Art in the Parks
Past Exhibits (2007)
Bronx
Anna Craycroft, Lo! The Fiery Whirlpool
October 17 to June 9, 2008
Baretto Point Park, Bronx
Image: Lo! The Fiery Whirlpool
Courtesy of artist
Description:
Anna Craycroft’s Lo! The Fiery Whirlpool is a study in contrasts. The thick base of the smaller-than-life-size corten steel lighthouse suggests permanency and a certain ruggedness that seems at odds with the filigree, almost lacy, cut-out at the apex of the structure. The form of the work suggests a lighthouse, a structure that is meant to be impervious to the weather. In contrast to this is the velvety, rusted texture of the steel, a literal testament to the structure’s vulnerability to water and air.
Craycroft’s work was previously shown at Socrates Sculpture Park as part of the Emerging Artists show in 2004, at P.S.1/MoMA, and at Governor's Island, among other locations.
George Sánchez-Calderón, Plinth, Monument, Stoop
October 1 to December 15, 2007
Joyce Kilmer Park, Bronx
Image: George Sánchez-Calderón, Plinth, Monument, Stoop
Courtesy of George Sánchez-Calderón and ZieherSmith Gallery, New York
Description:
Plinth/Monument/Stoop literally describes the plywood structure that Sánchez-Calderón built to resemble a plinth for a classical monument on one side and a stepped entry on the other. He originally placed the piece in the Overtown, an economically challenged section of Miami, Florida. For two months, it remained outdoors for locals to use to their liking – activities that never resulted in its destruction. Sánchez-Calderón visited with his camera, asking those at the scene if they would like to be photographed. Explaining the plinth’s traditional purpose as a pedestal for a work of art instantly inspired participants to respond. Standing on the plinth, some choose to present poses in classical contrapposto or defiant gestures of power. Others lounged on the steps, transforming it into a symbolic stoop, a traditional social center for many of America’s urban centers.
Locating the work in a New York City park seemed appropriate to the artist, since parks are traditional locations for the type of monumental sculpture to which the plinth alludes, while the piece’s “stoop” side is homage to the entrances of New York City brownstones.
Sánchez-Calderón was born in New York City in 1967, the son of Cuban exiles. His family relocated to Miami, where he now lives and works. He received his MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and BFA from Florida International University. His work is in the permanent collection of the Miami Art Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, the Margulies Collection, the Craig Robbins Collection, and the Carlos and Rosa de la Cruz collection. He has received the Oscar B. Cintas Fellowship, the South Florida Cultural Consortium Award, and is a finalist for the 2007-08 Rome Prize.
This project was organized by ZieherSmith Gallery, New York. It is funded in part by private support from the Mayor’s Fund to Advance New York City.
Michael Milton, Bronx Boogie
October 1 to December 10, 2007
Van Cortlandt Park, Bronx
Image: Malcolm Pickney, Parks & Recreation
Courtesy of the artist
Description:
The sinuous, twisting form of Michael Milton’s foam-wrapped metal sculpture Bronx Boogie evokes both abstract art and the natural world. The project is the artist’s first public art installation.
Simon Leung, Allison Smith & Amy Yoes, Poe and Twain Projects
September 8 to December 2, 2007
Glyndor Gallery, Wave Hill, Bronx
Image: Courtesy of Wave Hill
Description:
Jennifer McGregor, Senior Curator at Wave Hill, invited three artists to develop projects based on the writing of Mark Twain and Edgar Allen Poe. Alison Smith has taken Twain’s description of his experiences as a confederate soldier as inspiration for her installation of a period room. Simon Leung uses several of Poe’s works to inform his video project, which explores site-specificity, contemporary politics, language, and allegory. Amy Yoes’s installation also explores text from Poe through her sculptural work, a complex interlocking structure that is part furniture and part architecture.
Brooklyn
Rebecca Pollock, Urban Ornament
October 8, 2007 to September 2008
JJ Byrne Park, Brooklyn
Image: Courtesy of the artist
Description:
The artist says: “Decoration is often inspired by nature. For those of us living in the city, however, nature can be hard to come by. We surround ourselves with abstractions of flowers on wallpaper and silhouettes of birds on tote bags, but we often ignore the elements native to our everyday environment. The city, li ke nature, is filled with ordered and jumbled, messy, and lovely things--all of which deserve notice.
The goal of this ongoing project is to showcase how the imperfect, charming objects found on the sidewalks of New York can be a source of inspiration every bit as compelling as traditional starting points. The images used for this installation are all derived from things found in and around Park Slope.”
Rebecca Pollock created a temporary mural entitled Become at Taffee Playground in 2006.
Funded by Forest City Ratner Companies
Steve Tobin, Steelroots
October 15, 2007 to May 18, 2008
Prospect Park, Brooklyn
Image:
Photo by Ken Ek
Courtesy of Steve Tobin
Description:
Monumental sculptures of sinuous root forms are part of Tobin’s practice of exploring and recreating nature. Nature’s transient forms, like plant roots, are translated by the artist into the vernacular of bronze—making reference to classical sculpture and comparing nature’s forms with human-made beauty.
Tobin has worked in various media throughout his career, including glass, clay, bronze, and steel. His work often explores natural forms, and the artist cites nature as his earliest influence, one that continues to inform his work to date. The artist previously exhibited another of his works, Termite Mounds and Roots, at Theodore Roosevelt Park and Montefiore Park in 2001.
Jenny Holzer, Truisms Bench
October 22, 2007 to May 15, 2008
Columbus Park, Brooklyn
Image: Arielle Dorlester, NYC Parks & Recreation
Description:
Jenny Holzer’s Bench is part of the artist’s most famous series of work, her "truisms." These seemingly simple aphoristic phrases reveal themselves, upon closer inspection, to be slyly subversive. Holzer has used a variety of media, including LED signs, plaques, stickers, and T-shirts, to bring her words and ideas into the public sphere. A grouping of the artist’s benches was shown by the Public Art Fund in a 1989 installation in Central Park’s Doris Freedman Plaza.
Arthur Simms, Real Estate for Birds?
October 6, 2007 to March 17, 2008
Prospect Park (Grand Army Plaza entrance), Brooklyn
Image: Photo by A. Dorlester, NYC Parks & Recreation
Description:
Arthur Simms takes mundane artifacts of daily life and industrial waste and turns them into creative objects loaded with cultural memories and spiritual references. Like many of his works, Real Estate for Birds? is made from found materials: a telephone pole, rope, wood, wire, bird houses, glue, skateboards, bamboo, screws, nails, and bottle caps. Simms’s work frequently examines the cross-cultural dialogue between his native Jamaica and the United States. He lives and works in Queens, where he collects the various cast-off objects—bottles, rocks, wire, and scrap metal—that he incorporates into his work.
Simms was born in 1961 in Saint Andrews, Jamaica. He holds an MFA and BFA from Brooklyn College and also attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. His sculpture has been exhibited widely, including group shows at the Queens Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum, and P.S.1/MoMA. He is a recipient of the 2002-2003 Rome Prize, a 1999 Guggenheim fellowship, and was featured in the prestigious 2001 Venice Biennale, representing Jamaica. Just a short walk from Prospect Park, a new work by Simms is included in the exhibition Infinite Islands: Contemporary Caribbean Art at the Brooklyn Museum until January 27, 2008.
This project was presented in cooperation with the Prospect Park Alliance and made possible with funding by Forest City Ratner Companies and in-kind assistance from Con Edison.
Anne Peabody, Fallen Nest
October 1 to January 11, 2008
Fort Greene Park, Brooklyn
Image: Courtesy of artist
Description:
New Yorkers are incredibly resourceful when it comes to carving out niches for dwelling, says artist Anne Peabody. Fallen Nest was inspired by the current proliferation of new housing in Brooklyn. The work is an enormous representation of a paper wasps’ nest that is lying on the ground as if fallen from a tree. In the fall, wasps abandon their elaborately built homes for more substantial shelter in winter.
Peabody holds a BFA from Washington University, St. Louis, and an MFA from the School of Visual Arts, New York. A native of Kentucky, she lives and works in Brooklyn. Her work has been shown in Louisville, Kentucky and New York City. This is her first public art project.
The work is located at the corner of Washington and DeKalb Streets.
This project was made possible with funding from Forest City Ratner Companies.
David Hardy, Field Display # 2
October 1, 2007 to January 5, 2008
Cadman Plaza, Brooklyn
Image: Courtesy of the artist
Description:
David Hardy was thinking about the experience of looking at art when he made Field Display #2. At first glance, the sculpture looks like a familiar structure built to shelter information on a forest trail: a wooden display standing on two boxy legs with a shingled roof. Inside, a claw-footed goblet of unknown origin sits behind glass, and outside, planted in front, are two blue galoshes, empty except for lumps of black sludge. “I was thinking of the movie Repo Man, in which a man just explodes, leaving his boots behind,” says the artist. “I wanted to address the problem of public art and ‘the art experience,’ where the anticipation of the event is often so much more than the event itself. But what if the event itself was the cause of excitement?”
New York-based David Hardy has a BA from Brown, an MFA from Yale, and completed the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture program. His work was exhibited in group exhibitions at Socrates Sculpture Park, the Bronx Museum of the Arts, SculptureCenter, and in P.S.1’s Greater New York. He has had solo exhibitions of his work in
Sweden, Chicago, and San Francisco.
Funded by Forest City Ratner Companies
Stefany Anne Golberg, Anytime, Now. Somewhere, Here.
October 3 to to December 30, 2007
Prospect Park, Brooklyn
Image: Courtesy of the artist
Description:
Anytime, Now. Somewhere, Here is a multimedia, site-specific work based on the diary of a New York immigrant named Henry. It consists of a walk-in “observation cabinet” on the peninsula in Prospect Park, with copies of excerpts from Henry’s diary that are distributed to viewers for free. Henry’s diary tells the story of a man obsessed with the relationship between wonder and memory. The entries include descriptions of walks he took through the park, with references to Frederic Law Olmsted and his ideas about natural space in cities. In each cabinet is a song, written by the artist and based on diary entries.
Golberg, co-founder and Executive Director of Flux Factory, has been involved with many public projects, including Miracle on 43rd Street, a tour which led the public on adventures down 43rd Street, Queens, and Secret Spaces—part of the New Museum’s “Counter Culture” exhibition (2004). More recently, she created Romantic Moment on a Bench Looking Out at the Brooklyn Bridge: A Musical for the D.U.M.B.O. Arts Under the Bridge Festival.
Cameron Gainer, Nessie
October 22 to December 14, 2007
Salt Marsh Nature Preserve, Marine Park, Brooklyn
Image: Nessie, Courtesy of Cameron Gainer
Description:
On the morning of April 19, 1934, British Gynecologist Robert Kenneth Wilson supposedly shot a photograph of the Loch Ness Monster. Because of his profession, the image was referred to as “The Surgeon’s Photo.” The image quickly became the most iconic and recognized photo of the elusive serpent. It was not until 1994 that it was revealed as a hoax. For this project, Cameron Gainer has staged a replica of the mythic serpent in the salt marsh off of Marine Park.
Cameron Gainer's work has most recently been seen in New York at Socrates Sculpture Park and at the French Cultural Institute in Turin, Italy. Gainer works in multiple mediums, including video, sculpture, and photography. He received his MFA from Tyler School of Art in 2003 and his BFA from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1999. He lives and works in Ridgewood New York.
This project was made possible by Forest City Ratner Companies.
Javier Téllez, Games are Forbidden in the Labyrinth
November 2007
McCarren Pool, Brooklyn
Image: Courtesy of Damon Hart-Davis
Description:
Artist Javier Téllez brings the ancient parable of the ‘Blind Men and the Elephant’ to life. In keeping with various versions of the tale, from a Buddhist fable to the 19th Century poem by the writer John Godfrey Saxe, six visually impaired people will touch a different part of an elephant, just one part, and then describe the experience. Their responses illustrate how reality and understanding are shaped by perspective and the relativity of absolute truth.
Téllez’s action will take place on a closed set where it will be filmed and screened for the public at a later date. Games are Forbidden in the Labyrinth is the final project of Creative Time’s ‘Six Actions for New York City,’ co-curated by Mark Beasley and David Platzker.
A project of Creative Time.
Leonard Ursachi, Hiding Place
May 5 2007 to August 31, 2007
Prospect Park, facing Grand Army Plaza, Brooklyn
Image: Leonard Ursachi, Hiding Place
Description:
Ursachi's Hiding Place, a cylindrical bunker made from willow branches, is over 8-feet tall and 8-feet in diameter. The shelter has three "windows" with mirrors instead of glass.
"Because Hiding Place lacks a door and its windows are reflective shields, viewers can only imagine its interior," said Ursachi, "It is a receptacle for imagining and the yearning through which its simple iconic form may shift from bunker to refuge to nest-home. With this sculpture, I continue my investigation of the world of porous borders, vulnerable shelters, and mutating identities that is the 21st century experience of home."
Leonard Ursachi, a Brooklyn-based artist, left his native Romania in 1980 and has exhibited his work internationally. This is his third public art project with Parks & Recreation. Ursachi exhibited an earlier version of Hiding Place next to a 15th century stone fortress in Romania's Carpathian Mountains.
Osman Akan, The Third Bridge
October 14, 2007 to January 18, 2008
Brooklyn Bridge Park, Brooklyn
Image: Ripple, Osman Akan
Photograph by Kelly Barrie
Description:
The Third Bridge is a site-specific work of fiber optic grass fields temporarily surrounding the pathways of Brooklyn Bridge Park on the East River waterfront near the Manhattan Bridge in Dumbo, Brooklyn. The artist uses the site’s location, between the two physical bridges, to comment on the concepts of technology and network. This project marks the first of a series of solo commissioned works in a new program, Outer Space, being developed by the Dumbo Arts Center.
Osman Akan was born on the Black Sea coast of Turkey and since 1997 has lived and worked in the United States.
Presented by the Dumbo Art center (dac).
Cheryl Farber Smith, Leaning Firm
January 2007 to July 2007
Columbus Park, Brooklyn
Image: Cheryl Farber Smith, Leaning Firm
Description:
Cheryl Farber Smith's aluminum sculpture fuses simple geometric shapes to create a composition that simultaneously suggests motion and repose. Painted with a high-gloss red finish, it stands 9'4" high, 7'5" wide and 5'7", deep.
Manhattan
Adam Peachy and James Evans, Mural
October 2007 to October 2008
Baruch Playground, Manhattan
Image: Mural in progress
Description:
At Baruch Playground in Manhattan's Lower East Side, painters Adam Peachy and James Evans organized a team of volunteers to complete a mural of an underwater scene. It is a project of CITYarts.
CITYarts is a nonprofit organization that connects children and youth with professional artists to create public art that addresses civic and social issues, impacts their lives, and transforms their communities. Since its founding in 1968, CITYarts has engaged nearly 100,000 New Yorkers of all ages and backgrounds with over 500 professional artists in the process of designing and creating more than 260 murals, mosaics, and sculptures. Special emphasis is given to neighborhoods where access to and participation in the arts is limited.
Tony Smith, Free Ride (1962, refabricated 1982)
October 31, 2007 to May 30, 2008
Carl Schurz Park, Manhattan
Image: Arielle Dorlester, NYC Parks & Recreation
Description:
Tony Smith’s (1912-1980) painted steel sculpture Free Ride is a study in planes and angles. The geometric work, in some ways a simple black structure, becomes complex through its range of views. Each vantage the sculpture is viewed from offers a different angle and a different shape to the form. Smith’s work is not a sculpture for passive viewing; instead it invites engagement and thought—provoking a response in the viewer.
Tony Smith was trained and spent a good portion of his life as an architect. His introduction to art was through painting, and he did not begin his career as a sculptor until he was 44, in 1956. Smith was highly influenced by other minimalist, monumental sculptors, such as Barnett Newman, and first exhibited his sculptural work in 1964. He was the first artist to exhibit work in New York City Parks with his 1967 show in Bryant Park.
On loan from the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Robert Indiana, Love Wall
October 1, 2007 to May 15, 2008
Park Avenue Mall at 57th Street, Manhattan
Image: Robert Indiana, Love Wall
Courtesy of Paul Kasmin Gallery
Description:
Robert Indiana’s bronze Love Wall is a reworking of one of the artist’s most iconic images. The "Love" image, the word "love" in all capitals, arranged in a square with a tilted "O," was originally developed by the artist for use as the Museum of Modern Art’s Christmas card in 1964 and shown as a sculpture in Central Park in 1969. Since its inception, various sculptural incarnations of the sculpture have been installed on Sixth Avenue in New York City, The Indianapolis Museum of Art, New Orleans Museum of Art, in the city of Taipei, Taiwan, as well as in Singapore, Bilbao, Spain, and Vancouver, Canada. There is also another version of the sculpture, spelling out "ahava" (“love” in Hebrew) on display at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. Ahava was shown in Central Park’s Doris Freedman Plaza for a four-month period in 1978, prior to its installation at the Israel Museum.
Sarah Lucas, Perceval
November 15, 2007 to April 22, 2008
Doris Freedman Plaza, Central Park, Manhattan
Image: Sarah Lucas, Perceval
Courtesy of MurderMe, London
Description:
Perceval is a life-sized horse and cart, a replica of the sort of china ornament that have had pride of place on many British mantelpieces. Scaled up, the horse is majestic in his power but offers an unthreatening sense of stolid comfort in his benign reliability. In the proudly fashioned cart are two concrete cast squashes, outsize and off-scale, fertility symbols implicating a competitive rural contest to rival the ritual of the maypole. These giant vegetables are cast in cement, one of Lucas’s favored materials, and take the replication of the horse and cart knick-knack away from kitsch, the crudeness of this signature Lucas gesture thrown into sharper relief by the high finish of the bronze sculpture.
Perceval reflects a fascination for Englishness evident in much of Lucas’s work. The title is borrowed from the name of one of King Arthur’s Knights of the Round Table: raised in a forest by his mother, the virtuous and noble Perceval meets the knights as they pass and goes off the join them, later becoming involved in the quest for the Holy Grail. The story has been reworked in various contemporary versions, notably Eliot’s The Wasteland and Wagner’s opera Parsifal, in which version the eponymous hero is the one to recover the spear used to pierce Christ during his crucifixion.
Sarah Lucas is one of the most significant contemporary women artists working in London today. She is among the group of artists who are credited with being a catalyst for the Young British Artist (YBA) movement, which has brought to light the likes of artists including Damien Hirst, Gary Hume, Tracey Emin, and others. Her work has been exhibited in numerous museums, including Tate Modern in London, Kunsthalle Zurich, Kunstverein Hamburg, and others.
This installation is a project of the Public Art Fund.
George Rickey, Two Open Rectangles
October 1, 2007 to April 23, 2008
Union Square, Manhattan
Image: Courtesy of the Palaias Royale and Marlborough Gallery
Description:
Two Open Rectangles, a stainless steel kinetic sculpture, is made to move gently in response to any gust of wind. In this way, the sculpture, like other kinetic work in the artist’s oeuvre, translates the transitory nature of the wind’s movement into the more physical form of steel.
George Rickey (1907-2002) began his career as a painter in the cubist style. He later changed mediums and began his career in sculpture, starting with mobiles. Rickey’s mobile work eventually became the large, steel, kinetic forms for which he is most well-known. His work was included in the 1967 exhibition Sculpture in Environment.
Presented by Marlborough Chelsea.
Boaz Vaadia, Asa; Ba’al & Yizhaq; Yo’ah with Dog; Asaf
Morningside Park
Boaz Vaadia, Asaf & Yo’ah, Amaryahu
Broadway Malls at 114th and 117th streets, Manhattan
October 1, 2007 to April 22, 2008
Image: Yo’ah with Dog
Photo by: Arielle Dorlester, NYC Parks & Recreation
Description:
Boaz Vaadia’s group of bronze and bluestone boulder sculptures placed throughout Morningside Park and two locations on the Broadway Malls create collectively, as the artist says, a “contemplative connection between various communities.” The works are site-specific in that the materials Vaadia uses- slate, shingle, bluestone (here cast in bronze)- are all materials that are found in the native geology of the New York City area. Vaadia’s working method of hand-carving and then stacking layers of stone to create his forms recalls ancient methods of stone-carving and construction. For select works, Vaadia then continues the process by casting the original stone sculpture in bronze.
Angel Orensanz, The Garden Before the Snake
September 1, 2007 to March 31, 2008
Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, Manhattan
Image: Courtesy of the Angel Orensanz Foundation
Description:
The steel-pipe sculpture group by the artist Angel Orensanz,The Garden Before the Snake, is an expression of the artist’s concept of a "garden." Orensanz has described The Garden "as a utopian horizon for humankind’s endless growth and harmony" with the foil of "the serpent" or the "snake" acting as a representation of the "fragility" and "fragile future" of humankind.
Spanish-born Orensanz is likely best known for his purchase and refurbishment of a circa 1849 unused synagogue on Norfolk Street in New York City’s Lower East Side. Orensanz first used this as his studio, and then in 1992, along with his brother and several other artists, established the Angel Orensanz Foundation. The Foundation now occupies the building.
Melora Kuhn, Monument
October 3, 2007 to March 30, 2008
Fort Tryon Park, Manhattan
Image: Melora Kuhn, Monument
Courtesy of Melora Kuhn
Description:
Kuhn’s sculpture for the Cloisters Lawn is a monumental wooden cut-out in the silhouette of a grand, equestrian memorial statue. The artist recasts this classic image of the hero into an examination of what has been left out or forgotten in our histories. It forcibly reinterprets the idea of the vanquisher. Kuhn chose Fort Tryon Park for Monument in part because its physical geography—high on a hilltop—enhances the association of the conquering figure. In addition, the proximity of the Cloisters lends further connection to the history of Western regimes (including the advent of the American industrialists who took as their “spoils” the art and architecture of past European empires). Finally, the artist adds that the diverse communities of the surrounding neighborhoods speak to the many cultures whose histories are often overlooked in the narrative of the subjugating Western men that still dominates our textbooks.
Kuhn was born in 1971 in Boston and now lives in Brooklyn and works in Long Island City. She has a BFA from the Art Institute of Chicago and has trained in Italy at La Cipressaia, Montagnana, and Scuola Lorenzo di Medici in Florence. She has had solo exhibitions of her work in New York, San Francisco, and Boston, with a show in Seoul, Korea scheduled for October 2007.
This project was organized by ZieherSmith Gallery and made possible by the Fort Tryon Park Trust.
Kenny Scharf, Totemikon
December 6, 2007 to March 30, 2008
TriBeCa Park, Manhattan
Image: Kenny Scharf, Totemikon, photo by Jonathan Kuhn, NYC Parks & Recreation
Description:
Kenny Scharf’s bronze sculpture Totemikon riffs on the traditional form of a totem pole. As the title suggests, the sculpture explores themes of “totems” and “icons” as seen through Scharf’s aesthetic, which is very much informed by pop and contemporary-culture influences.
Scharf rose to prominence in the 1980s New York art world. The artist was part of a group of dynamic artists, including Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring. Scharf’s work often employs a cartoon or cartoon-like aesthetic, using that seemingly childlike style to comment on adult themes.
Presented by Paul Kasmin Gallery.
Hans Van de Bovenkamp, Cloud Kicker
October 1, 2007 to March 16, 2008
Dante Park, Manhattan
Image: Cloud Kicker by Hans Van de Bovenkamp
Courtesy of Hans Van de Bovenkamp and Louis K. Meisel Gallery
Description:
Like many of his works, Van de Bovenkamp’s Cloud Kicker was inspired by organic forms—in this case, the sky. The sculpture was made from stainless steel, a material the artist likes for its strength and contemporary appearance, as well as its reflective quality that modifies the work’s appearance as the light changes throughout the day.
Born in 1938 in Garderen, Holland, Van de Bovenkamp trained first as an architect and then studied sculpture at the University of Michigan. Upon graduating from college in 1961, Van de Bovenkamp moved to New York City in order to pursue his dream of becoming a sculptor. Select one-person shows and group exhibitions include the Arlene Bujese Gallery, East Hampton, NY; New Leaf Gallery, Berkeley, CA; Kouros Sculpture Garden, Ridgefield, CT; Louis K. Meisel Gallery in New York, NY; and Sagaponack Sculpture Fields, Sagaponack, NY. Additionally, Van de Bovenkamp’s works are featured in numerous corporate, museum, university, and public collections.
This project was organized by the Louis K. Meisel Gallery.
City Lore, Your Guide to the Lower East Side
September 10, 2007 to February 28, 2008
Seward Park, Straus Square, Manhattan
Image: Courtesy of City Lore
Description:
Your Guide, a joint project between Place Matters, the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, and the Lower East Community Preservation projects, seeks to illuminate small moments in the larger history of the neighborhood. The Your Guide project uses graphically interesting signs to tell first-person stories generated from interviews with current and past neighborhood residents. These signs promote insider perspectives, allowing residents and visitors alike to feel a sense of intimacy and welcome; the project enables viewers to feel as if they are sharing in a story rather than getting a history lesson.
Roxy Paine, Conjoined, Defunct and Erratic
May 15, 2007 to February 28, 2008
Madison Square Park, Manhattan
Image: Roxy Paine, Conjoined, 2007
Photo by Jason Mandella, Courtesy James Cohan Gallery
Description:
Roxy Paine’s three works: Conjoined a 40 foot-tall sculpture of two intertwined trees, Defunct, a 42 foot-tall sculpture of a lone tree which appears to be under attack from the shelf-fungus growing on it’s trunk and Erratic a boulder measuring 7 feet high by 15 feet wide, are part of a larger series of works by the artist. These works come out of the artist’s interest in the interactions between humans and nature and specifically from Paine’s examination of nature through the lens of industrial processes.
Presented by Mad. Sq. Art, a program of the Madison Square Park Conservancy.
Kent Henricksen, Playing with Feathers
October 1, 2007 to January 5, 2008
Seward Park, Manhattan
Image: Photo by William Hampton-Sosa
Description:
Kent Henricksen’s Playing with Feathers, a playful-yet-disturbing, smaller than life-size bronze sculpture, has taken up temporary residence in Seward Park. The bronze, of a small figure covered in feathers, speaks to the integration of fantasy and reality, evoking both the playfulness of imagination and the disquiet of the strange and unknown.
Henricksen’s work is currently on view through October 6, 2007 at John Connelly Presents in "Divine Deviltries," the artist’s second solo show at the gallery.
Tom Otterness, Large Sad Sphere
October 1, 2007 to January 5, 2008
Hudson River Park, Manhattan
Image: Tom Otterness, Large Sad Sphere
Courtesy of the artist
Description:
Otterness’s bronze sculpture Large Sad Sphere shows a hunched figure sitting on a block. The figure, with its rotund body and elongated legs, is recognizable as Otterness’s signature style and part of the cast of characters that populate the artist’s work. This work is another entry in the artist’s continued exploration of, and interest in, the interaction of the public with his work.
Tom Otterness has several previous works on permanent view throughout the city, including the MTA’s commissioned work Life Underground on view primarily in the 14th Street/Eighth Avenue subway station. Otterness’s work will be concurrently on view at Marlborough Chelsea in Tom Otterness: The Public Unconscious on view from October 4 through November 3, 2007.
Presented by Marlborough Chelsea, in cooperation with the Hudson River Park Trust.
Susan Watts, Milestones to Recovery
June 28 to January 3, 2008
Battery Park, Manhattan
Image: Susan Watts, Milestone to Recovery
Photo by Arielle Dorlester, NYC Parks & Recreation
Description:
Milestones to Recovery celebrates the rebirth Lower Manhattan has experienced over the past five-and-a-half years, through the exhibit of 30 4-foot by 6-foot photographs.
"In the aftermath of 9/11, New Yorkers gathered in their parks as they remembered, reflected and tried to recover," said NYC Parks & Recreation Commissioner Adrian Benepe. "Susan Watts's striking photographs in Milestones to Recovery eloquently and emotionally capture the spirit of this vibrant community as it overcame and thrived. We are proud to be a part of this recovery process and to welcome residents and visitors back to The Battery as they witness the remarkable resilience that Lower Manhattanites have demonstrated."
Susan Watts has been an award-winning photojournalist in New York for more than 13 years. A staff photographer at the Daily News since 1995, she covers top local, national and international news stories. Her 9/11/01 work is archived in the permanent photography collections of both the Smithsonian Institution and the Library of Congress.
A native New Yorker, Ms. Watts attended New York University and graduated in 1991 with a bachelor of fine arts in film.
Jim Johnson, Freedom of Movement
October 1 to December 29, 2007
Riverside Park South, Manhattan
Image: Photo by A. Dorlester, NYC Parks & Recreation
Description:
According to artist Jim Johnson, there is the arguable theory that the Neanderthal tribe became extinct simply because of its reluctance to move, and accordingly, the subsequent depletion of their nearby food sources; in contrast, Homo Sapiens have circumnavigated the earth, and even set foot on our moon. The inherent desire to move is almost always the first freedom from which humans are deprived when their kingdoms are overrun by other warring tribes. In the case of the great white shark, the absence of a gill-pump requires the species to move continuously, mouth slightly open, directing an endless flow of sea water over the gills in order to extract oxygen: if they stop moving, they will die.
Seth Weiner, myOpticon
October 5, 2007 to December 20, 2007
Bowling Green Park, Manhattan
Image: Courtesy of the artist
Description:
Seth Weiner’s myOpticon resembles coin-operated viewing devices often found in scenic parks and at the tops of skyscrapers. Rather than providing views of distant landscapes, Weiner’s myOpticon provides a thermal image of its immediate surroundings. The thermal image is created by a camera that filters out all visible light, constructing an image of only long-wave infrared radiation emitted by all objects in proportion to surface temperature. This appears equally as vivid in pitch-blackness as in broad daylight. Warmer surfaces glow brightly, while cooler surfaces appear dim.
Weiner’s myOpticon continues the artist’s exploration of the intersections between the public, art, and technology. Weiner’s work, The Fortunate Islands, was previously shown in Thomas Paine Park in January and February of this year.
Funded by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.
Donna Dennis, Tourist Cabins on Park Avenue
July 2 to November 29, 2007
Park Avenue Malls, from 52nd to 53rd Streets, Manhattan
Image: Donna Dennis, Tourist Cabins on Park Avenue
Photo by Peter Mauss, courtesy of Peter Mauss / Esto
Description:
Two smaller than life-sized tourist cabins—complete with interior lighting and a satellite
sculpture—will inhabit the Park Avenue median at 52nd to 53rd Streets. These sculptures come
out of Dennis's continuing artistic discussion with the "cabin" as an icon both in the
artist's personal lexicon and in the larger world.
Drawing inspiration from overlooked fragments of vernacular architecture both rural and urban, Dennis is known for her complex, lyrical and metaphorical sculptural installations. The sculptures are presented with the support of the Fund for Park Avenue.
Keith Haring, Self Portrait
September 13 to November 23, 2007
The Arsenal, Central Park, Manhattan
Image: Courtesy of the Keith Haring Foundation
Description:
Haring’s sculpture is the fourth in an edition of seven. The large-scale version was displayed on Park Avenue at 60th Street as part of a multi-site exhibition of Haring’s on the avenue in 1997. Sculptures by Haring, who painted the Crack Is Wack and Carmine Pool murals, were also displayed at Riverside Park in 1988 and Dante Park in 1992.
During his brief but prolific career during much of the 1980s, Haring was featured in over 100 solo shows and group exhibitions. Haring died of AIDS-related complications in 1990 at the age of 31. Prior to this death, Haring founded the Keith Haring Foundation to provide funding and imagery to AIDS organizations and children’s programs, as well as to expand the audience for Haring’s work through exhibition, licensing of his images, and publications.
Alexander Calder, Alexander Calder in New York
April 2006 to October 30, 2007
City Hall Park, Manhattan
Image: Alexander Calder, Jerusalem Stabile
Photograph by Daniel Avila, NYC Parks & Recreation
Description:
This major exhibition of sculpture by Alexander Calder is the first multi-work presentation of the artist's iconic sculptures in New York's outdoor spaces. Alexander Calder in New York is the fourth exhibition sponsored by Forest City Ratner Companies that the Public Art Fund has organized in City Hall Park since 2003. The exhibition includes five of Calder's large metal "stabiles" (what Calder called his freestanding, nonmoving sculptures) and one of his signature hanging mobiles, which will be shown in the dramatic rotunda of City Hall.
It's My Park segment about Alexander Calder exhibition.
Damián Ortega, Obelisco Transportable
May 19 to October 28, 2007
Doric C. Freedman Plaza, Manhattan
Image: Damián Ortega, Obelisco Transportable
Photo by Seong Kwon, courtesy Public Art Fund
Description:
Obelisco Transportable is artist Damián Ortega's variation on the ancient form of the obelisk. The artist characterizes Obelisco Transportable – which appears to have been uprooted from a previous location – as "a mobile landmark" that one could potentially move anywhere to commemorate anything. It offers a pragmatic yet wryly playful approach to a global society in which the balance of power is constantly in flux, and in which populations shift and drift from one place to another.
Damian Ortega was born in 1967 in Mexico City, and now lives and works in Berlin. In 2003, his work was featured in the 50th Venice Biennale. His recent major solo shows include "The Beetle Trilogy and Other Works," Gallery at REDCAT (The Roy and Edna Disney CalArts Theatre) and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2005); and "The Uncertainty Principle," at Tate Modern, London (2005).
Organized by the Public Art Fund.
William Wegman, Around the Park
September 14 to October 28, 2007
Madison Square Park, Manhattan
Image: William Wegman, Around the Park, 2006
Courtesy of William Wegman
Description:
Artist William Wegman presents Around the Park, a new video work, on four outdoor monitors near Madison Square Park’s popular food kiosk Shake Shack. The approximately seven-minute-long video stars Wegman’s favorite cast of characters as they enjoy a fall day in Madison Square Park. Opening concurrently at Senior & Shopmaker Gallery on Madison Square Park is Wegman Outdoors, an exhibition of the artist’s landscape photographs dating from 1981 through 2007.
William Wegman’s photographs, video tapes, paintings, and drawings have been exhibited in museums and galleries internationally. Funney/Strange, a retrospective of Wegman's work organized by the Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts, with a catalogue published by Yale University Press, completes its two-year tour this fall at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio.
A project of the Madison Square Park Conservancy
Minsuk Cho, Ring Dome Pavilion
September 21 to October 25, 2007
Lt. Petrosino Square, Manhattan
Image: Photo by Alan R. Tansey
Courtesy of Storefront for Art and Architecture
Description:
In celebration of Storefront’s 25th Anniversary, the Korean Architect Minsuk Cho has designed and built the Ring Dome Pavilion out of specially made plastic hoops. The Pavilion blurs the line between sculpture and architecture and acts both as a piece of art and as a stage for Performance Z-A.
Performance Z-A is a celebratory recreation of Storefront’s first public performance event, Performance A-Z, which took place in September 1982 at Storefront’s original location on Prince Street. All of Performance Z-A’s 26 events will take place in the Ring Dome Pavilion.
Presented by the Storefront for Art and Architecture.
Barry Flanagan, Left-Handed Drummer
February 2007 to June 2007
Union Square Park, Union Square, southeast traffic island, Manhattan
Image: Barry Flanagan, Left-Handed Drummer
Description:
Flanagan, an internationally renowned British sculptor, is best known for his expressive bronze hares modeled in varying poses of dynamic energy. The series of hares, which he began in 1980, are often engaged in human activities such as playing musical instruments or sports, dancing and interacting with technology. They are often rendered in a monumental scale, as is the Large Left Handed Drummer, with its long wiry limbs and ears that capture a playful and jubilant spirit.
Related Info: Press Release
Bill Fontana, Panoramic Echoes
March 21, 2007 to May 1, 2007
Madison Square Park , Manhattan
Image: Sounds are projected into the park from rooftops
(Courtesy Madison Square Park Conservancy)
Description:
Panoramic Echoes is a sound sculpture that is projected into the north end of the park from speakers located on rooftops of historic buildings around the park. Layers of environmental sounds move, float and echo above the park's predominant sonic background of traffic noise. The sculpture interacts with the live sounds of the now-silenced chimes of the Metropolitan Life Tower facing the park, once the tallest building in the world. The bells at the top of the tower, which have been silent for more than five years, tolled the hours for park visitors for over eighty years will ring again as part of this sound sculpture.
Bill Fontana has been an innovator in sound art for more than 30 years. Last summer, Bill’s sound sculpture Harmonic Bridge in the Turbine Hall of the Tate Modern transformed live sounds of the Millennium Bridge into evocative art piece. Speeds of Time in 2004, also in London, was based on Big Ben’s bells. The MetLife Tower bells play the same melody as Big Ben, the Westminster Chimes, from a melody from Handel’s Messiah.
This project is presented by the Madison Square Park Conservancy.
Liz Larner, 2001
Central Park, Doris Freedman Plaza, Central Park at
East 60th Street, Manhattan
Image: 2001, by Liz Larner
Description:
Liz Larner is best known for her engaging investigations into the physicality of objects in space. 2001 is Larner’s virtuoso reinterpretation of the two quintessential geometric forms of modernist sculpture – the sphere and the cube. Twelve feet high, deep and wide, and painted in green and purple iridescent urethane, 2001 is anenigmatic shape-shifter; its contour and color change with the viewer’s angle and the overall light conditions so that it seems to be both at rest and undergoing metamorphosis.
Larner lives and works in Los Angeles. She received a BFA from California Institute of Arts (1985). Her work has been featured in the Whitney Biennial (2006), Regen Projects, Los Angeles (2005); Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2002); Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2001); Kunsthaus Graz, Austria (2006).
Organized by the Public Art Fund.
Seth Weiner, The Fortunate Islands
January 2007 to February 2007
Thomas Paine Park, Manhattan
Image: Seth Weiner, the Fortunate Islands
Description:
This installation features a prefabricated security booth, but the booth does not function as a security node or personnel shelter. Rather, it contains a tree with small video surveillance monitors mounted to its branches, perched on the limbs in such a way as to be reminiscent of birds in their natural habitat.
Canaries originated from The Canary Islands, which were once referred to as "The Fortunate Islands". For centuries, The Fortunate Islands were thought to reside at the edge of the world. This, suggests the artist, is not entirely dissimilar from the way in which many Manhattan residents regard the lower tip of their island; a neighborhood at the edge of their world, which also happens to be the world's financial center. Simultaneously earnest and ironic, the title provides an entry point to the project's multi-layered metaphors.
Queens
2007 Emerging Artists Fellowship Exhibition
September 9, 2007 to March 2, 2008
Socrates Sculpture Park, Queens
Image: Changamire Semakokiro, Mama I wanna do the damn thang B fresh to def N let my balls hang, 2007
Photo by Chris Baker, courtesy of Socrates Sculpture Park
Description:
Socrates Sculpture Park’s annual Emerging Artist Fellowship Exhibition includes the following artists for 2007: Tim Clifford, Linda Ganjian, Vandana Jain, Ken Landauer, Caroline Mak, Greg Martin, Ohad Meromi, Rachel Owens, Ricky Sears, Shane Aslan Selzer, Changamire Semakokiro, and Brian Wondergem.
EAF artists are selected through an open call for proposals and are awarded a grant and a residency in the Park’s outdoor studio. Fellowship artists are also provided with technical support and access to tools, materials, and equipment to facilitate the production of large-scale public sculptures for exhibition in the Park.
The fellows develop their projects throughout the summer in the open studio and on site in the landscape, offering visitors the opportunity to experience both the creation and presentation of their works. Representing a broad range of materials, working methods, and subject matter, the diverse sculptural works in this exhibition are presented against the Park’s spectacular waterfront view of the Manhattan skyline.
For more information, please visit www.socratessculpturepark.org.
It's My Park segment about Socrates Sculpture Park.
Tim Hetherington, No Condition Is Permanent: Liberia 2003-2007
October 1 to December 31, 2007
Alice Austen House, Staten Island
Description:
This exhibition features Tim Hetherington's raw, emotional, sometimes beautiful photographs of Liberia. He documented the fall of Charles Taylor in 2003, the election of Ellen Johnson in 2005, and the early work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Hetherington captures lives irrevocably changed by war. While he does not try to explain, his images beg the question of how democracy can take hold in a country ravaged by violence.
Born in Liverpool, United Kingdom in 1970, Hetherington studied English and Classics at Oxford University before taking up photography in 1996. He is a recipient of numerous awards, including a research grant from the Hasselblad Foundation, two prizes from World Press Photo, and a fellowship from the National Endowment for Science, Technology, and the Arts.
Jeppe Hein, Modified Social Bench I
September 9 to November 27, 2007
Court Square Park, Queens
Image: Modified Social Bench I © 2007 Sculpture Center and the artist
Photograph by Katie Farrell
Description:
SculptureCenter in Long Island City presents Jeppe Hein’s Modified Social Bench I in conjunction with an installation of the artist’s work there through November 25, 2007, including four more of Hein’s benches. The benches stem from the artist’s consideration of social space and the way in which the physical environment shapes one's behavior. These sculptures, Hein's most recent exploration of the form and context of the park bench, present impossible seating structures. One is a circular bench, another has a seat that appears to have melted and dropped to ground level, another has legs that arch so that the seat is actually upside down and the back of the bench is touching the ground. While playful, these works invite us to consider an altered perspective on landscape and public space.
Jeppe Hein was born in Copenhagen, Denmark and lives and works in Berlin. His work has been exhibited at the 50th Biennale di Venezia; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Barbican Art Center, London; FRAC Center, Orléans; The Moore Space, Miami; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Museum Tinguely, Basel; Pompidou Center, Paris; Sprengel Museum, Hanover; Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen; Tate Liverpool; TBA 21 - Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna among others.
Presented by Sculpture Center
Jamaica Flux: Workspaces and Windows 2007
September 29 to November 17, 2007
Rufus King Park, Queens
Image: Christopher K. Ho, Kingcharlesrufuskingmartinluther,
Jamaica Flux 2007
Photo by A. Dorlester, NYC Parks & Recreation
Description:
Jamaica Flux is a contemporary public art project that includes 24 multidisciplinary, site-specific artworks. On view in Rufus King Park are works by Lishan Chang (a large, translucent temporary wall), Shigeko Hirakawa (light sensitive tree leaves that change colors during the day), Christopher K. Ho (icosahedrons: benches of the future), Diane Meyer (a trading post where community members can exchange objects), and Carol Pereira (an upside-down, Baroque-style cone structure). The project is curated by Heng-Gil Han.
Jamaica Flux is an outgrowth of Jamaica Center for Arts & Learning’s (JCAL) extremely well-received Jamaica Flux: Workspaces & Windows 2004 project. Jamaica Flux 2007 challenges traditional ideas about where art should be displayed and explores the relationship between art, commerce, urban renewal, and community. By facilitating an inclusive dialogue between artists, curators, art-historians, community residents, business owners, and visitors to Jamaica, Queens, the project examines issues such as identity and cultural heritage, immigrant experiences, capitalism and technology, and their impacts on contemporary arts practices, and the historic specificity of place and time.
JCAL is a 35-year-old multidisciplinary urban arts center serving the community of Southeast Queens. Jamaica, Queens is one of the most ethnically diverse neighborhoods in the country, and JCAL programming strives to reflect the diversity of its vibrant community.
Staten Island
Elizabeth Egbert, Tibetan Bench
October 1, 2007 to April 30, 2008
Greenbelt Nature Center, Staten Island
Image: Elizabeth Egbert, Tibetan Bench
Courtesy of Elizabeth Egbert
Description:
Elizabeth Egbert's sculptures are expressive and elegant constructions in wood. Much of her recent works are functional as well as sculptural, including Tibetan Bench. Ms. Egbert has been working and exhibiting in New York since the mid 1970s. A Staten Islander since 1979, Ms. Egbert currently serves as Executive Director of the Staten Island Museum, a general interest museum located opposite the Staten Island Ferry. Her work developed its natural and organic quality after the move to the Island when she was able to work outside in her garden. Her current work is returning to the more linear and minimal quality that characterized her first major pieces from the 1970s, following the completion of her MA in sculpture from NYU.
Gudjon Bjarnason, Exploding Metal
October 1 to January 31, 2008
Snug Harbor Cultural Center, Staten Island
Image: Courtesy of Snug Harbor Cultural Center
Description:
This outdoor exhibition of sculpture by Gudjon Bjarnason is his second at Snug Harbor Cultural Center. Bjarnason is deeply involved with the choice and arrangement of his materials; his “exploded” works explore the tension between the simultaneous veneration and destruction of the materials that make up the artist’s work.
Born in Reykajvik, Iceland in 1959, Bjarnason studied art and architecture in the United States. He returned to Iceland and had his first major solo exhibition at Kjarvalsstadir, the Reykjavik Art Museum, in 1990. Since then, his work has been featured in nearly fifty exhibitions in Iceland, the United States, Britain, Norway, Denmark, Spain, and recently in France in connection with the cultural cities of Europe. His work is on view in fall 2007 at The Amelie A. Wallace Gallery at SUNY College at Old Westbury.
Related Info
Current Exhibits
Art in the Parks Program
Temporary
Public Outdoor Art Guidelines