Maachew Bentley
Maachew Bentley is a cultural polyglot within the orbits of music and visual arts. In addition to his many public and private curations for NY institutions over the passed decade, he co-founded the music platform Street Dreams Radio that publishes music in an literary fashion, and iterates IRL events in the same spirit home and abroad.
In a city that rewards speed, Maachew builds a case for sitting still, with his 7 local picks for NYC.
Museum of the Moving Image
MoMI isn’t really for casual tourists chasing selfies with movie props, it’s for the people who stay through the end credits. It’s for editors who notice jump cuts, sound designers who listen past dialogue, and gamers who understand code as storytelling. It’s for the kid from Queens who wants proof that the screen isn’t magic, it’s labor, craft, and obsession. It’s for anyone who knows that moving images didn’t just entertain New York, they built it.
Maachew Bentley
Weeksville Heritage Center
Weeksville Heritage Center is for those who want to inform themselves how New York was engineered block by block. It’s for descendants of self-determined Black communities, urbanists who study resistance through land ownership, and artists tracing lineage
Maachew Bentley
House of Sound
HOS is for those who treat sound as architecture. Here, hi-fi is ritualistic and wont cost you a salary for your slot to live in a breathing speaker. It’s for crate-diggers, DJs, and engineers who hear lineage in a bassline and politics in a drum break. W
Maachew Bentley
Silence Please
Fundamentally, Silence Please is an all-day cafe that hugs you acoustically. High fidelity no doubt, a very different type of surround sound approach with speakers everywhere of every size supported by the vinyl shop. Second floor entrance gives you that
Maachew Bentley
Brooklyn Public Library (Central Branch)
What sometimes feels like a treasure chest of resources, I would do it no justice to attempt to list them. For my great reveal here, there is a free music studio with computer, soundproofing, recording mic, and every input you would need to get out of you
Maachew Bentley
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
If you’re interested in the impact of design, Cooper Hewitt is the place to sit still, courtyard like none other with cafe and libations to boot. Looking to niche down on your education sprawling from industrial photography to sound installation, this ins
Maachew Bentley
Astor Chinese Garden Court
There was a time I thought myself Thomas Crown of the MET, without the mischief. I knew every corner without a map, and while the museum can be a zoo, this ever forgotten, skylit nook has billed me hours of my life I have no buyers remorse for.
Maachew Bentley