Block Party

Everyone's invited to the Gardner for Neighborhood Nights, a series of fun and free interactive evenings for you and your family. Enjoy music, performance, food trucks, cash bar, gallery games, and hands-on creative experimentation inside the Museum and out.

Program for the Evening

Evans Way Park // 5-9 pm*
Fun flows from the Museum into Evans Way Park for an interactive evening featuring Intervention: Ocean Blues by Laura Anderson Barbata with the Brooklyn Jumbies stilt dancers in oceanic, bioluminescent, sculptural wearables, processing with Tempo International Rhythm Section playing Afro-Caribbean percussion. Choreographer Marsha Parrilla will offer a Dances of Resistance mini-workshop. Enjoy the Boston Latin Academy Step & Stroll Team, DJ Real P, roller skaters from Chez-Vous Roller Rink, interactive youth demos from Xtreme Ninja Martial Arts and the International Fencing Club, metalsmithing projects with Metalwerx, the Boston Public Library’s Bibliocycle, lawn games, art-making with Lavie Raven, and tabling from local organizations. The Jamaica Mi Hungry, Boston Burger Company, and Zack's Ice Cream food trucks will be available for visitors to enjoy a casual bite to eat.

Inside the Museum // 5-9 pm
Join artist Silvia López Chavez in the Bertucci Education Studio, songwriter and violinist Josh Knowles's single release celebration in Calderwood Hall, a stone-carving demo in the Jordan Garden with David Baird of Metalwerx, rune readings in the Tapestry Room with healer Luana Morales, music, and games throughout the galleries. 

At sundown, keep the party going and head around the block for more free neighborhood fun ​with MFA Film's Sunset Cinema on the Huntington Avenue lawn.

*In case of heavy rains, activities will move inside the Museum.

Intervention: Ocean Blues is a cross-disciplinary performance by Laura Anderson Barbata in collaboration with the Brooklyn Jumbies, Spontaneous Celebrations, and Afro-Caribbean percussion by Tempo International Rhythm Section, and with Meegan Williams, who will be designing the Mermaid-Queen. The performance highlights the physical and emotional relationship maintained within the life of our ocean and the urgent need for collective transformation. The resulting work combines spoken word, dance, stilt dancing, improvisation, ritual, procession, sculptural costuming, and music to create a unique form of storied performance that will unfold in front of the Museum.

Intervention: Ocean Blues is inspired by all the forms of life that make the ocean their home—in particular, the extraordinary sea creatures that have the gift of producing their own light through bioluminescence—and live in the deepest and least explored depths of our oceans. The performance intentionally unfolds in an urban environment highly dependent on the health of the oceans, even though it may not be overtly obvious to our urban communities.

Admission for Neighborhood Nights is free, and is limited to Museum capacity. Please check in at the Admissions Desk upon arrival.

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