ART IN A SNAP REMEMBER how as a kid you were able to build castles and robots out of Legos? Manhattan artist Nathan Sawaya has gone way beyond that. Now through Dec. 14, art and toy lovers alike are invited to see Sawaya’s 18-piece exhibit of Lego art, which includes several life-size human figures, each made from up to 6,000 plastic building blocks that have been glued together. “They’re the same kind of Legos you’d buy in a store,” says Sawaya, who’d previously worked with wire and clay. “I order them by the hundreds of thousands.” Not surprising for a show called “Red: The Lego Brick Sculpture of Nathan Sawaya,” it’s made up of 75 percent red Legos with blues, grays, blacks and whites used for accent. It’s free to see the exhibit Tuesdays through Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. at Agora Gallery, 530 W. 25th St.; 212-226-4151, brickartist.com. — B.N.
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EXCEPTIN’ ALICE It’s that time of year again. Time for Coney Island-born Arlo Guthrie (left) to hit the stage in New York City. “I’ve been playing Carnegie Hall on the same day every year since 1969 — that’s a long run!” Guthrie says. “I worked as an office boy on the corner of 57th and Seventh, across from Carnegie Hall, so it’s a homecoming.” Guthrie, 63, is performing his annual Thanksgiving concert tomorrow with the University of Kentucky Symphony Orchestra. And he’s excited that his daughter Sarah Lee Guthrie and son Abe Guthrie will be joining him. As for Thanksgiving, Guthrie and his wife, Jackie, always spends the holiday at the old church near Stockbridge, Mass., where he wrote “Alice’s Restaurant” and where the movie was filmed — it now serves as his nonprofit foundations’ headquarters. “We host an annual free feed on the holiday for folks down on their luck,” Guthrie says. “People come from all over to volunteer, in the kitchen, or performing music, parking cars, whatever. It reminds you of what is great about this country.” (And what’s great about the dinner is, he says, “Pumpkin pie! Of course!”) “Alice’s Restaurant” isn’t on his Carnegie set list. “I haven’t done it live onstage in years,” Guthrie says. “I relearn and perform it on the 10-year anniversaries — next scheduled performance is 2015.” 8 p.m. at 57th Street and Seventh Ave.; tickets, $12.50-$70; 212-247-7800 carnegiehall.org. — Billy Heller ASSOCIATED PRESS
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ON THE RIGHT TRACK All aboard! The New York Botanical Garden’s 19th Annual Holiday Train Show, in the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory, is picking up steam for an express run. Nearly a quarter-mile of track carries 15 small-scale trains past more than 140 miniature New York landmarks, including the storied Apollo Theater and a brand-new replica of the Eero Saarinen-designed TWA terminal at JFK. “The thing that makes this unique is that we immerse people in a three-dimensional New York experience where they can walk under bridges and see the city,” says designer Paul Busse. Dressed in railroad suspenders and a shirt reading “Still plays with trains,” Busse led the weeklong construction process, which included “artistic liberties” like moving Rockefeller Center to the base of the Brooklyn Bridge. Hey, why not? The show runs through Jan. 9. Tickets are $20 for adults and for $10 kids at 200th Street and Kazimiroff Boulevard, The Bronx; 718-817-8700. For holiday prices and hours, go to nybg.org. — Brian Niemietz Joseph M. Calisi
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STEINBECK-ONING “I prefer the old masters,” Orson Welles said on more than one occasion. “And by that, I mean John Ford and John Ford and John Ford.” The great Ford deservedly won the second of his four Best Director Oscars (no one else has won more than two) for his 1940 masterpiece “The Grapes of Wrath,” which begins a one-week run in a new 35mm print at Film Forum beginning today. This stirring and poetic adaptation of John Steinbeck’s novel about refugees from the Depression-era Midwestern Dust Bowl stars Henry Fonda and unforgettable Oscar-winner Jane Darwell as his indomitable Ma. For screening schedule, go to filmforum.com. — Lou Lumenick
