For homeless New Yorkers, finding shelter from the elements can be a life or death situation.

For the last 20 years on Christmas Day, New York City historian Seth Kamil has been leading groups on a walking tour of the Jewish Lower East Side. On one recent holiday, almost 700 people showed up to take the tour.

Producers of the troubled Broadway show "Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark" told state and federal officials that they would hire an independent expert to review safety procedures, and increase the number of rehearsals for understudies.

Three thousand amateur and professional singers will gather at Lincoln Center on Tuesday night for the National Chorale’s 43rd annual sing-a-long of Handel’s Messiah. Seventeen conductors will lead the audience through the nearly three-hour holiday classic. The sing-in starts at 8 P.M. at Avery Fisher Hall.

The City's economy may have hit some rocky patches in the last few years, but enrollment at New York City’s culinary schools has seen steady growth. Many of the new students are mid-life career changers, forced out of their old professions by the crumbling economy.

It's that time of the year again when Puerto Rican New Yorkers dust off old family recipes and prepare tasty batches of a holiday rum drink made with eggs, cream, coconut milk, and spices.

An arts organization in upstate New York, has commissioned a sculpture using five huge mangled pieces of steel from the World Trade Center.

At the Museum of Arts and Design’s new Center of Olfactory Art, visitors might soon be able to smell the next great masterpiece.

Just over a year old, Parwaz Playhouse bills itself as the first major Pakistani-American theater company in the U.S. Currently, eight first- and second-generation Pakistani–American actors, playwrights and directors make up the company.

Previews started this week for the most expensive musical in Broadway history, “Spiderman.” It took nine years and some $65 million for producers to bring the webbed superhero to the stage at the Foxwood Theater in Times Square. New Yorkers weighed in on preview performances.

The new director of the Schomburg Center for Research In Black Culture, Indiana University history professor Khalil Gibran Muhammad, plans to do a lot of listening in his first days on the job.

Timed to coincide with auctions of Latin American art at Christie’s and Sotheby’s, the PINTA Latin American Contemporary Art Fair opened Friday at Pier 92 in Manhattan. The exhibit showcases the best of Latin American modern art.

Your Facebook wall may be a work of art. A new exhibit at Outpost Artist Resources in Queens called the #TheSocialGraph explores the emerging field of social media art.

The Morgan Library Museum in Manhattan reopens to the public on Saturday after a $4.5 million restoration of its ornate interior.

Houdini: Art and Magic, opening Friday at the Jewish Museum, explores the life of master illusionist Harry Houdini and his lasting impact on contemporary culture.

Artist Mauricio Lopez designed the bold geometric patterns of “Color Mesh,” now adorning the construction fence along one side of the Brooklyn Atlantic Yards project.

An exhibit at The New Museum explores the growing impact of the Internet on artistic expression. “Free” opened this week with contributions from 22 contemporary artists from a range of disciplines—including sculpture, photography, collage, installation, and video.

When it comes to corporate support of culture in New York City, energy giant Con Edison stands out. That’s according to the advocay group Americans for the Arts’ annual list of the top ten US companies that support the arts. Con Edison was the only New York-based company that made the list this year.

Twenty thousand poets and poetry lovers are gathering in Newark’s burgeoning arts district this weekend for the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival.  Held once every two years, the festival is the largest poetry event in North America.

Community gardeners met this weekend in Manhattan for a Town Hall meeting and discussion about new Parks Department rules governing gardens. The rules were adopted three weeks ago to replace the expiring 2002 Attorney General's agreement between gardeners and the city.