Spooky stuff tends to hog the culture calendar in October, but I’m not mad. As a horror fan I live for scary season, which is why I put together a guide to celebrating Halloween in and around New York. But what else is there to do this month besides dress up like the “Weapons” witch and stuff your face with Snickers minis? Here are my picks.
Art
The maverick multidisciplinary artist David Wojnarowicz, who died in 1992, posed for dramatic self-portraits around New York City in the late 1970s wearing a mask of the French poet Arthur Rimbaud. At the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, those defining works are in “David Wojnarowicz: Arthur Rimbaud in New York,” starting on Oct. 1.
“The Gay Harlem Renaissance,” a sweeping survey of Black queer life here in the 1920s and ’30s, opens at the New York Historical on Oct. 10. Among the more than 200 objects featured are recordings from Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey and paintings by Jacob Lawrence and Earle Richardson.