Enjoying chic accommodations at Hotel Zero Degrees Stamford, you’ve got a plethora of cultural attractions at your fingertips. Here are some of the fine museums, art galleries, and theaters at your ready disposal as a guest of ours!
Stamford Museum & Nature Center
Situated on a lovely, expansive, woodsy property in North Stamford, this all-ages destination covers a lot of educational territory. Its historic Bendel Mansion has art galleries as well as fascinating displays on New England ecology, American Indian heritage, and history; the 10-acre Hecksher Farm, meanwhile, celebrates New England’s agricultural roots as a working farm complete with vegetable plots, livestock, and a sugarhouse.
Current exhibitions include Birds in Art (through May 28th), which displays some 60 highly varied pieces evoking those beautiful feathered fellow denizens of the planet. And there are plenty of happenings studding the SM&NC event calendar, including Observatory Visitors’ Nights on Fridays at 8:30 PM (weather-permitting), which give you an up-close, guided look at the heavens courtesy of a 22-inch research telescope.
The Loft Artists Association
Head over to 575 Pacific Street on the weekend to appreciate the vibrant artistic talent under the tent of the Loft Artist Association (LAA), established back in 1978. The building harbors 14 working artist studios as well as two exhibition galleries, which are open 1 to 4:30 PM on Saturdays and Sundays.
Franklin Street Works
This contemporary art gallery and café hosts stimulating and varied exhibitions with associated programs as well as regular lectures, performances, and other events. The current exhibition, In this place where the guest rests, which runs through May 13th, explores displacement and the true meaning of home.
The Palace Theatre
Opened in 1927 as a vaudeville house, the Palace Theatre was reborn as a multipurpose performance, film, and art venue in the early 1980s. Part of the Stamford Center for the Arts, the Palace is a visual stunner.
As usual, there’s an across-the-board lineup of entertainment on the Palace Theatre calendar for the coming weeks: concerts (the U.S. Air Force Concert Band & Singing Sergeants on April 3, Kalie Shorr on April 27, a benefit show for the Children’s Learning Centers of Fairfield County with Valerie Simpson, Paul Shaffer, and Darlene Love, to name a few), kid-friendly shows (for example, the Frogtown Mountain Puppeteers’ The Legend of the Banana Kid on April 8, and Wild Kratts Live! on April 19), movie screenings (Ferris Bueller’s Day Off on April 6, Moana on May 6), and more.
The Avon Theatre
This historic 1939-vintage venue shows the best of independent, foreign, and documentary film as well as special screenings of cult favorites (Jim Henson’s The Dark Crystal, David Lynch’s Eraserhead, and the Coen Brothers’ The Big Lebowski among the upcoming offerings in that department) and Hollywood classics (from The Seven Year Itch to Jaws, to name some on the 2018 calendar)