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Next month the Brooklyn Museum will offer a wide range of holiday programming.
Museum members will enjoy complimentary or discounted tickets to these events, as well as early access to public programs.
The Brooklyn Conservatory of Music will offer a concert from 3 to 5 p.m. on December 6, performing Dvořák's Symphony No. 9, "From the New World," and Schuman's "New England Triptych."
On December 7 from 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., Brad Vogel, author of Find Me in the Feral Pockets and organizer of the NYC Poets Afloat Residencies, will offer a generative writing workshop inspired by the museum's highly praised current exhibition, Monet and Venice. Vogel will draw a parallel between Brooklyn's own Gowanus Canal and Venice's storied waterways, providing prompts for participants' writing. The workshop will begin with an overview of the exhibition by Lisa Small, senior curator of European art.
The exhibit is the first in over a century dedicated to Claude Monet's Venetian cityscapes. It includes over 100 artworks, books and ephemera, and is also the largest museum exhibition of Monet's work in New York City in over 25 years.
Seydou Keïta, the premier studio photographer of 20th-century Africa from Mali, who recorded his country's evolution with his camera, is the subject of another current exhibition, "Seydou Keïta: A Tactile Lens." This features over 280 works, including iconic prints, never-before-seen portraits, textiles and Keita's personal artifacts, as well as unique insights from his family.
While Keïta worked inside the studio to capture his sitters' style and construction of a postcolonial identity, other photographers went into the field to document the lived realities of African society. Ernest Cole: Lost and Found (Raoul Peck, 2024, 105 min.), which will be shown from 2 to 4 p.m. on December 14, chronicles the life and work of Ernest Cole, one of the first Black freelance photographers in South Africa, who took to the streets to reveal life under apartheid.
The museum's sixth annual toy drive and giveaway will take place next month. Through December 13, visitors can stop by the admissions desk in the lobby to drop off new, unwrapped toys for children ages 0-14 in designated bins.
On Sunday, December 14, from 11 a.m.-2 p.m. visitors to the museum can pick up toys as well as clothing, coloring books and other holiday gifts for children. During the giveaway, which will be free and open to the public, there will also be a festive lineup of art-making activities and seasonal fun for all ages.
A joyful, global celebration of music will be performed by the Brooklyn Symphony Orchestra on Sunday, December 13 from 2 to 4 p.m. Conducted by artistic director Felipe Tristán, the orchestra will perform Dmitri Shostakovich's exuberant Festive Overture, Gabriela Lena Frank's rhythmic Three Latin American Dances, and Beethoven's immortal Fifth Symphony
Pop-Up Performances by VocalSoul Carolers will take place on Sunday, December 14, from 12:30-2 p.m. and on Sunday, December 21, from 2:30-4 p.m. VocalSouL an a capella group, will brings its signature Motown stylings to holiday classics set to soulful melodies.