City of Water Day

July 12 | 11am–5pm | Free Museum Admission

Join the Seaport Museum, Waterfront Alliance, and fellow climate-conscious partners for the 18th annual City of Water Day, which provides programs and activities across the region that champion a climate-resilient New York and New Jersey Harbor.

For this special initiative, the Museum joins dozens of communities across all five boroughs, Westchester and Rockland counties, and northern New Jersey who will host events on and near the water that celebrate the importance of a resilient and equitably shared waterfront.

Take advantage of free admission to the Seaport Museum throughout the day, which will allow you to explore all of the exhibitions on view and two historic ships at Pier 16. In addition, the Museum will be offering a free all-ages activity focused on watersheds and +Pool will be on site to present “Water Diaries,” inviting attendees to share their thoughts on a water-related prompt.

Advanced registration for free admission to the Museum is suggested. Walk-ups will be accommodated as possible. The Seaport Museum aims to make our facilities accessible to all visitors. Due to the historical nature of our ships and Landmarked buildings, access requirements vary for each location. Please see the specific access details on our accessibility page if you would like more details.

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Sounds of the Sea for Solidarity
11am–5pm | Free with Admission

Stop by the Seaport Museum for an immersive sound experience designed for City of Water Day. This day-long program invites you to commune with the waters of New York Harbor through five participatory, artist-led sound installations and performances that explore solidarity with life in and around the sea.

Artists Dylan Gauthier, Suzanne Thorpe, Cal Fish, Marina Zurkow and Anna Rose Hopkins, as well as Eugene Lew will offer meditative and multi-sensory experiences shaped by field recordings, live interventions, soft sculptures, and underwater acoustics. Highlights include Gauthier’s evolving underwater recording project OVER//UNDER, Thorpe’s sonic reflections on New York City’s watershed infrastructure, Cal Fish’s sound sculptures and oral histories, and Zurkow and Hopkins’s immersive ASMR audio theater A Liquid Wanting.

From 3pm to 4pm, the series of installations culminates in a collective, improvised composition by all participating artists, performed in the resonant cargo hold of the 1885 tall ship Wavertree—a “community hour” in sound that builds solidarity through deep listening and shared presence with the sea.

Access to these installations is included in free Museum admission for City of Water Day. No registration needed to experience these works. 

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Free Museum admission and Sounds of the Sea for Solidarity is funded in part by Hudson River Foundation, the New York-New Jersey Harbor & Estuary Program and the Waterfront Alliance as a part of City of Water Day 2025.

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Sail New York Harbor
1pm, 4pm, 7pm | Pier 16 | $20–$70

City of Water Day Pioneer Sail Schedules

Can’t join a schooner sail on City of Water Day? No worries! The Museum offers Pioneer daytime sails each weekend through October. You can also check out our Pioneer sunset sails, offered Thursday–Saturday.

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Get Out On the Water
1:15pm, 2:45pm | Pier 16 | $15–$30

City of Water Day W.O. Decker Ride Schedules

Can’t join a tugboat ride on City of Water Day? No worries! The Museum offers W.O. Decker rides each weekend through October.

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About the Artists

Cal Fish is a cross-disciplinary artist from New York. Their work is multi-modal and immersive, often employing interactive sonic tools in soft and social sculpture. Cal performs regularly around NYC and has toured to share work all across North America and parts of Europe. Listening and archival practices, electromagnetic fields, flute, fm hijacking, songs, oral histories, up-cycled quilts, conductive thread, comfort objects, and magical kinesthetic tools combine to create environments for critical play, ecological awareness, and expanded perception. Graduating from Bard in 2018, Cal has since shared work at venues including Chaos Computer, Philadelphia Museum of Art, and Brooklyn Academy of Music. Currently Cal helps run the Living Gallery in Brooklyn where they regularly organize/host multimedia events, sews upcycled clothing in their home studio, and runs the phone line media label Call Waitn.

Anna Rose Hopkins is an actress, interdisciplinary storyteller and culinary artist. Film/TV credits include High Maintenance (HBO), Orange is the New Black (Netflix), Dark Night (dir. Tim Sutton), Amos’ World (dir. Cécile B. Evans), Gregory Go Boom (dir. Janicza Bravo), and Shame (dir. Sir Steve McQueen). Immersive storytelling collaborations have been produced by ICA San Diego, the Guild of Future Architects, the Rockefeller Foundation, FoodxFilm Festival, PBS, KCET, Tastemade, UCLA IoES, Rice University, Swissnex SF and the Barbara Seiler Gallery. Anna Rose is chef and partner at Hank and Bean. In 2020, Anna Rose cofounded LA based food justice non-profit Farm2People where she is currently the Executive Director.

Dylan Gauthier’s research-based and collaborative projects explore the intersections between ecology, architecture, landscape, and community-based public art. Gauthier’s individual and collective projects have been exhibited at the Centre Pompidou, Musée national d’art moderne, the Parrish Art Museum, CCVA at Harvard University, the 2016 Biennial de Paris (Beirut), (New York:) the Center for Architecture, The International Studio and Curatorial Program, the Chimney, the Neuberger Museum at SUNY Purchase, Columbus College of Art and Design, the Walker Art Center, EFA Project Space, and other venues in the US and abroad.  His writings about art and public space have been published by De Gruyter, Contemporary Art Stavanger, Parrish Art Museum, Urban Omnibus, Art in Odd Places, and Routledge/Public Art Dialogue, among others.

Eugene Lew is a graduate of P.S.124 Manhattan, and a former resident of the Smith Houses who patronized the Fulton Fish Market with his grandfater. He often interacts with people, places, sounds, and things.

Becca Rodriguez is an artist from Florida/Georgia currently based in Brooklyn. Recently, Becca was a volunteer at the Amphibian Foundation in Atlanta working in their nursery towards reintroduction efforts of endangered frogs and salamanders. Watery eggs and earthen vessels are persistent motifs in Becca’s ceramic, textile, and sonic installations, becoming elemental altar work to extant, extinct, and fictitious ecosystems.

Suzanne Thorpe is a performer, sound artist and scholar. She couples critical listening with acoustic ecology, improvisation and technology to craft emergent and immersive sound engagements with electronic and acoustic instruments. Her soundscapes slip fluidly between ambient saturation and punctuated instances of temporal intensity and possible melody. With her practice, Thorpe reveals dynamics within human cultures and nature’s systems, inviting discourse amongst ourselves and our environment to support interspecies empathy, understanding and climate advocacy. She has performed and exhibited internationally and has contributed to a significant discography as a founding member of the critically acclaimed American group Mercury Rev. She has received numerous grants, awards and residencies, and has had the distinct pleasure of performing with a heady roster of wonderful performers and improvisers worldwide. Thorpe’s current research focuses on the impact of human-made noise on oyster reef restoration by listening with oysters. She is currently Assistant Professor of Sound Studies at Manhattan University, a Visiting Scholar at NYU, and remains co-founder and director of TECHNE, a nonprofit arts-education organization dedicated to dismantling social and cultural barriers in technical learning environments.

Marina Zurkow is an American visual artist based in New York City who works with media technology, animation and video. Some of the less traditional mediums are known to be dinners, life science and bio materials. Her subject matter includes individual narratives, environmental concerns, and reflections on the relationship between species, or between humans, animals, plants and the weather. Her artworks have been seen in solo exhibitions at DiverseWorks in Houston Texas and at FACT in Liverpool. Zurkow is the recipient of a Creative Capital grant and has had fellowships from the Guggenheim and the Rockefeller Foundation. Her current exhibition Parting Worlds is on view at the Whitney Museum of American Art until January 2026.

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