Decades before The Bronx neighborhood of Morris Park came to be, it was home to the 360 acre Morris Park Racecourse which ran from 1889 until 1904 as an important center of American thoroughbred horse racing which was the home of the Belmont Stakes from 1890 until 1904 and even saw the famous Preakness Stakes in 1890.
Arts & Culture
Don’t be fooled by the mainstream media: Arts & Culture is alive in our borough and The Bronx has been at the forefront of arts and culture for decades and isn’t something new to the borough. We’ve been creating and exporting the arts in all its disciplines as long as our borough has been around. From the founding of Hip-hop to fashion designers and major entertainment artists along with the visual and literary arts, we’ve been doing it.
Yes, you read that correctly. According to an interview in The New Yorker with Anthony Daniels, the British actor who plays the iconic C-3PO in the Star Wars franchise, was supposed to have a “Bronx” accent as George Lucas had imagined he would.
Thanks to The New York Public Library Digital Collections, the public has access to thousands of images of New York City from the 1870’s to the 1970’s. Today we’re sharing some of our favorites of The Bronx where you can see how things have changed—or not.
Join the Bronx Music Heritage Center for the first ever Parranda, the traditional fun-filled Puerto Rican way of celebrating the holidays in this inaugural event that will take on a different theme each year!
The event is scheduled for Monday, December 21st and kicks off at the Bronx Documentary Center at 4pm.
If you’ve never been to a parranda or know what it is, it’s basically Christmas caroling on steroids with traditional Puerto Rican instruments and the crowd grows as it goes from place to place, picking folks up along the way.
Watch Puerto Rican born, Bronx raised Rita Moreno talking about her legacy as she takes a walk through The Bronx with CBS News as she’s set to receive Kennedy Center Honors this Sunday, and a new express SBS bus service to speed up travel between The Bronx and Queens.
The DreamYard Project is nurturing Bronx youth through the arts in hopes of changing the world, some of the works of the late Tony Award-winning Bronxite Boris Aronson who began his career in Yiddish theatre, and the greenest borough’s best hiking spots, all in this evening’s Bronx PM Links.
Legionnaires update on the second outbreak in The Bronx in Morris Park, Puerto Rican Heritage Month’s Artist and Book Expo at Hostos Community College, and Migration Stories at The Bronx Documentary Story are part of this evening’s Bronx PM Links roundup.
Pandas in The Bronx, buying South Carolina crabs right here in our borough, and a new documentary explores the difficulty of extreme poverty facing single fathers and devastate impacts on their families are some of the stories you’ll find in this evening’s edition of Bronx Links.
No Longer Empty Curatorial Lab (NLE Lab) is pleased to present Intersecting Imaginaries at 900 Grand Concourse, a site-responsive exhibition curated by Natasha Bunzl, Dalaeja Foreman, Paola Gallio, Mary Kay Judy, Eva Mayhabal Davis, Lindsey O’Connor, Walter Puryear, and Emilia Shaffer-Del Valle. Including sculpture, photography, installation, video, works on paper and commissioned works by Bronx-based and tri-state area artists, Intersecting Imaginaries considers mapping as a method for understanding place, time, and identity.
The title of the exhibition is borrowed from the philosophical concept of the social imaginary, which considers community to be composed of human interaction and perceived connection. Intersecting Imaginaries melds this abstract understanding with an acknowledgement of external circumstance, presenting a constellation of works that speak to memory and lived experience as composite parts of a map, and as the binding fibers of community.
Facing the Bronx Supreme Courthouse, and mere blocks from Yankee Stadium, the storefront sits in a highly frequented intersection of the South Bronx. These landmarks, each controversial in their own right, arouse singular stories within a diverse borough that inform the cultural and sociopolitical discussion at the heart of the exhibition. The site has served many functions: it was once a ballroom as part of the Concourse Plaza Hotel, a diner, a thrift store, and now stands empty, sharing walls with housing provided by the Mid-Bronx Senior Citizen Council. Remnants of its former lives are evident in the raw space, serving as inspiration and context for works that navigate body politics, racial identity, communities in flux, and the natural environment as both separate and intersecting realities.
Mayor Bill de Blasio’s housing plan to preserve and create 200,000 units of affordable housing is crumbling, Casita Maria searches for a new executive director as Sarah Calderon departs the organization after 7 wonderful years, and the Gould Memorial Library at Bronx Community College may be repurposed are some of the stories you’ll find here at Bronx PM Links.
Tomorrow, Saturday October 31st from 3pm-5pm, come to The Bronx Documentary Center for your FREE Halloween Portrait! The Free Holiday Portrait Series is one of the many ways the BDC gives back to the community by providing professional portraits for our residents (proof of Bronx residency is required!)
A big shout out to Fujifilm for their continued support of the Bronx Documentary Center who donated the supplies for this event!
This event is ONLY open to Bronx residents so once again, please bring your ID with you!
An anonymous tipster has sent us images of two 1 trains that were graffiti bombed in the past month up in The Bronx.
Although nothing like decades past when entire trains were covered in Graff and roamed through through the belly of the beast of our subway through the city, this still shows that graffiti artists are very daring in trying to capture their claim to fame—even if ever so brief as these trains are generally pulled out of service immediately to be cleaned.
You must be logged in to post a comment.