATIONAL PORTFOLIO DAY

Oct 27 - Oct 29 2024

JA NEW YORK FALL

Oct 27 2024

Performing and Visual Arts College Fair

Oct 29 - Oct 30 2024

FINANCE AND ACCOUNTING TECHNOLOGY EXPO (FATE)

Oct 31 - Nov 02 2024

TCS NEW YORK CITY MARATHON EXPO

Nov 07 2024

SERVICENOW NOW WORLD FORUM

Nov 07 - Nov 08 2024

NEW YORK VET BY CLOSERSTILL MEDIA

Nov 08 - Nov 10 2024

SALON DU CHOCOLAT

Nov 09 2024

TONIGHT'S CONVERSATION LIVE

Nov 10 - Nov 11 2024

BOUTIQUE DESIGN NEW YORK (BDNY)

Nov 13 - Nov 14 2024

Nov 14 2024

BUSINESS CLASS LIVE

Nov 14 - Nov 15 2024

SLEEP OUT REAL ESTATE EDITION

Nov 19 2024

The Cooperator Expo New York

Nov 20 - Nov 21 2024

ISC EAST & NATURAL DISASTER RECOVERY

Nov 20 2024

SALESFORCE WORLD TOUR: NEW YORK

Nov 21 2024

SLEEP OUT EXECUTIVE EDITION

Dec 07 2024

FLOOR HOCKEY TOURNAMENT

Dec 11 2024

THE NEW YORK PRODUCE SHOW AND CONFERENCE

Dec 11 - Dec 12 2024

AI SUMMIT NEW YORK

Icsc new york.

Jan 21 - Jan 23 2025

TEXWORLD NYC

Jan 22 - Jan 23 2025

TravMedia's International Media Marketplace - IMM NYC

Jan 25 - Jan 26 2025

THE NEW YORK TRAVEL AND ADVENTURE SHOW

Meet the breeds.

Feb 08 - Feb 11 2025

WESTMINSTER KENNEL CLUB

Feb 18 - Feb 20 2025

Mar 01 - Mar 04 2025

NORTH AMERICAN INTERNATIONAL TOY FAIR

Mar 12 - Mar 15 2025

AADOCR/CADR Annual Meeting & Exhibition

Mar 12 - Mar 13 2025

New York Build Expo

Mar 14 - Mar 15 2025

Mar 18 - Mar 20 2025

BLOCKWORKS DIGITAL ASSET SUMMIT

Mar 23 - Mar 25 2025

INTERNATIONAL ESTHETICS COSMETICS SPA CONFERENCE

International restaurant and food service show of new york, coffee fest ny, international beauty show.

Apr 06 2025

COLLEGE FAIR NACAC

May 13 2025

DISNEY UPFRONT

May 18 - May 20 2025

INTERNATIONAL CONTEMPORARY FURNITURE FAIR (ICFF)

May 20 - May 22 2025

D&M EAST

Atlantic plastec east, pharmapack na, quality expo east, md&m east.

Jun 17 - Jun 18 2025

Jun 25 - Jun 27 2025

NEW YORK VALVES THE STRUCTURAL HEART SUMMIT

Jun 29 - Jul 01 2025

SUMMER FANCY FOOD SHOW

Jul 22 - Jul 24 2025

Aug 19 - Aug 22 2025

INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY OF NEUROCHEMISTRY (ISN) MEETING

Sep 17 - Sep 18 2025

Nov 20 - Nov 21 2025

Jan 31 - Feb 03 2026

Jun 24 - Jun 26 2026

NEW YORK VALVES 2024: THE STRUCTURAL HEART SUMMIT

Iconic + inspirational.

Explore the blockbuster expansion project that has added 1.2 million square feet of state-of-the-art event space to the Javits Center! Featuring a new exhibit hall, 200,000 square feet of new meeting space, breathtaking views from our new rooftop pavilion and terrace and a one-of-a-kind truck marshaling facility, the project is catapulting the Javits Center to one of the most desired event spaces in the United States. Contact us at [email protected] to book a tour!

Javits Buzz

The Javits Center's Green Roof spans 6.75 acres and has become a habitat for 35 bird species.

The javits center looks. feels, and operates better than ever before, and as a result, we are busier than ever before., sign up for news and updates.

Within New York City, public transportation is always a quick and affordable way to go- and the opening of the new 7 Subway line extension across the street makes the trip even more convenient. Arriving from out of state? We have directions and helpful tips whether you are arriving by car, train, plane, or more.

JACOB K. JAVITS CONVENTION CENTER OF NEW YORK

429 11th Avenue New York, NY 10001 (212) 216-2000 [email protected]

©2006 TravelShow.com, All rights reserved. An iventure production...

Sixth Avenue to close Saturday for street Expo Fair: What to know

Avenue of the americas to close july 6 for expo fair, published july 5, 2024 • updated on july 5, 2024 at 2:00 pm.

Sixth Avenue through midtown Manhattan will close for much of Saturday for the Avenue of the America's Expo Fair, according to the NYPD.

The festival will take place on 6th Avenue between 42nd Street and 54th Street, the NYPD said.

A Facebook event page from Mardi Gras productions says the fair will take place from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. with more than 50 food booths and 300 vendor booths.

24/7 New York news stream: Watch NBC 4 free wherever you are

The event is free, according to the Facebook page.

Here's a look at other street closures throughout New York City this weekend .

Get Tri-state area news and weather forecasts to your inbox. Sign up for NBC New York newsletters.

This article tagged under:

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

What to See in N.Y.C. Galleries in July

By Yinka Elujoba ,  Martha Schwendener and Jillian Steinhauer

This week in Newly Reviewed, Yinka Elujoba covers Elmer Guevara’s subtle paintings , James Casebere’s reimagined architecture and John Ahearn and Rigoberto Torres’s busts of Bronx residents.

Elmer Guevara

Through Aug. 3. Lyles & King, 19 Henry Street, Manhattan; 646-484-5478, lylesandking.com .

A man in an umbrella hat reaches down to a boy by a basketball court. Both wear “Bryant” jerseys. The neighborhood seems peaceful on a sunny day but at their feet are names and a chalk outline of a human body.

This scene, from Elmer Guevara’s “Hoova’ Park Stroll,” embodies the sentiments of “Recess,” his first solo exhibition in New York.

In the 1980s, Guevara’s parents escaped to the United States from the brutal civil warin El Salvador. Full of visual cues from his early years in South Central Los Angeles, where he was born and still lives, the show is the artist’s reckoning with his childhood. In fact, the two figures in “Hoova’ Park Stroll” are his self-portraits at different ages.

Using extracts from family photographs, news clippings and film stills, Guevara makes visible the native culture of the immigrant melding into a new way of life. Perhaps this notion of settlement is most palpable in the children with their homemade Halloween costumes and fascinating array of sneakers: Theirs will be a future vastly different from their parents’ past.

Although the paintings are vibrant, the show’s strength is in its subtleties. Beneath the veneer of peaceful and slow living lies the trauma and violence interwoven with the artist’s upbringing: Stashes of cash recall his parent’s distrust of banks. In “Waiting for Nightfall,” children in Halloween costumes await the chance to trick or treat, surrounded by a black cat, a menacing coyote and the chalk outline of a dead body. The statement “Recess” makes is clear: Immigrants’ situations are always precarious, even as they find new and solid ground.

James Casebere

Through Aug. 2. Sean Kelly, 475 10th Avenue, Manhattan; 212-239-1181; skny.com .

By photographing table-size models he makes of buildings, prizewinning architectural designs and historical reimaginings, James Casebere re-examines suburban, Indigenous-made and institutional buildings, while raising questions about societal power structures. In “Seeds of Time,” his ninth solo show at Sean Kelly Gallery, the artist turns toward environmental sustainability.

Casebere, born in 1953, uses simple materials for his reconstructions, many of which are based on the work of famous architects. (“Cavern With Skylights” and “Balconies and Stairs” in “Seeds of Time” draw from the work of the Indian architect Balkrishna Doshi ; the biomorphic forms in “Patio With Blue Sky” and “School” are interpretations of the Burkinabé-German architect Francis Kéré ).

The images are haunting, since they are absent of people. In “Seeds of Time,” this absence is even more evocative because the buildings are placed in water. The viewer will likely ask, “How does one live here?” The recent floods in affluent cities like Dubai , in the United Arab Emirates, however, prove that there is nothing unreal about the possibilities in Casebere’s images.

His range of imagery also raises the question of how people from less affluent communities might survive environmental disasters. The floods in Dubai caused the city to plan an $8 billion storm water runoff system . Compare this response to the people of Makoko along the coast in Lagos, Nigeria , which, in 2013, received the gift of an innovative floating school from an architectural firm. The news drew attention to Makoko , but the school was rarely used and ultimately wrecked by heavy rain in 2016. Casebere’s world has more equality though, as his pictures, whether based on low-cost housing or grander designs, are devoid of people, indicating that climate change will do the same thing to the rich and the poor.

Upper East Side

John Ahearn and Rigoberto Torres

Through Aug. 16. Salon 94, 3 East 89th Street, Manhattan; 212-979-0001; salon94.com .

In 1979, the artists John Ahearn and Rigoberto Torres created 21 busts at Fashion Moda, a high-energy alternative art space that ran in the Bronx from 1978 to 1993. Known as “The South Bronx Hall of Fame,” this group of portraits are now, together with other sculptures, the subject of a new exhibition, “Walton Ave & Friends,” at Salon 94.

By the time Ahearn and Torres met at Fashion Moda, it had become host to off-the-curve collaborations between the graffiti and hip-hop worlds. (Ahearn was born in Binghamton, N.Y., and settled in the Bronx; Torres was born in Aguadilla, Puerto Rico, and grew up in the Bronx.)

They were not conventionally trained artists. Torres learned mold-making and casting at his uncle’s factory, which manufactured religious figures, and Ahearn first discovered casting from a book on makeup for television and film. But they followed Fashion Moda’s practice of engaging the local community, employing residents as sitters. Right on the sidewalk, they would cover a willing model in plaster , and afterward the volunteer would receive a painted copy of their sculpted portrait. It was a radical approach to art, proving that great work could be made outside the solitary air of a studio.

At Salon 94, the sculptures, mostly leaning against or fixed to the walls of the gallery, carry the infectious joy of any ordinary day in a regular neighborhood. “Maggie and Connie” features a woman returning from grocery shopping, her daughter holding on to her arm. In “Ralph and Kido,” a man plays with a young boy; and a woman styles a girl’s hair in “Carmen Combing Erica’s Hair.” The busts, set in an upscale ballroom with limestone walls, are hung far above the heads of onlookers, in the same way they were displayed at Fashion Moda in 1979.

Ahearn and Torres produced these sculptures in an age when the South Bronx was devastated by crime and poverty. But the happiness in “Walton Ave & Friends” is how that age will be remembered, proving that a people’s triumphant legacy can be made possible through communal participation in art making.

Last Chance

Life cycles: the materials of contemporary design.

Through July 7. Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53rd Street, Manhattan; 212-708-9400, moma.org .

My favorite clock of all time is a video: A camera looks down onto two skinny mounds of garbage, maybe 20 and 15 feet long, meeting at one end like the hour and minute hands on a watchface; for the 12 hours of the video, we see two men with brooms sweeping these “hands” into ever new positions, at a pace that keeps time.

The piece is by the Dutch designer Maarten Baas, and it’s among the 80 works in “Life Cycles: The Materials of Contemporary Design,” a group show now in MoMA’s street-level gallery, which has free admission.

The “materials” of today’s most compelling design turn out to be ideas, even ethics, not the chrome or bent wood that MoMA’s title would once have invoked. This show’s ethical ideas center on the environment and how we might manage not to abuse it.

Baas’s “Sweeper’s Clock,” is perfectly functional — could I view it on an Apple Watch? — but it also works as a meditation on the Sisyphean, 24/7 task of dealing with the trash we generate.

All-black dishes by Kosuke Araki look very like the minimalist “black basalt” china designed by Josiah Wedgwood way back in 1768 (it’s some of the oldest “modernism” claimed by MoMA) except that Araki’s versions are made with carbonized food waste.

Food not at all wasted, but consumed — by cattle — goes into making Adhi Nugraha’s lamps and speakers, as explained by the title of the series they’re from: “Cow Dung.” BLAKE GOPNIK

Upper Manhattan

The Word-Shimmering Sea: Diego Velázquez / Enrique Martínez Celaya

Through July 14. The Hispanic Society Museum & Library, 613 West 155th Street, Manhattan; 212-926-2234, hispanicsociety.org .

There are places you can’t easily return to, like childhood or, for many migrants and refugees, the country where they were born. This was true for Enrique Martínez Celaya , who was born in Cuba and relocated with his family to Madrid when he was a young boy. Martínez Celaya, now almost 60 , returned to Cuba only in 2019, but he has found a way of retrieving both childhood and homeland in this impressive exhibition at the Hispanic Society .

Large canvases by Martínez Celaya include blown-up snippets from his childhood notebook, surrounded by interpretations of waves and seascapes. In a stroke of kismet, the notebook from which these early drawings were copied was given to him by his mother and featured a reproduction of a painting on its cover: Diego Velázquez’s “Portrait of a Little Girl” circa 1638-42 , which is in the collection of the Hispanic Society. That painting is displayed at one end of the room.

Objects and their historical hierarchies are irreverently jumbled in the show: Velázquez, the great Spanish painter, sits alongside Martínez Celaya’s childish doodles. In another series of paintings by Martínez Celaya, the “Little Girl” holds objects that he coveted as a boy. The exhibition also includes work by other artists, like the 1971 notebook of Emilio Sánchez , an artist born in Cuba in 1921 who never went back to his homeland after 1960. In the end, the subject of the exhibition is really an immaterial poetic thread in which memory is fleeting but art, in its various forms, connects people, places and history. MARTHA SCHWENDENER

More to See

Jutta koether: 1982, 1983, 1984.

Through July 27. Galerie Buchholz, 17 East 82nd Street, Manhattan; 212-328-7885 , galeriebuchholz.de

“What do you want,” Jutta Koether wrote in 1984 about the band the Cramps on the occasion of its raucous, triumphant debut in Paris, “sex, fun, hysteria, a racket from battered amplifiers and abused guitars, sweaty bodies, dirt, sleazy chords and the feeling that a garage is still the best place for music?”

Koether’s writings, which appeared in the German pop-culture magazine SPEX in the 1980s, are famous for her smart, tough takes on art and music. If you were not fortunate enough to get your hands on a copy of the original print editions, in German, you’ll have the chance in “ Jutta Koether: 1982, 1983, 1984 ” at Galerie Buchholz. The exhibition includes a binder of her writings, translated into English, as well as her earliest, dark expressionist paintings.

The paintings and writings are of a piece. “Announcing the marriage of existentialist black shades with the spiked leather collar of rock ’n’ roll,” she wrote in 1984. “To celebrate, Sonic Youth has released a new EP.” The canvases have a similar spiked, existentialist swagger. The palettes are moody and the surfaces are stubbly. Some works here are abstract, others feature gaunt, alien faces, surrealistic shapes or a pair of limbs wrapped for battle, which turns out to be a female boxer.

But there’s also a sense of nostalgia. The bands written about are gone, and many of the performers, like Nico and Lou Reed, are no longer with us. Similarly, Koether’s paintings feel very much from another time, which could be the 1910s or the 1920s — the original era of disaffected German expressionism — or the gritty 1980s. Nonetheless, battered amplifiers, sleazy chords and a garage to play them in are still great models for music, and art. MARTHA SCHWENDENER

Through July 27. Microscope Gallery, 525 West 29th Street, Manhattan; 347-925-1433 , microscopegallery.com

“ To Deceive the Eye ,” a show by the experimental filmmaker and artist Ina Archer, hinges around a 1933 Bing Crosby film, “ Too Much Harmony ,” that features a song titled “Black Moonlight.” In that musical number, white chorus girls morph into Black performers through the use of special effects — a kind of technological blackface.

Archer’s 2024 video installation, “Black Black Moonlight: A Minstrel Show,” includes footage from “Too Much Harmony” and other minstrel performances. The images are arranged with clips from James Baldwin’s famous 1965 debate with William F. Buckley Jr. about the American dream. Additionally, the walls are lined with Archer’s watercolors of dolls and figurines, some racially charged, and a short 16-millimeter film, “Trompe l’oeil: Black Leader” (2023), that features color charts and mannequin heads that allude to the difficulty of capturing dark skin on celluloid film.

Other Black artists, like Adrian Piper and Arthur Jafa, have made works extracted from Hollywood archives. What Archer brings is a canny sense of the bewitching potential of celluloid. Manipulating the archive into an art object, she seduces you into watching — and staring at — the appalling ways racism has manifested in cinema. MARTHA SCHWENDENER

Through July 26. JDJ, 370 Broadway, Manhattan; 212-220-0611, jdj.world

Susan Weil is lodged firmly in art history, but in an auxiliary way. After attending the famed Black Mountain art school in North Carolina in the 1940s, she married Robert Rauschenberg and the two made a series, “ Blueprints ” (1949-1951), by capturing human bodies on light-sensitive paper. The body-silhouette idea has been explored by many artists, including David Hammons and Keltie Ferris, but Weil remains a lesser-known figure. Now 94 years old, she is still painting and writing poetry, and you can see 50 years of her work at JDJ in Lower Manhattan.

Those works, from 1969 to 2023, show a consistently clever approach to representing the body in two dimensions. A selection of pastel “Spray Drawings” from the early 1970s looks at first like geometric abstractions, until you realize that you’re seeing the outlines of arms and legs and torsos. “Walking Figure” (1968), made with spray paint on plexiglass, revamps the 19th-century photographer Eadweard Muybridge ’s “human locomotion” experiments. Other works approach landscapes in a wildly inventive way, like “Soft Landscape” (1972), with its horizontal bands of earth and sky painted on canvas that has been draped from the wall like a jacket hung on a peg.

Recent works use opalescent or iridescent interference paint that causes the image to shift when viewed from different angles. Here, Weil tracks phases of the moon or the trajectory of the sun. Throughout, the common thread is a gentle, playful way of observing bodies, planets and the act of art making. MARTHA SCHWENDENER

Pat Oleszko

Through July 20. David Peter Francis, 35 East Broadway, No. 3F, Manhattan; 646-669-7064; davidpeterfrancis.com .

Pat Oleszko has performed at MoMA, the Whitney, P.S. 1 and P.S. 122, but “Pat’s Imperfect Present Tense,” at David Peter Francis in Chinatown, is her first solo show in nearly 25 years. As you’d expect, it’s overflowing with five decades’ worth of hats, costumes, signs and videos that delight in subversion and take subversively uncomplicated pleasure in delight.

In “Footsi,” two fingers in tiny shoes and socks tiptoe across a woman’s naked belly. In “Where Fools Russian,” Oleszko takes aim at Cold War paranoia, “Dr. Strangelove” style, by putting on a dozen layers of clothing and submerging herself in the Atlantic. There’s an enormous inflatable pelvis through which she can give birth to herself (“Womb With a View”), a “coat of arms” made for the 50th anniversary of the Surrealist Manifesto and a similar but more revealing “handmaiden” costume designed for a striptease in Japan. The punning is relentless.

There’s a clear feminist bite to much of this, and a frequent political edge that ranges from pointed to broad. There’s even a light tweaking of art-world categories, since you’re never quite sure if these are sculptures masquerading as costumes or vice versa. But the real subversion here is simply Oleszko’s full-scale refusal to take herself, or anything else, seriously: It’s hard to participate in this kind of humor, even as a viewer, without losing hold of whatever serious, oppressive trip you may have walked in with. WILL HEINRICH

‘Threads to the South’

Through July 27. Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA), 142 Franklin Street, Manhattan; islaa.org .

For decades, textile art was trivialized as “craft” and “women’s work” by mainstream U.S. institutions. That longstanding bias has started to erode , but countless fiber art practices remain underexplored. “ Threads to the South ,” a thrilling exhibition curated by Anna Burckhardt Pérez, spotlights some of them.

The show focuses on Latin America, a region with long and varied thread-based traditions. Many of the 22 artists from 10 countries draw on these heritages, including Julieth Morales , a member of Colombia’s Misak Indigenous community. Her piece “Untitled” (2022) is woven in the style of a striped Misak skirt, but hangs instead as an unfinished banner from the ceiling — a statement of pride and possibility.

The exhibition is intergenerational, but the knockouts are mostly older. Among them are Olga de Amaral ’s “Tapete — Número 330” (1979), a checkered wool and woven leather rug; Nora Correas ’s “En Carne Viva” (1981), an animalistic bundle of dark red and fuchsia wool forms; Jorge Eielson ’s “Amazonia XXVII” (1979), a cross between ancient Andean and Western postmodernist traditions; and Feliciano Centurión ’s embroideries on synthetic blankets from the 1990s. These disparate works are alternately visceral and cerebral, intimate and chic. They expand the canon and common understanding of fiber art and who makes it.

Themes emerge throughout the show, but ultimately “Threads to the South” is about identity. Not in a reductive way, as has often been the case in the U.S. Rather, the exhibition argues convincingly that because fabric is at the root of so much Latin American art and life, it deserves, even demands, to move from the margins to the center. JILLIAN STEINHAUER

‘Painting Deconstructed’

Through Aug. 18. Ortega y Gasset Projects, 363 Third Avenue, Brooklyn; oygprojects.com .

What makes a painting a painting? Is it the application of color to canvas or board? The fact that it hangs on a wall? What about different types of art that are informed by painting’s histories and conventions? Where should we draw the line (pun intended)?

These are some of the questions raised by “ Painting Deconstructed ,” an exhibition featuring 46 contemporary artists who work in a wide range of mediums and materials. That’s what makes the show equally smart and fun: You won’t find a straightforward painting anywhere. Instead you’ll find pieces made of ceramics, fabric, photography, and even balloons that evoke paintings, and paint applied to all manner of surfaces, including T-shirts and palm husk.

For me, looking back and forth between the artworks and checklist became a kind of treasure hunt. I wanted to find out what elements made up Scott Vander Veen ’s wonderfully tactile “Graft #2 (Thigmomorphogenesis)” (2023). Learning that Jodi Hays used a found plein-air painting kit in her weathered “Self Portrait at 61” (2024) made me chuckle.

Kevin Umaña ’s “Split Apple Core” (2023) is a technical marvel: a complex and sumptuous ceramic work that could be an abstract painting. I delighted in the conceptual cleverness of Erika Ranee ’s multimedia and nonrepresentational “Selfie” (2024), which includes black-eyed peas, a plant and the artist’s hair dipped in acrylic.

There’s remarkable skill on view throughout “Painting Deconstructed,” but it doesn’t feel like it’s being deployed solely for technical ends. These artists experiment in order to open up the category of painting. They use what it has been to imagine what it might yet be. JILLIAN STEINHAUER

Financial District

Christopher Wool

Through July 31. 101 Greenwich Street (entrance on Rector Street), Manhattan; seestoprun.com .

The dilapidated 19th-floor office space hosting Christopher Wool’s recent sculptures and paintings could not be more simpatico with them. In its state of abandoned tear-down, the venue offers melodious visual rhymes: electrical cords dangling from the ceiling ape Wool’s snarls of found-wire sculpture; crumbling plaster mirrors the attitudinal blotches of his oils and inks. Scrawls of crude graffiti or quickly penciled notes left by workmen emulate the tendril-like lines dragged through Wool’s globular masses of spray paint. The space is a horseshoe-shaped echo of Wool’s work — raw, agitated — and the restless elegance he wrenches from a feeling of decay.

Wool said he started to think about how environment affects the experience of looking at art when he began splitting his time between New York and Marfa, in West Texas. Photographic series he made there, like “Westtexaspsychosculpture,” depict forlorn whorls of fencing-wire debris that look like uncanny mimics of Wool’s own writhing scribbles, and which inspired scaled-up versions cast in bronze. (The Marfa landscape is fertile ground for New York artists. Rauschenberg made his scrap metal assemblages after witnessing the oil-ruined landscape of 1980s Texas, what he called “souvenirs without nostalgia,” a designation that’s appropriate here, too.)

Place has always seeped into Wool’s work. His photographs of the grime and trash-strewn streets of the Lower East Side in the 1990s — compiled as “East Broadway Breakdown” — aren’t included here, but “Incident on 9th Street” (1997), of his own burned-out studio, are. The chaos of those scenes repeat here, the wraparound floor plan and endless windows letting the city permeate the work, just as it did in their making. MAX LAKIN

Robert Irwin

Through Aug 31. Judd Foundation, 101 Spring Street, Manhattan; 212-219-2747, juddfoundation.org . Public hours: Friday–Saturday, 1:00–5 p.m., or by appointment.

In 1971 Robert Irwin installed a 12-foot acrylic column in the ground floor of Donald Judd’s SoHo studio, a prism positioned to pick up light from the building’s large southern and western windows. Since the early ’60s, Irwin had been pushing the definition of art beyond objecthood, gradually reducing his work of distractions until he stopped producing salable art works. By 1970, he had abandoned his studio in favor of what he called a conditional practice: making subtle, barely perceptible interventions in architecture to tease out the marvels of visual potential. He viewed his installations merely as tools to induce the real art, which was perception — “to make people conscious of their consciousness.”

A later iteration of that work, “Sculpture/Configuration 2T/3L,” first exhibited at Pace in 2018, is on view in roughly the same spot (the hole bored through the floor 53 years ago remains, never filled). More advanced, formed by two columns of stuttering panels of teal and smoky brown acrylic, it’s beautiful, but its beauty is beside the point. It melts into the background, both there and not there. Sunlight catches a corner or flutters over a faceted edge as you move around it, splicing and refracting SoHo’s thrum, making it new.

The installation’s long run means the quality of natural light will change and so too will the effect. It’s a slow, affecting distillation of Irwin’s philosophy, which remains generously contra the art world’s relentless demand for novelty. Irwin, who died last year , refined an expansive vision, making us aware of the transitory, letting us see what was always there, for as long as we can. MAX LAKIN

Huong Dodinh

Through Aug. 16. Pace Gallery, 540 West 25th Street, Manhattan; 212-421-3292; pacegallery.com .

Buoyed by a great sense of calm, and even silence, the paintings in Huong Dodinh’s “Transcendence” represent an artist’s triumph after decades of pursuing concision by adopting a minimalist vocabulary. It is this Paris-based artist’s first-ever solo exhibition in the United States in her close to 60 years of painting.

Beginning with a rare 1966 figurative painting, whose colors seem to recall Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s “Hunters in the Snow,” the show progresses to the ’90s and to the last couple of years. Figuration falls away as the decades pass, the artist’s hand becomes less pronounced, and by the 2000s Dodinh’s central concerns emerge: light, density, transparency and how these interact with lines, forms and space. These come together gracefully in works like “Sans Titre,” from 1990, in which three sensual curves depict what could be mountains in a desert, or layers of women’s breasts.

Dodinh’s soft palette — a quiet but delightsome range of carton browns, light blues, and off-whites — originated from her first experience with snow in Paris, where her family fled from Vietnam in 1953 during the First Indochina War. She was a child in boarding school when she first witnessed snow and marveled at how it revealed subtle colors underneath when it started to melt. Subtlety, a hallmark of Dodinh’s work, is something she goes to great lengths to attain: She has always worked alone, without assistants, makes her own pigments, ensuring that every inch of her canvas is filled with an energy that is wholly hers. It has been a long solitary journey and after all these years, even while Dodinh masters the art of austerity, her work feels adorned. YINKA ELUJOBA

East Harlem

‘Byzantine Bembé: New York by Manny Vega’

Through Dec. 8. Museum of the City of New York, 1220 Fifth Avenue, Manhattan; 212-534-1672, mcny.or g.

In celebration of its centennial year, the Museum of the City of New York invited Manny Vega to be its first artist in residence. Fabulous choice. Vega is a native New Yorker and a treasure, with a nearly four-decade track record of visual scintillation behind him. The essence of that career is distilled in a 24-karat nugget of a survey, “Byzantine Bembé: New York by Manny Vega,” assembled by Monxo López, the museum’s curator of community histories.

Puerto Rican by descent, Vega was born in 1956 in the Bronx, raised there and in Manhattan, and an immersion in art came early. One of his first jobs after graduating from the High School of Art and Design was as a guard at the Cloisters, the Met’s branch in Upper Manhattan devoted to European medieval art. In 1979 he joined El Taller Boricua (Puerto Rican Workshop), the street-active artist collective and graphics workshop in the East Harlem neighborhood known as El Barrio.

In the early 1980s, he began traveling to Brazil, where he was initiated into Candomblé, an Afro-Atlantic religion that fuses West African Yoruba and Roman Catholic beliefs and has a vivid tradition of ceremonial art, including beaded banners and ritual utensils, both of which Vega has produced. Given these entwined influences, conventional distinctions between “high art,” “popular art” and “spiritual art” have never made sense to him, which explains the title of his show, “Byzantine” suggesting intricate formal polish; and “Bembé” evoking drum-driven religious worship that is also a party.

The mix is there in four small paintings he made in 1997 as studies for a set of mosaics commissioned by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority for the subway station at East 110th Street and Lexington Avenue. Brightly colored and packed with figures, the images depict El Barrio street life — neighbors jostling, vendors selling, bands playing — and give it a charge of devotional fervor, aural exultation. (A tour of other Vega commissions in East Harlem, all within walking distance of the museum, is well worth making, a highlight being his tender homage to the poet Julia de Burgos (1914-1953) on a building at East 106th Street and Lexington Avenue.)

Sound and movement are major components in Vega’s visual universe. Icon-like images of Ochun, the Yoruba goddess of dance, and St. Cecilia, the Roman Catholic patron saint of music, appear in the show as tutelary spirits. And there are others. One is the Barrio-born jazz musician Tito Puente, whose album covers Vega has reproduced as glass mosaics. And in a large ink drawing, as crisp as a woodcut, we find the assembled performers of Los Pleneros de la 21, a local dance and music troupe promoting traditional bomba and plena.

Politics runs, like a bass note, throughout Vega’s art. In his case, though, it’s far less a politics of overt protest than of positive assertion.

In the work of this profoundly devotional artist, the presiding deity is Changó, the Afro-Atlantic spirit of justice and balance, and also of dancing and drumming. A watercolor painting of him closes the show, and it’s a classic Vega creation: formally precise, imaginatively stimulating, instantly accessible. And it has found just the right home. It’s on loan to the show from Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor who, a wall text tells us, displays it in her chambers in Washington. HOLLAND COTTER

See the June gallery shows here.

Jillian Steinhauer is a critic and reporter who covers the politics of art and comics. She won a 2019 Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers grant and was previously a senior editor at Hyperallergic. More about Jillian Steinhauer

Art and Museums in New York City

A guide to the shows, exhibitions and artists shaping the city’s cultural landscape..

Pieces add up to an archive of a life lived deeply  in Lyle Ashton Harris’s compelling survey at the Queens Museum.

The photographer Vivian Maier was a supremely gifted chameleon. But even in her striking new exhibition at Fotografiska , she remains in the shadows.

Ray Johnson, the artist you meet in a small, revelatory show, is quite different from the one known for mail art  and his later gritty samplings of popular culture.

At the Museum of Modern Art, the documentary photographer LaToya Ruby Frazier honors those who turn their energies to a social good .

Looking for more art in the city? Here are the gallery shows not to miss in July .

Press Herald

Account Subscription: ACTIVE

Questions about your account? Our customer service team can be reached at [email protected] during business hours at (207) 791-6000 .

• Local & State
• Arts & Entertainment

Spirited ‘Funny Girl’ captures excitement of early musical theater

The show that made Barbra Streisand famous is playing at Maine State Music Theatre through July 13.

You are able to gift 5 more articles this month.

Anyone can access the link you share with no account required. Learn more .

With a Press Herald subscription, you can gift 5 articles each month.

It looks like you do not have any active subscriptions. To get one, go to the subscriptions page .

Loading....

Jenna Lea Rosen as Fanny Brice with the cast of “Funny Girl” at Maine State Music Theatre. Photo by MSMT/Jared Morneau Photography

Who are the luckiest people in the world? At least for theater fans, the answer is “people who need people,” a line made famous well over half a century ago by Barbra Streisand in the original production of the musical “Funny Girl.”

THEATER REVIEW

WHAT: “Funny Girl: the Musical” by Maine State Music Theatre

WHERE: Pickard Theater, Bowdoin College Campus, Brunswick

REVIEWED: June 28 (matinee); continues through July 13

TICKETS: Starting at $93

CONTACT: 207-725-8769, msmt.org

On the heels of the show’s recent Broadway revival, the Maine State Music Theatre has opened a spirited production of the classic musical on its home stage at the Pickard Theater on the campus of Bowdoin College in Brunswick.

The show primarily captures the rousing excitement of early musical theater while unavoidably making us think about how it launched the career of Streisand. At a lengthy but enjoyable two-and-one-half hours, plus intermission, it’s a show that still charms with its memorable songs, old-style comedy and bittersweet love story.

The impressive production, directed and choreographed by Kenny Ingram and with the time-honored music of Jule Styne, lyrics by Bob Merrill and book by Isobel Lennart, tells the semi-fictionalized story of Fanny Brice, a real-life figure who rose from humble origins to showbiz stardom as a give-it-everything-you’ve-got performer in the early 20th century.

At first socially awkward and vulnerable, but with a unique talent and an admirable determination to succeed, Fanny gained the attention of famed impresario Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr. and went on to star in many of his glitzy stage shows. At the same time, Fanny’s personal life was a bit of a rollercoaster ride.

Jenna Lea Rosen takes the lead role and scores comedically with her initially wide-eyed approach to Fanny’s personal and professional challenges. Armed with a feisty “New Yawk” accent, the actress easily takes charge of backstage, front stage and offstage scenes. Her vocals are compelling on both comic numbers (“Sadie, Sadie” and “Rat-Tat-Tat-Tat”) and in more intimate moments (“People” and “Don’t Rain On My Parade”). Advertisement

Douglas Raymond Williams plays Fanny’s handsome rogue of a love interest who brings her to a fuller life but fails her in the end. His opera-trained vocals alongside Rosen (“I Want to be Seen With You” and “You are Woman, I am Man”) establish both the heat and uncertainties within their relationship.

Among the many standout secondary actors and choristers, Tyler Johnson-Campion is a tap-dancing whiz. His work with Sue Cella, who plays Fanny’s mom, is a treat on “Who Taught Her Everything.” Cella also has some fun moments squabbling with a competitive friend played by Maine State favorite Charis Leos.

Tommy Betz shines as a Tenor and David Girolmo returns to the Pickard stage as the stern but supportive Mr. Ziegfeld. Jeremiah Valentino Porter gets to toot a hot horn on “Cornet Man.”

The Maine State Music Theatre Orchestra, led by Jason Wetzel, mixes up the period flavors with a newer Broadway expansiveness. The costumes designed by J. Theresa Bush and scenic design by Jeffrey D. Kmiec take the audience back to a distant era when musical theater and its early stars were on the rise.

Steve Feeney is a freelance writer who lives in Portland.

Modify your screen name

Join the Conversation

Please sign into your Press Herald account to participate in conversations below. If you do not have an account, you can register or subscribe . Questions? Please see our FAQs .

Your commenting screen name has been updated.

Send questions/comments to the editors.

After 2 long years, couple who lived in a van finally found a place to call home. They thought they’d be there together.

One killed, two injured in head-on crash in gray, duckfat’s trailblazing owners talk about the early days, their restaurants and their decision to retire, maxwell’s in cape elizabeth to close strawberry farm after 5 decades, maine’s public defender crisis devolves into a blame game, member log in.

Please enter your username and password below. Already a subscriber but don't have one? Click here .

Not a subscriber? Click here to see your options