The Brooklyn Museum Kicks Off Pride Month with First Saturdays Programming

First Saturday Lite : Still Here, Still Queer, 2021. (Photo: Kolin Mendez)

Taking place on June 3, 2023, First Saturday: Pride continues the Brooklyn Museum’s twenty-fifth anniversary celebration of its flagship community-centered series, sponsored by Bank of America.

The lineup for June’s First Saturday—the Brooklyn Museum’s much-anticipated Pride Month celebration—spotlights LGBTQ+ creative communities in Brooklyn while imagining their incandescent futures. Upholding the First Saturdays tradition of presenting exciting musical acts, the lauded New York City Gay Men’s Chorus, Huda Asfour, Ivy Sole, Sir Babygirl, and the Dragon Sisters are all slated to perform. The program includes an art- making session that invites participants to create a flag representing who they are and what they find meaningful. Visitors can also attend a tour of Oscar yi Hou: East of sun, west of moon led by the artist himself, exploring themes of chosen family and queer community. Other highlights include a pop-up market offering handmade items by more than thirty Brooklyn artisans and a book talk with dapperQ founder Anita Dolce Vita.

This program is free; registration is required and includes Museum general admission. The complete schedule is below:

5–6 pm Music: Huda Asfour

Lobby, 1st Floor
Oud player and vocalist Huda Asfour performs selections from her latest project, Dawayer, reinterpreting familiar Arabic styles through a futuristic lens.

5–7 pm Hands-On Art

Plaza, 1st Floor
Create a flag that represents who you are and what you find meaningful. (Rain location: Great Hall, 1st Floor)

5–9:30 pm Brooklyn Pop-Up Market

Beaux-Arts Court, 3rd Floor Shop one-of-a-kind, handmade items by more than thirty artisans and vendors from across Brooklyn, including artwork, jewelry, fashion, home and apothecary goods, and more.

5:30–6:30 pm Tour: Oscar yi Hou

Ingrassia Gallery, 4th Floor
Oscar yi Hou and curator Eugenie Tsai lead a tour of the artist’s special exhibition Oscar yi Hou: East of sun, west of moon, exploring themes of chosen family and queer community.

6–7 pm Music: New York City Gay Men’s Chorus

Plaza, 1st Floor
Welcome back the New York City Gay Men’s Chorus, a longtime First Saturday collaborator, for a showcase of songs from its latest season. (Rain location: Beaux-Arts Court, 3rd Floor)

6–7:30 pm Book Talk: DapperQ Style 

Auditorium, 3rd Floor Join dapperQ founder Anita Dolce Vita to celebrate the launch of DapperQ Style: Ungendering Fashion, her compendium of queer fashion, along with featured models Alex Berg, Dev Doee, and Devin Norelle.

7–8 pm Music: Sir Babygirl

Lobby, 1st Floor
Vocalist, songwriter, and producer Sir Babygirl performs radical, neon pop from her debut album, Crush on Me.

8–10 pm Music: The Dragon Sisters

Sculpture Garden, 1st Floor
The Dragon Sisters, a Brooklyn-based nightlife duo, bring their signature choreography and blend of hip-hop, pop, and classical music to the First Saturday stage. (Rain location: Beaux-Arts Court, 3rd Floor)

9–10 pm Music: Ivy Sole

Lobby, 1st Floor
Charlotte-born, Philadelphia-based musician and rapper Ivy Sole plays tracks from their latest record, Candid.

The first and longest-running series of its kind, First Saturdays—free after-hours programming on the first Saturday of months throughout the year—has been replicated by museums around the globe since its inception in 1998. As the Brooklyn Museum’s marquee public program for twenty-five years, First Saturdays has also influenced cultural programming at home, inspiring a wave of similar offerings across the city. In Brooklyn, First Saturdays has become one of the borough’s most beloved and popular series, welcoming approximately 1.5 million visitors at its 250 iterations thus far. Each First Saturday is linked with themes from the Museum’s exhibitions and collections, or withbroader heritage observances, and comprises dynamic events that attract a wide array of guests. Artists of all disciplines activate nearly every inch of the Museum to celebrate the multifaceted communities of Brooklyn, New York City, and beyond.

In 2023, as we celebrate twenty-five years of the series with sponsorship from longtime partner Bank of America, First Saturdays are held in February–August and October. Each month’s program features throwback performances by veteran DJs and musical artists who shaped the series into what it is today. Themes still to come in the anniversary year are Africa Fashion (July 1), Caribbean Heritage (August 5), and Latinx Heritage (October 7).

Brooklyn Museum

Founded in 1823 as the Brooklyn Apprentices’ Library Association, the Brooklyn Museum contains one of the nation’s most comprehensive and wide-ranging collections, enhanced by a distinguished record of exhibitions, scholarship, and service to the public. The Museum’s vast holdings span 5,000 years of human creativity from cultures in everycorner of the globe. Collection highlights include the ancient Egyptian holdings, renowned for objects of the highest quality, and the American collections, which are unrivaled in their diversity, from Native American art and artifacts and Spanish colonial painting, to nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American painting, sculpture, and decorative objects. The Museum is also home to the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, which is dedicated to the study and exhibition of feminist art and is the only curatorial center of its kind. The Brooklyn Museum is both a leading cultural institution and a community museum dedicated to serving a wide-ranging audience. Located in the heart of Brooklyn, the Museum welcomes and celebrates the diversity of its home borough and city. Few, if any, museums in the country attract an audience as varied with respect to race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, educational background, and age as the audience of the Brooklyn Museum.

Bank of America

Bank of America is one of the world’s leading financial institutions, serving individual consumers, small and middle-market businesses and large corporations with a full range of banking, investing, asset management and other financial and risk management products and services. The company provides unmatched convenience in the United States, serving approximately 68 million consumer and small business clients with approximately 3,900 retail financial centers, approximately 15,000 ATMs and award- winning digital banking with approximately 56 million verified digital users. Bank of America is a global leader in wealth management, corporate and investment banking and trading across a broad range of asset classes, serving corporations, governments, institutions and individuals around the world. Bank of America offers industry-leading support to approximately 3 million small business households through a suite of innovative, easy-to-use online products and services. The company serves clients through operations across the United States, its territories and more than 35 countries. Bank of America Corporation stock (NYSE: BAC) is listed on the New York Stock Exchange.