EarthFest Guide
Join our annual all-ages festival celebrating planet Earth with hands-on activities, science trivia, specimen Identification Stations, and more!
*Free for Members or with Museum admission.
Floor 1
Milstein Hall of Ocean Life
11 am–4 pm
Richard Gilder Center for Science, Education, and Innovation
11 am–4 pm
Brick Build at the Museum
Tackle real-world planet challenges with the power of building bricks in this new drop-in build experience facilitated by Museum educators. Design structures that could help protect bee populations or safeguard New York City from extreme weather, then construct solutions with building bricks.
Hall of North American Forests
11 am–4 pm
Be the Change: Action Plan
It’s not too late to slow, halt, and even reverse many of our negative impacts on the Earth! Ideate on the type of world you want to live in, then use worksheets to create a climate action plan. This collaboration between the Museum’s Exhibition department, Learning Labs, and the Center for Biodiversity and Conservation explores concrete ways to encourage action.
Theodore Roosevelt Hall of Biodiversity
11 am–4 pm
Short Film: The Nature of Nature: Biodiversity in the Hudson Valley
An ode to the remarkable variety of life in the Hudson Valley, this film celebrates the living fabric of this unique landscape. From high-elevation forests to the globally rare freshwater tidal marshes along the Hudson estuary, this 30-minute documentary captures the beautiful, the complex, the familiar, and the unknown—guided by the plants, animals, and people that call the Hudson Valley home.
The The Nature of Nature was produced by Flicker Filmworks and the Hudson River Estuary Program with funding by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation through the New York State Environmental Protection Fund in partnership with NEIWPCC.
Ellen V. Futter Gallery
11 am–3 pm
Tardigrade Cake
Meet our giant (and delicious) tardigrade! This 3-foot-long tardigrade cake features multiple layers of flavor and celebrates one of Earth’s tiniest, toughest creatures. Stop by to see it up close, and join us for the cake cutting at 3 pm.
Floor 2
Richard Gilder Center for Science, Education, and Innovation
11 am–3 pm
Floor 4
Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Orientation Center
11 am and 3 pm
Storytime:
Good Morning, Garden! and Peekaboo, Flowers! are joyful, visually vibrant celebrations of nature designed for the very youngest readers. Families are invited to step into the garden together to greet hummingbirds and robins, peek at buttercups and lilacs, and discover the magic that lives right outside the door.
Noon
Eels: A Fishy Story
This talk by Adam Jadhav, a postdoctoral fellow in the Museum’s Center for Biodiversity and Conservation, explores the weird, wild history of the American eel, including this slippery fish’s relationship to the waterways of New York.
EarthFest is part of the Milstein Discovery Series.
Earthfest is generously supported by the Abel Shafer Public Program Fund, a fund created by the Arlene B. Coffey Trust to honor the memory of Abel Shafer.
A portion of this program is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.