Where-To-Go Wednesday : Puppets of New York Downtown at the Clemente

What: Puppets of New York Downtown at the Clemente

Where: Clemente Soto Velez

             107 Suffolk St.

              New York, NY

Who: All ages

When: Through September 30, 2021

Me - The Puppets of New York exhibit was small but unique. They had some really interesting puppets.  There were a few puppets from a play that was actually written by a child. They looked like common household objects. There were three girl puppets that looked like they represented the show Dreamgirls or the musical group the Supremes, which allegedly that show was loosely based on, but they didn't really represent either of those groups. There was one that looked like a full-size skeleton. There were some that looked like they were made out of metal. 

There was a video you could watch that showed clips of all the puppets in the exhibit being used in their puppet shows. The metal puppets made a lot of noise in the video. Watching that puppet show would probably be headache-inducing. I'm glad I only saw a little of it. 

None of the shows represented were familiar to me except for a couple of puppets from Peter and Wendy, a version of Peter Pan. There was a Peter Pan puppet and a Captain Hook puppet. Captain Hook didn't look like the familiar Captain Hook at all. He was bald and had a ghostly white face. The exhibit was fun to look at but I would have liked to learn more about the different puppets, for instance, more about how they were made. 

Mom- The current exhibit Puppets of New York Downtown at the Clemente is a companion to the recent Pupper Fringe Fringe Festival that was held at the venue and at other nearby locations. It is also a multi-site collaboration in conjunction with a similar puppet exhibit currently running at the Museum of the City of New York. The latter exhibit will run through early April, however, and we hope to bring you more about it in a future post.

The Clemente exhibit focuses specifically on downtown artists who strive to explore and expand the art of puppetry. It features a wide array of puppets made using a wide variety of materials including cloth, paper, metal, wood, and even bones or replicas of bones and more. These materials were used to create a wide variety of different puppets including ones that are giant, ones that are life-size, ones that have no heads, ones that are flat, and more. These puppets were been used in a wide variety of different puppet shows in a wide variety of genres. The puppet shows represented range from a version of the epic Greek poem The Odyssey to a version of the children's classic, Peter Pan to a number of stories that the average person may not be familiar with and more. A highlight of the exhibit is a screening room where you can watch a video that shows segments from the puppet shows featuring every puppet in the exhibit. The video is on a continuous loop so if you come in the middle, and you want to make sure you see it all you can just keep watching until you get to where you came in.

The whole exhibit is not very large making it suitable even for most children and others with short attention spans. Most of  the puppets are not behind glass or anything, however. You can get really close to them which is nice for the average visitor but not so good if you have a small child who likes to touch things so keep that in mind if you are thinking about planning a visit.

There is no fee for visiting the exhibit. It is is open from 11:00 AM to 5:00 PM 7 days a week. For more information, visit www.theclementecenter.org/exhibitions.