You enter Culture Lab LIC through the parking lot. The building sits at 5-25 46th Avenue, and its contact page puts that instruction right under the street address, which suggests plenty of first-time visitors have walked past the front looking for a door. For the next month, most of Long Island City's late-fall arts calendar runs through that entrance.
Between Thursday, November 12, and the close of the holiday art sale on Sunday, December 13, Culture Lab's calendar holds a holiday art sale that runs the whole stretch, two film nights, three dance and performance runs, a community storytelling party, a language exchange, and free jazz on Fridays. Most of the evening programming in the neighborhood during those weeks happens inside this one building, so the season keeps its hours.
Thursday to Sunday, 5-25 46th Avenue
The gallery is open Thursday and Friday from 5 to 9 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday from 2 to 9 p.m. Nearly everything on the calendar below fits inside those four days, and most of it starts after dark.
The building came with the neighborhood's industrial history. Culture Lab calls itself a 501(c)(3) arts umbrella for Western Queens, working out of a 35,000-square-foot converted warehouse with galleries, a theater, classrooms, an outdoor venue and an artist residency. In a 2024 interview with Culturebot, artistic director Tess Howsam described Plaxall as a former Long Island City plastics manufacturer that opened its warehouse space to nonprofits and arts groups once production stopped. She explained that Plaxall gifted the space in 2016, LIC Artists first used it as a temporary pop-up venue, and Culture Lab was founded as a nonprofit in February 2020, with Plaxall staying on as its main sponsor by providing the space.
That partnership with LIC Artists is the reason the building matters this time of year.
A holiday art sale that runs until December 13
Off the Wall 2026 opened on November 5 and stays up through December 13. LIC Artists, known as LIC-A, presents it with Culture Lab as their annual holiday exhibition and art sale. Norma Homberg of LIC-A and Nancy Bruno of Brickhouse curated it, it covers all mediums, and artists keep 100% of their sales. The organizers' own pitch is "Get your art off the wall.. and into someone's home!"
For a sense of scale, when the fair ran in 2024, the Long Island City Partnership's listing described more than 100 local artists, every work priced at $999 or less, and no commission taken by either organization. Those were the 2024 terms. The 2026 page confirms the curators, the dates and the 100% arrangement.
Since the sale runs the whole stretch, every other event in the building doubles as a chance to walk through it. A film night or a dance piece gets you into the gallery during the five weeks when the work on the walls is for sale.
The weeks between now and the last sale day
Here is the warehouse calendar from November 12 through the end of the sale, from Culture Lab's event listings.
| Date | Event | Time |
|---|---|---|
| Thu, Nov 12 | Movie night: Charade | 7:30 p.m. |
| Fri, Nov 13 | icchā | 7 to 8 p.m. |
| Fri, Nov 13 | Sunset Jazz: Pan Jam, Brazil Show | 8 p.m. |
| Sat, Nov 14 | icchā | 7 to 8 p.m. |
| Sun, Nov 15 | icchā | 3 to 4 p.m. |
| Thu, Nov 19 | Celebrate Queens Memory's Sweet 16 | 6 to 8 p.m. |
| Nov 19 to 21 | Rabbit God: A Queer Chinese Fantasy | 7:30 to 8:45 p.m. |
| Sun, Nov 22 | Rabbit God | 3 to 4:15 p.m. |
| Fri, Nov 20 | Sunset Jazz: Madeline Dalton | 8 p.m. |
| Sat, Nov 28 | SpeakEasier Language Exchange | 3 p.m. |
| Dec 3 to 6 | The 8th | 8 to 9 p.m. nightly |
| Fri, Dec 4 | Sunset Jazz: Nathaniel Aguilar | 8 p.m. |
| Wed, Dec 9 | Film night: Metropolis | 7:30 p.m. |
| Fri, Dec 11 | Sunset Jazz: Yotoco | 8 p.m. |
| Sun, Dec 13 | Last day of Off the Wall 2026 | Gallery hours |
A few details from the listings make the evenings easier to plan.
Charade is the 1963 Stanley Donen film with Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant, shown in Culture Lab's Front Art Gallery. The page says it starts promptly at 7:30.
icchā is a contemporary kathak work with original music, set design and garba, the communal Gujarati folk form. On Friday the 13th, the 7 p.m. show ends at 8, the same time the jazz set starts in the same building.
Queens Memory's Sweet 16 marks 16 years of the Queens Memory Project. The gallery opens at 5 p.m., the program starts at 6, and from 6:30 guests can step up to the mic and share a favorite Queens memory, encounter, photo or object. It needs an RSVP.
Rabbit God is a new dance-theater work by Jiemin Yang and dancers, drawn from the folklore of Fujian, China. It combines contemporary dance, martial arts staff work, projection and an original score with live vocals.
Fridays at 8, and what lands on top of them
Sunset Jazz is the building's weekly constant. It runs every Friday at 8 p.m. in the gallery, and Culture Lab calls it "always free and open to the community," with limited seating and a request to get there early. RSVPs go through Humanitix. The rest of the 2026 lineup:
- November 13: Pan Jam, Brazil Show
- November 20: Madeline Dalton
- December 4: Nathaniel Aguilar
- December 11: Yotoco
The schedule has no entry for November 27, the Friday after Thanksgiving, and the page notes that it is subject to change.
Two nights are busier than the rest, one Thursday and one Friday, and on both of them the warehouse lines up with the rest of LIC.
Thursday, November 19 is the busiest night of the month. Queens Memory's party starts at 6, Rabbit God opens at 7:30, and up on Jackson Avenue, MoMA PS1's School Nite with Nourished by Time and Tromac runs from 7 to 11 p.m. at 22-25 Jackson Avenue. PS1's page lists that one as sold out.
Friday, December 4 lasts from morning to late evening. The Noguchi Museum holds Free First Friday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. At Culture Lab, Nathaniel Aguilar plays Sunset Jazz at 8 p.m., the same hour The 8th begins its second night. If you want both of those, you'll have to pick one, since they share a building and a start time.
The mornings belong to the other venues
Culture Lab opens at 5 p.m. on Thursdays and Fridays and at 2 p.m. on weekends, so LIC's morning programming this month happens elsewhere.
The Noguchi Museum's calendar has two back-to-back mornings on the weekend of November 14 and 15, among the museum's other programs this month. Mindfulness in the Galleries: Ikebana runs Saturday, November 14, from 10 a.m. to noon. The family Open Studio: Play with Paper runs Sunday, November 15, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Both finish before Culture Lab opens its gallery at 2 p.m. that weekend, and the Sunday icchā show starts at 3.
Thanksgiving weekend has the quietest Friday on the warehouse schedule, and its one waterfront event is on Saturday. NYC Parks lists a free Gather Around the Campfire at Hunter's Point South Park on November 28, from 1 to 2:30 p.m., at the Center Boulevard and Borden Avenue entrance. No registration is required. Back at 46th Avenue that afternoon, Culture Lab hosts its monthly SpeakEasier Language Exchange, which brings together intermediate-to-advanced speakers of Arabic, French, Farsi and Spanish. The Long Island City Partnership calendar lists it at 3 p.m.
Dinner on either side of a 7:30 curtain
Most of the Culture Lab events start at 7:30 or 8, which leaves time for an early dinner or a late one. Two fall openings fit that window.
Rewind, at 45-57 Davis Street between Jackson and Skillman avenues, opened on Wednesday, September 9. Eater NY described it as a 9,000-square-foot underground restaurant, cocktail bar and karaoke lounge, entered by pressing a "rewind" button on an '80s-style boombox. Eater reported that beverage director Ken Chen builds cocktails around tea, the Chinese zodiac and the five elements. Partner Alexander Lee's menu includes truffle mushroom congee, Taiwanese fried chicken and wagyu donburi, and the space has eight private karaoke rooms that take their cues from Hong Kong cinema and vintage recording studios. Eater also put it on its October list of new Queens restaurants. The karaoke rooms work for the hours after a Rabbit God show lets out at 8:45.
Xiang Ba Ye, a Hunan restaurant, opened in October at LIC Food Hall, 2717 42nd Road. A food hall makes sense before a promptly started film, since everyone at the table can order something different and still be in a gallery chair by 7:30.
That leaves December 13, the last afternoon of Off the Wall. The gallery opens at 2 p.m. that Sunday and closes at 9.
If a piece from Off the Wall comes home with you and you're wondering where it should go, that's the kind of conversation we enjoy. At The Jane Advisory, we think about how a room, a wall and a neighborhood fit together, and we're always happy to talk about LIC's arts calendar too. Connect with Jane.
