free things to do in New York City
Free events for Sunday, 05/11/25
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Free Events, Free Things to Do in New York City!  Read More

Are you looking for free things to do in New York City (NYC) on May 11, 2025?

24 free events take place on Sunday, May 11 in New York City. Don't miss the opportunities that only New York provides! Exciting, high quality, unique and off the beaten path free events and free things to do take place in New York today, tonight, tomorrow and each day of the year, any time of the day: whether it's a weekday or a weekend, day or night, morning or evening or afternoon, December or July, April or November! These events will take your breath away!

New York City (NYC) never ceases to amaze you with quantity and quality of its free culture and free entertainment. Check out May 11 and see for yourself. Summer or Winter, Spring or Fall! Just click on any day of the calendar above and you'll find most inspiring and entertaining free events to go to and free things to do on each day of May . Don't miss the opportunities that only New York provides!

Some events take place all year long: same day of the week, same time there are there for you to take advantage of. One of the oldest free weekly events in Manhattan is Dixieland Jazz with the Gotham Jazzmen, which happen at noon every Tuesday. Another example of an event that you can attend all year round on weekdays is Federal Reserve Bank Tour, which takes place every week day at 1 pm (but advanced reservations are required). You can take at least 13 free tours every day of the year, except the New Year Day, July 4th, and the Christmas Day. If you are classical music afficionado, you can spend whole day in New York going from one free classical concert to another. If you love theater, then New York gives you an option to attend plays and musicals free of charge, or at deep discount. You just need to have information about it. And we are here to make that information available to you.
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The quality and quantity of
free events,
free things to do
that happen in New York City
every day of the year
is truly amazing.

So don't miss the opportunities
that only New York provides:
stop wondering what to do;
start taking advantage of
free events to go to,
free things to do in NYC
today!

24 free things to do in New York City (NYC) on Sunday, May 11, 2025

All events are free unless otherwise noted.

Editor's Picks

free events nyc Sunday Funn at an Iconic Art Museum
free events nyc Greek Jewish Festival
free events nyc Playing with Social Codes through Performance Art: The Pin
free events nyc Explore Downtown Manhattan with a Whitney Museum Educator
free events nyc World-Class Jazz with Legendary Bassist Buster Williams
free events nyc The Imaginary Invalid: Moliere's Comedy-Ballet Starring Broadway Actor
        

Workshop | Tai Chi in the Park for All Fitness Levels


Join Silvana Pizzuti to learn and practice Tai Chi, a slow moving martial art with health benefits for all fitness levels. Space is limited, unreserved, and available on a first-come, first-served basis. If there is heavy rain at the time of the event, the event will be canceled.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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8:00 am
Free
Workshops, May 11, 2025, 05/11/2025, Tai Chi in the Park for All Fitness Levels

Museums | History, Culture, and Arts of Indigenous Peoples


This cultural institution showcases a vast collection of Native artifacts, such as objects, photographs, archives, and media.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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10:00 am
Free
Museumss, May 11, 2025, 05/11/2025, History, Culture, and Arts of Indigenous Peoples

Fair | Street Fair on Broadway 


Celebrate community, creativity, and culture at this vibrant street fair! Discover a colorful mix of artisan goods, local eats, live entertainment, and educational activities. This lively outdoor event highlights the diversity and spirit of the neighborhood while supporting local nonprofits, merchant associations, and community organizations.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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10:00 am
Free
Fairs, May 11, 2025, 05/11/2025, Street Fair on Broadway&nbsp;

Park Walk | Guided Tour through Park on the Water


Docents lead a walking tour to learn about the history of the Brooklyn waterfront, the area's sustainable design and ecology, and how the park came to life!
   New York City, NY; NYC
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10:30 am
Free
Park Walks, May 11, 2025, 05/11/2025, Guided Tour through Park on the Water

Museums | Sunday Funn at an Iconic Art Museum


Enjoy art, drinks, special programming, music, city views, and more! Activities include: all-ages artmaking related to art on view, storytimes from The New York Public Library, tours...
   New York City, NY; NYC
10:30 am
Free
Museumss, May 11, 2025, 05/11/2025, Sunday Funn at an Iconic Art Museum

Museums | Family Fun at a Historical Site: Sailor Adventures


Enjoy interactive activities and engagement stations for visitors of all ages. Incorporate 19th-century maritime craft traditions into your handmade Valentine's Day cards and unique trinkets for the holiday. You can also browse galleries and learn about ships, life at sea and more.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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11:00 am
$1, registration required
Museumss, May 11, 2025, 05/11/2025, Family Fun at a Historical Site: Sailor Adventures

Museums | Tiffany Glass and Other Exhibitions


The museum is dedicated to showcasing the history, art, and culture of its area with a permanent collection of 10,000 items. One of the exhibitions includes famous Tiffany's leaded glass objects and a valuable insight into the development of the inuctry in the US at the turn of the 20th century.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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11:00 am
Pay-what-you-wish, reservation required
Museumss, May 11, 2025, 05/11/2025, Tiffany Glass and Other Exhibitions

Museums | Sunday at a Unique Art Museum


Candid, genuine, and unexpected, this is New York City's only museum dedicated to folk & self-taught artists. The Museum celebrates the creativity of individuals whose singular talents have been refined largely through personal experience rather than formal artistic training. The museum's collection includes more than seven thousand works of art from four centuries and nearly every continent--from compelling portraits and dazzling quilts to powerful works by living artists in a variety of mediums. From critically acclaimed exhibitions and publications to inspiring educational programs and robust community outreach, the museum's mission is to be the leading forum shaping the understanding and appreciation of folk and self-taught art across time and place.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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11:30 am
Free
Museumss, May 11, 2025, 05/11/2025, Sunday at a Unique Art Museum

Museums | American Masterpieces on View: Day Two


Discover paintings, sculptures, and works on paper from across centuries of American art at this unique Art Fair. Now in its 18th year, the fair brings together premier specialists showcasing over 400 works.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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12:00 pm
Free
Museumss, May 11, 2025, 05/11/2025, American Masterpieces on View: Day Two

City Walk | Annual Atlantic Avenue ArtWalk, Featuring 125+ Local Artists


This spring, Brooklyn will come alive with creativity with over 125 local artists exhibiting their work at 70 local businesses for the Annual Atlantic Avenue ArtWalk. This vibrant,self-guided, 1.5-mile art event will showcase the diverse talents of emerging and established artists at galleries, salons, boutiques, restaurants, and home decor shops. Attendees will have the opportunity to experience a diverse collection of art ranging from paintings, drawings, three-dimensional art, mixed media, and photography. While enjoying Atlantic Avenue ArtWalk, people are encouraged to take time to visit and support the local, small businesses and restaurants in the area. They can grab a cup of coffee for their stroll, sit and eat, pick up a unique gift, or a new spring outfit, and explore new services- all of which help to keep the businesses that make up the fabric of the neighborhood thriving.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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12:00 pm
Free
City Walks, May 11, 2025, 05/11/2025, Annual Atlantic Avenue ArtWalk, Featuring 125+ Local Artists

Tour | Explore Downtown Manhattan with a Whitney Museum Educator


The Whitney's building may be new, but its surrounding neighborhood's past is long and storied. From the many Greenwich Village artists who came through the museum's first home on 8th Street, to the varied artistic projects along the Hudson River Piers: the history of the Whitney brings together the creative communities that shaped it. Attendees will a Whitney Museum Educator or Teaching Fellow to learn about the vibrant and varied cultural highlights within just a few blocks of the Whitney. The meeting place will be marked with physical signage. Outdoor events are weather dependent and subject to cancellation or being moved indoors should conditions require. Any changes to event plans will be noted online.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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12:00 pm
Free
Tours, May 11, 2025, 05/11/2025, Explore Downtown Manhattan with a Whitney Museum Educator

Festival | Greek Jewish Festival


First launched in 2015, the Greek Jewish Festival has grown into an international event that brings together the Greek Jewish community as well as the broader Greek and Jewish communities from across the US and around the world. The festival cuts across religious, cultural, age, and geographic lines. Situated within the historic immigrant neighborhood of the Lower East Side, the Greek Jewish Festival celebrates centuries of cultural exchange that occurred in Greece and the Balkans.
   New York City, NY; NYC
12:00 pm
Free
Festivals, May 11, 2025, 05/11/2025, Greek Jewish Festival

Performance | Playing with Social Codes through Performance Art: The Pin


Artist Pilvi Takala presents The Pin, a new performance that continues her work playing with social codes. Takala's work is set in motion by actors--identifiable only by a pin fastened to their shirts--who canvass the park, blending in with the public until they spontaneously approach unsuspecting passersby. Each performer is trained to improvise based on a script written by the artist, following the responses of the participating public. The seemingly happenstance interactions expose our preconceived expectations of how we engage with others in public spaces, and what might bring strangers to either connect or disengage. In setting up these exchanges, Takala makes visible how we grapple with polite contact, inclusion, and exclusion, while blurring the line between reality and fiction. Pilvi Takala's practice is centered on poking, prodding, and questioning conventions and codes in an effort to lay bare the social frameworks of our offices, parks, shopping malls, and other public spaces. The artist disrupts the experience of daily routines, using performative interventions as a means to push the audience to confront its own assumptions and behaviors. Often humorous--and almost always perplexing--her actions and interactions reveal our inherent discomfort with discomfort.
   New York City, NY; NYC
1:00 pm
Free
Performances, May 11, 2025, 05/11/2025, Playing with Social Codes through Performance Art: The Pin

Classical Music | Relationships & Comparisons in Music: Curated Piano Pairings


Classical music often sets itself up to be heard in relationships and comparisons: a prelude with a fugue, a theme with its return, the past with the present. At this event, pianist Anne Lovering Rounds presents an evocative afternoon of curated musical pairings from the Baroque to the contemporary. Program J.S. Bach (1685-1750) Prelude and Fugue in C minor from the Well-Tempered Clavier, Book II J.S. Bach (1685-1750) Prelude and Fugue in F minor, WTC Book II Franz Schubert (1797-1828) Impromptu in C minor, Op. 90 no. 1 Claude Debussy (1862-1918) "Suite Bergamasque" Alberto Ginastera (1916-1983) "Danza del viejo boyero," Op. 2 no. 1 John Adams'  (1947-) "China Gates" Doors open at 1:45pm.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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2:00 pm
Free
Concerts, May 11, 2025, 05/11/2025, Relationships & Comparisons in Music: Curated&nbsp;Piano Pairings

Classical Music | Works from Baroque through Contemporary Composers for Piano


Anne Lovering Rounds, piano, performs evocative musical pairings from the Baroque period through today.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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2:00 pm
Free
Concerts, May 11, 2025, 05/11/2025, Works from Baroque through Contemporary Composers for Piano

Classical Music | Violin Works by Dvorak and More (In Person AND Online!)


Sungmin Choi, violin, performs two pieces by Romantic composers. Program Henryk Wieniawski (1835-1880) Fantasia on Themes from Gounod's 'Faust', Op. 20 Antonin Dvořák (1841-1904) Violin Concerto in A Minor, Op. 53
   New York City, NY; NYC
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3:00 pm
Free
Concerts, May 11, 2025, 05/11/2025, Violin Works by Dvorak and More (In Person AND Online!)

Play | New Original Play: Cankersore Paradise


Honey’s got mouthsores. Beau’s got bourbon. A love story. Playwright: Leah Plante-Wiener
   New York City, NY; NYC
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3:30 pm
Free
Plays, May 11, 2025, 05/11/2025, New Original Play:&nbsp;Cankersore Paradise

Tour | Explore Downtown Manhattan with a Whitney Museum Educator


The Whitney's building may be new, but its surrounding neighborhood's past is long and storied. From the many Greenwich Village artists who came through the museum's first home on 8th Street, to the varied artistic projects along the Hudson River Piers: the history of the Whitney brings together the creative communities that shaped it. Attendees will a Whitney Museum Educator or Teaching Fellow to learn about the vibrant and varied cultural highlights within just a few blocks of the Whitney. The meeting place will be marked with physical signage. Outdoor events are weather dependent and subject to cancellation or being moved indoors should conditions require. Any changes to event plans will be noted online.
   New York City, NY; NYC
4:00 pm
Free
Tours, May 11, 2025, 05/11/2025, Explore Downtown Manhattan with a Whitney Museum Educator

Classical Music | Music on the Water: NYT-Featured Musicians Perform Modern Piano Quartets


Emilie-Anne Gendron, violin, Laura Sacks, viola, Chris Gross, cello, and Steven Beck, piano, perform a series of three string quartets by 20th-Century composers. Program Darius Milhaud (1892-1974) Piano quartet op. 417 Pierre Boulez (1925-2016) Incises (1994/2001) Ernest Chausson (1855-1899) Piano quartet in A major, op. 30
   New York City, NY; NYC
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4:00 pm
Free
Concerts, May 11, 2025, 05/11/2025, Music on the Water: NYT-Featured Musicians Perform Modern Piano Quartets

Jazz | World-Class Jazz with Legendary Bassist Buster Williams


This concert features renowned bassist, composer, and bandleader Buster Williams, whose profound influence has shaped the genre for more than six decades. Born in Camden, New Jersey, Williams began his career in the early '60s, quickly rising to prominence with his impeccable technique, deep tone, harmonic innovation, and lyrical sensitivity. He has performed and recorded with a long list of jazz greats, including Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins, Sarah Vaughan, Count Basie, Nancy Wilson, Art Blakey, Chick Corea, and Mary Lou Williams. A cornerstone of Herbie Hancock's groundbreaking Mwandishi band and a first-call bassist for both traditional and avant-garde giants, he bridges eras with elegance and power. Williams's ensemble, Something More, showcases his visionary spirit and brilliance as a bandleader and composer. Event organizers suggest arriving 45 minutes before start time. Admission is first-come, first-served, with ticket holders receiving priority (although not guaranteed entrance if the venue reaches capacity).
   New York City, NY; NYC
4:00 pm
Free
Concerts, May 11, 2025, 05/11/2025, World-Class Jazz with Legendary Bassist Buster Williams

Movie in a Park | Identity, Migration, and Memory: Three Short Documentaries Exploring American Chinatowns


Luka Yuanyuan Yang is a visual artist and filmmaker whose practice, characterized by interwoven documentary and archival materials, addresses themes of identity, migration, and memory, challenging conventional historical narratives and amplifying overlooked voices. During a year-long research trip across the US in 2018, Yang was captivated by the rich history of migration and adaptation in America's Chinatowns. From 1882 until the 1950s, due to the Chinese Exclusion Act and racial discrimination, Chinese Americans were largely confined to Chinatowns. During this same period, Yang began researching the stories of Chinese women in 20th-century American performing arts, seeking to uncover the experiences of Chinese women performers whose stories have been forgotten or misunderstood by history. Yang's exploration of these neighborhoods, the Chinese diaspora, and performing artists has become the central focus of her short films and feature film Chinatown Cha-Cha, and her recently published artist book Dance in Herland. In a time of rising threats to America's Chinatowns, the artist brings generations together through film, dance, and dialogue. For this screening, Yang presents Tales of Chinatown, an exhibition of three of her short films: Cantonese Tunes on Mott Street (2022), The Lady From Shanghai (2019), and Tales of Chinatown (2019). By following her protagonists on the streets, through their communities, and into their homes, Yang amplifies the voices of those often denied the chance to share their own stories--individuals who have been forgotten, silenced, or misinterpreted.
   New York City, NY; NYC
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5:00 pm
Free
Movie in a Parks, May 11, 2025, 05/11/2025, Identity, Migration, and Memory: Three Short Documentaries Exploring American Chinatowns

Classical Music | Piano Works by Haydn, Schubert, Ravel, and More (In Person AND Online!)


Yunqing Huang, piano, and Sarah Tuan, piano, play pieces by composers of various time periods from all over the world. Program Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) Piano Sonata in D Major, Hob. XVI/33, L. 34 Franz Schubert (1797-1828) Impromptus, D. 899 Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) Valses nobles et sentimentales, M. 61 Joaquín Turina (1882-1949) Tarjetas Postales, Op. 58
   New York City, NY; NYC
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5:30 pm
Free
Concerts, May 11, 2025, 05/11/2025, Piano Works by Haydn, Schubert, Ravel, and More (In Person AND Online!)

Theater | The Imaginary Invalid: Moliere's Comedy-Ballet Starring Broadway Actor


Argan is ill. But is he? Argan is dying. But aren't we all? Argan wants absolute control. But is that ever achievable? After a series of upside down attempts to snap him out of it, a solution is found. But will it save him? The Imaginary Invalid is the last play that legendary French playwright Moliere wrote and was originally conceived as a Comedy-Ballet where theater, dance, and music are intertwined. It explores the fear of disease and the exploitation it breeds through infinitely humorous dialogue and in-your-face satire. This production will feature original choreography by FlexN dancer Cal Hunt, original music by cellist Johnathan Moore, and stars Tony and Olivier Award nominee Sahr Ngaujah. Director and Translator: Lucie Tiberghien Choreographer and Dancer: Cal Hunt Composer and Cellist: Johnathan Moore Cast: Dante Bonner, Mary Bacon, Rory Furey-King, Doron JePaul, Naomi Lorrain, Sahr Ngaujah, Shayvawn Webster
   New York City, NY; NYC
7:30 pm
Free
Theaters, May 11, 2025, 05/11/2025, The Imaginary Invalid: Moliere's Comedy-Ballet Starring Broadway Actor

Play | New Original Play: Cankersore Paradise


Honey’s got mouthsores. Beau’s got bourbon. A love story. Playwright: Leah Plante-Wiener
   New York City, NY; NYC
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8:00 pm
Free
Plays, May 11, 2025, 05/11/2025, New Original Play:&nbsp;Cankersore Paradise
Complimentary Tickets

to shows, concerts ... (CFT Deals!)

Musical | Hit Show Musical Parody

Regular Price: $58.50
CFT Member Price: $0.00

Classical Music | Large Chorus and Orchestra at a Landmark Venue

Regular Price: $55
CFT Member Price: $0.00
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