Brooklyn Museum First Saturdays November 2022

For over twenty-one years, Brooklyn Museum has hosted First Saturdays—monthly evenings of free programming welcoming visitors from central Brooklyn and beyond—at the Brooklyn Museum. Join for free every month (except January, July, September, and December).  This event is free, but advance registration is encouraged. Admission is subject to capacity at the time of arrival.

Theme: Joyful Resistance

To celebrate the long-anticipated reopening of the Arts of the Islamic World and Arts of South Asia galleries, join for a night of music, dance, and poetry amplifying artists of the SWANA (Southwest Asian and North African) diaspora. These musicians, performers, and activists joyfully reclaim aspects of their cultural heritage. This month’s programming is organized in collaboration with Shirine Saad.

Schedule
BROOKLYN POP-UP MARKET
Beaux-Arts Court, 3rd Floor
5–9:30 pm
Stop by our market to shop one-of-a-kind, handmade items from more than thirty artisans and vendors from across Brooklyn, featuring artwork, jewelry, fashion, home and apothecary goods, and more.

HANDS-ON ART
Meet in the Education Studios, 1st Floor
5–7 pm
Drawing inspiration from textiles in the Arts of the Islamic World collection, design your own Islamic art–inspired geometric stamp and create a rubbing of the pattern.

TEEN POP-UP TALKS
Arts of Asia and the Islamic World, 2nd Floor
5–6 pm
Join the Teen Museum Apprentices as they host ten-minute pop-up talks in the Arts of Asia and the Islamic World galleries.

MUSIC: BROOKLYN MAQAM PRESENTS ZIKRAYAT
Martha A. and Robert S. Rubin Pavilion and Lobby, 1st Floor
5–6:30 pm
Brooklyn Maqam fosters community engagement with music based on the Arabic maqam, a complex melodic system, by presenting and promoting selections from Middle Eastern (especially Arabic) musical traditions. In this program, the ensemble Zikrayat performs vocal and instrumental music from Egypt and Syria, featuring traditional instruments such as the oud, qanun, riqq, and violin, as well as vocals by Sami Abu Shumays and Zafer Tawil.

ROUNDTABLE: CULTURAL ERASURE OF ISLAMIC HISTORY IN INDIA
Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Auditorium, 3rd Floor
6–7:30 pm
Learn about the erasure of Islamic monuments and history in contemporary India at this roundtable copresented by Guernica magazine. Writer Madhuri Sastry moderates a discussion about politics, art, and cultural memory among historian Manan Ahmed, author and photographer Suchitra Vijayan, and artist Jaishri Abichandani. Joan Cummins, Lisa and Bernard Selz Curator of Asian Art at the Brooklyn Museum, introduces the conversation with an overview of our newly reopened Arts of South Asia gallery.

POP-UP POETRY: HALA ALYAN AND SARA DENIZ AKANT
Arts of Asia and the Islamic World, 2nd Floor
6–7:30 pm
Poet and clinical psychologist Hala Alyan and poet and educator Sara Deniz Akant read and perform their original writing in our reinstalled Arts of the Islamic World galleries. Then, they discuss themes in their work, including migration, translation, and identity.

MUSIC: YALLA! PARTY PROJECT
Beaux-Arts Court, 3rd Floor
7–10 pm
Enjoy sets by DJs ZNA and Meduusa of Yalla! Party Project, an arts collective that celebrates SWANA, queer, and nonbinary people of color from New York and beyond. Their emblematic Brooklyn dance party features DJs spinning North African sounds, Arabic pop, dancehall, Afrobeat, and multicultural global grooves, honoring the healing power of intentional spaces and the communities behind them.

POP-UP PERFORMANCES: YAA SAMAR! DANCE THEATRE
Beaux-Arts Court and Egyptian Galleries, 3rd Floor
7:30–8:30 pm
Experience a series of ten-minute pop-up performances—taking place over the course of an hour—that employ the image of the bull known as Kuyūthā in medieval Islamic cosmography. Created by Artistic Director Samar Haddad King and featuring company members Arzu Salman and Mohammed Smahneh, this performance explores herd mentality, capitalism, and the physical process through which these systems are dismantled.

MUSIC: HIP-HOP SLAM
Martha A. and Robert S. Rubin Pavilion and Lobby, 1st Floor
8–10 pm
Honoring the rich tradition of hip-hop to emerge from the Middle East and South Asia as well as the SWANA diaspora in New York, DJ Shirine spins tracks and backs original songs performed by MCs Felukah, Omar Offendum, and No Komment.