Teen Night: planned by teens, for teens.
These events are located on places like the New, Brooklyn, and Metropolitan Museums and the High Line. These events are completely free to teenagers. Teen night at these museums consist of activities like scavenger hunts which require you to look for specific pieces of art, screen watching movies, art making, workshops, along with live music and dance performances. Places like the High Line provide photo booths, face painting, tarot card readings and more hands on activities.
Each Teen Night has a different theme which everyone loves. Now senior at LaGuardia High School, Alma Rodriguez, an intern at the Brooklyn Museum Teen Night events, states “Teen Night events hosted by museums are incredibly fun without a doubt-in their own ways of course. It is evident that most Teen Nights are fun and are great hang out spots for teens. However, there is a lot of work that goes into these one night events. The Teen Night Planning Committee at the Brooklyn Museum works tremendously hard to plan the Teen Nights that take place in museums. Being a part of the committee, I have focused on social media outreach, planned art activities, food, and contacting performers. For every Teen Night event we plan, we always have a theme. Our themes are based off of the exhibits the museums hold. We spend some time in the exhibit and/or galleries and base our ideas by the exhibitions, which is why for every Teen Night has an activity. We ask teens to go on a scavenger hunt in specific exhibitions, hopefully, to gain an understanding of the work.”
“The main purpose of constructing our Teen Nights from exhibits is to persuade teens into becoming involved and familiarizing themselves with the arts and bring attention to some issues and do it in the most fun way possible. Most of our Teen Nights share a common goal: activism.” Alma adds on. One example of that would be was Teen Night: Call2Action. It was based of the exhibit called “Agitprop!” which was based on political propaganda in the form of art and literature. The teens who attended were called to take a stance on issues they face in everyday life. They’ve set up a wall which teens can write about the issues they care about and asked then to write down names of activists that they consider important.
Rising senior at University Neighborhood High School, Willie Batista says “Teen Nights for me have always been a cool way to hang out and interact with peers across the city. It’s like the only time people of my age group can conjugate and have fun. Attending has always been fun with friends and I make a lot of new friends at them as well.”
Alma believes “As a planner, my main goal is for teenagers to enjoy the Teen Nights given by the music and activities that we plan, but we hope that they leave the event with an open mind and question why we chose our theme and how it pertains to the importance of the exhibition we chose. Our Teen Nights are a great form of entertainment but our events always go beyond its theme.”
