Photo by Sylvie Bonne, author of A NYC Guide for Instagrammers 

It’s December in New York City and despite the cold, there’s still a good number of new outdoor art installations to check out (as well as some indoor ones). Light is the theme of the month, and you can discover the first ever NYC Winter Lantern Festival, an interactive installation for wishes in Brookfield Place, a secret Christmas Tree in Central Park, the largest Menorah in Brooklyn, and more. See details for all below:

1. NYC Winter Lantern Festival

Photo courtesy NYC Winter Lantern Festival

The Snug Harbor Cultural Center & Botanical Garden on Staten Island is hosting the first ever NYC Winter Lantern Festival featuring seven acres of LED light installations. Some are up to thirty feet tall, and there is a dazzling and diverse display of various worlds: a light tunnel that’s inevitably going to be an Instagram favorite, a flower wonderland, an animal kingdom, a sea world, a Chinese section, and a holiday zone. The NYC Winter Lantern Festival is produced here thanks to the China National Tourist Office New York, produced by New York Events & Entertainment (NEWYORKEE) and Haitian Culture, and co-sponsored by Empire Outlets and Snug Harbor. Tickets are available here.

2. Luminaries at Brookfield Place

Photo by @ShaneDrummondPhoto, courtesy of ArtsBrookfield

Brookfield Place has its annual Luminaries light installation up in Winter Garden, a tradition since 2015. A glowing canopy of 650 lights, suspended inside the glass-vaulted pavilion, changes colors and intensity.  Designed by LAB at Rockwell Group, Luminaries also features Wishing Stations that are positioned within the Winter Garden, and guests can send a ‘wish’ to the lanterns above, by placing their hands on the touch-sensitive stations, which pulse with color. Upon releasing your hands, color erupts in the canopy above, translating the wish into a mesmerizing display of colors that travel throughout the lanterns.

3 & 4. Flatiron Public Plaza Holiday Design Competition: Happy

The fifth annual Flatiron Public Plaza Holiday Design Competition winner, “Happy” by Studio Cadena was installed on November 19th and will be viewable through January 1st, 2019. The work has transparent vinyl screens that can sway with the wind, offering a yellow and orange glow to the everything surrounding it. “We all wish each other happiness during the holidays. This installation physically manifests this well wishing to all who visit Flatiron,” said Benjamin Cadena, Founder and Principal of Studio Cadena. “In our otherwise bleak social and political context, it aspires to carve a small and more positive space in the city—it offers a warm embrace during the cold winter months.”

The competition is run by the Flatiron/23rd Street Partnership and Van Alen Institute and is the centerpiece of the event “23 Days of Cheer.”

While you’re there, also check out the Flatiron Prow with new artwork by Wendy Letven called “Drawing the Invisible.” (above).

5. See All the Street Art Pieces by Kobra in NYC

All photos by Silvie Bonne, author of A NYC Guide for Instagrammers  

The Brazilian street artist Kobra has been hyperactive in New York City since October. His colorful, stunning works are all large-scale, and the adventurous can visit all 18 pieces just like what Silvie Bonne, author of A NYC Guide for Instagrammers which just released last month, did. She’s shared with us eight of her favorites, including one that particularly caught our eye above Empire Diner in Chelsea, featuring Mount Rushmore with the faces of Andy Warhol, Frida Kahlo, Keith Haring, and Jean-Michel Basquiat.

6. Carnegie Deli Pop Up

We got a VIP sneak peek into the highly anticipated pop-up Carnegie Deli restaurant which opened in December 1st for one week, timed in conjunction with the second season of the hit Amazon series, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, which is filmed in New York City. Located at 201 Lafayette Street in Nolita, the Carnegie Deli reincarnation is set in the year 1958. As such, you will find it decorated with vintage details, along with staff in period garb. Three pristine classic cars from the 1950s are parked out front, including a checker cab and a Ford Fairlane, along with a period-style bicycle for deliveries. Ads for the Gaslight Cafe, the comedy club in the show, are plastered on the phone booth on the sidewalk.

See more photos here.

7. A 7,220 Square Foot Asphalt Mural in the Bronx

Photo courtesy NYC DOT

Outside of P.S. 69 Journey Prep School in Soundview, Bronx, a 7,200 square asphalt mural designed by artist Carla Torres was completed just as November ended. Entitled “The World is Our Oyster,” this is one of the largest murals the New York City Department of Transportation’s Art Program has ever completed through the Asphalt Art Activations initiative. The work was inspired by the area surrounding the school, as well as the students themselves.

8. December’s Midnight Moment in Times Square

 

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Times Square’s December Midnight Moment, which takes over the digital billboards in Times Square every evening at midnight, features the work of Nick Cave. The piece, titled Drive-By Remix show Cave’s famous Soundsuits in colorflu motion. According to the artist, “Times Square is a living representation of America as a melting pot. My hope is that by turning our collective gaze up to the city’s sky and taking in the Soundsuits in all their limitless exuberance, we can let some of that positivity seep into our own skins.”

9. New Work by Artist JR for Guns in America in Brooklyn

JR’s work at the Bowery Mural in conjunction with the TIME Magazine cover “Guns in America” made a big splash (see more detail on that piece later in this article), but a follow-up mural in Brooklyn just off the Brooklyn Queens Expressway got literally no coverage. This wheat pasting takes over the side of a whole building and features a portion of the same cover magazine.

Alban Denoyel, founder of the 3D platform Sketchfab snapped photographs, and then used a drone to capture a 3D annotated image you can view here.

10. Largest Menorah in Brooklyn

Photograph Courtesy of LargestMenorah.com

On Sunday, the first night of Hanukkah was celebrated in style at the lighting of Brooklyn’s largest menorah in front of Grand Army Plaza. Every night of Hanukkah Rabbi Shimon Hecht, with the assistance of a 60-foot boom lift, lights a candle on the giant menorah. Admission is free and every night there will be live music, hot latkes, and gifts for kids.

11. The Secret Pet Christmas Tree in Central Park

The annual secret Christmas Tree dedicated to beloved pets, will go up later this month somewhere deep in the Ramble of Central Park. It’s a very grassroots tradition and the ornaments to the lost pets go up gradually over the course of the month. You usually won’t find another person at the tree when you visit, which makes it an ideal place for reflection.

Join us for an upcoming tour of the Secrets of Central Park:

Secrets of Central Park Walking Tour

Of course, you can also check out the new Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree – we have a new piece on its secrets based on our behind the scenes visit this year.

12. What We Carry Sculpture Celebrates Immigrants in Queens

Photo courtesy Queens Council on the Arts

Queens Council on the Arts has installed its first-ever ArtSite Project in Elmhurst, featuring the work of local artist Yvonne Shortt. The sculpture, titled “What We Carry,” celebrates the immigrant culture in the Jackson Heights-area. She sat in Dunningham Park, where the sculpture is now located, to collect stories from the community. She says, “My family came by boat but I thought by listening to others I could incorporate other influences into the piece.  Sitting in the park I learned how some came by plane and others by land.  I think it’s so important to remember that in many cases, one doesn’t leave everything behind unless where they are leaving is worse.”

What We Carry is located in Dunningham Triangle (82nd St. &, Baxter Ave, Elmhurst, NY 11373),

Click on to see the other pieces of notable outdoor art (and a few architecturally-minded indoor exhibitions and installations) to see around the city that are still here this month:

13. JR at the Bowery Mural

On September 26th, the French artist JR completed a new work at the Bowery Mural at Houston and Bowery called “Guns in America,” produced in partnership with TIME magazine. The work features 245 people whom JR, his team, and TIME journalists met across the United States on all sides of the gun issue, including “veterans and teachers, hunters and doctors, people afraid that guns may kill their children and people afraid they won’t have guns to protect their children,” writes Edward Felsenthal, TIME’s Editor-in-Chief. The participants in the painting says JR, “will always be part of the same mural even if they don’t share the same ideas. I really hope they will actually listen to each other, and I hope that people will join this conversation.”

JR was chosen for both his outside perspective as well as his long history doing social conscious, participatory art. He made his mark putting up his signature large photographs on the Palestinian/Israeli border wall, in the favelas of Rio, and all over New York City and Paris.

By the morning of September 28th, someone had tagged the painting in red with the number 11, to mark the number of fatalities in the Tree of Life synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh. In addition, a bouquet of red roses was left leaning against the mural with rose petals scattered on the sidewalk. As of the morning of publication, the number 11 was still on the mural. The mural will be up through November 15th.

14. New York Botanical Garden Train Show

Image courtesy the New York Botanical Garden

On November 17th, the New York Botanical Garden Train Show returns with over 175 New York City landmarks created from barks, leaves, and other plant-based materials, with model trains running through the miniature wonderland located inside the stunning Enid A. Haupt Conservatory. This year, some new additions and new replicas will include the historic Battery Maritime Building, vintage ferry boats, the Battery Park Control House, the Woolworth Building, One World Trade Center, the Oculus, and the Terminal Warehouse. The show will be on until January 21st, 2019. You can already reserve your tickets here.

Check out photos from a previous train show at the New York Botanical Garden.

15. Lever House is Bathed in Yellow

Through December 31, 2018, artist Peter Halley has bathed the lower level of the iconic Lever House in yellow light – similar to what Halley did at Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt, Germany. The exterior takeover will be part of an exhibition curated by the Lever House Art Collection that will take over the lower two floors of the building.

In this two-floor immersive installation, Halley uses the circuit-like compositions of his paintings as inspiration for the lobby’s layout, inviting viewers to feel as if they are walking through the space created by one of his paintings. “The installation is foremost a series of changing scales. The sweeping band of yellow light on the second floor can be seen at night from blocks away. The paintings in the first-floor lobby address the viewer at street level. Then within the lobby, the structure I built to support the paintings has an interior passageway, leading into two hidden rooms, invisible to passersby on the street,” says Halley. The exhibition includes six large shaped-canvas paintings as well as a sequence of hidden digitally-generated mural works.

The Lever House Art Collection has previously featured the work of Jeff Koons and a bronze union rat.

16. The Poetry Jukebox

The Poetry Jukebox, a version which was previously at Extra Place in 2017, will be at Ruth Wittenburg Triangle in Greenwich Village through February 22nd, 2019, an initiative of the Village Alliance, playing twenty poems by neighborhood figures including Jane Jacobs, Edna St. Vincent Millay (who lived in the narrowest house in New York City), James Baldwin, Edgar Allan Poe, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Emma Lazarous, and Mark Twain.

The Poetry Jukebox was started by the Czeck project Piána na ulici (Pianos on the Street) by Ondřej Kobza, a coffee house owner and Michaela Hečková. The mission of the organization is to animate public spaces, on a worldwide scale – and besides the Poetry Jukebox they install street pianos (similar to NYC’s Sing for Hope), public chess tables, and other public installations. The Poetry Jukeboxes have been installed in Prague, London, Kiev, Belfast, Venice, Brussels and other cities.

17. Socrates Sculpture Park Annual Exhibition

Joiri Minaya, Tropticon, 2018, Courtesy the Artist & Socrates Sculpture Park, Photo by Sara Morgan.

The Socrates Sculpture Park Annual Exhibition is up through March 10, 2019 featuring the new commissioned work of 15 artists (including one artist-pair) who were awarded the Park’s Emerging Artist Fellowship. The artists work on-site at the park’s outdoor studio in the summer and create a work that’s designed specifically for the park’s landscape and context. The Park describes the 2018 exhibition:

“Projects range from a decolonial greenhouse to audio-sculptural portraits of Queens hip-hop legends. Approaches vary among community-centered pedagogy and production, material experimentation, and redeployment of historical forms of construction, among others. This year contemporary and historical land-use is examined by several artists in projects including a labyrinth of fences and gates, and a steel and textile installation that traces the East River ecology of waste flows through land, water, and biological life. Additionally, several artists employ representations of the human figure, perhaps suggesting a time for reflection upon the Humanist philosophies that seem precarious with looming climate change and ongoing political conflict.”

18. Art in Concrete Plant Park

Photo courtesy Sohhee Oh, via NYC Parks

A relatively new NYC Parks Art in the Parks installation is up in Concrete Plant Park in the Bronx. Artists Sohhee Oh, Lovie Pignata, and Moses Ros have created a three connected works: a long bench of painted concrete blocks that reference native plants from the Bronx River Foodway, geometric concrete pavers that are inspired by Bronx’ original native dwellers, the Mohegans, along with its current diverse population and colorful flags at the entrances of the a park that were designed in conjunction with the local community.

Concrete Plant Park was previously a location for Swale, the foragable floating food forest.

19. M.C. Escher Exhibition and Experience

Installation view, ESCHER. The Exhibition & Experience at Industry City, June 8, 2018–February 3, 2019. Photo by Adam Reich. Courtesy Arthemisia.

Escher: The Exhibition and Experience, which originated in Italy and has been in Rome, Bologna, Milan, Singapore, Madrid and Lisbon, is now at Industry City in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. Architecture and art fans will discover 200 works by M.C. Escher, the artist famous for his trippy architectural drawings. In addition to a traditional gallery, format, there are spaces you can enter to test your own sense of scale and reality.

The  exhibition is curated by Mark Veldhuysen (the curator of the M.C. Escher Foundation Collection) and Federico Giudiceandrea, described as “one of the world’s foremost collectors of, and experts on, the art of M.C. Escher.”

20.  Andy Warhol Retrospective at the Whitney Museum

The Whitney Museum will launch the retrospective exhibition, Andy Warhol – From A to B and Back Again, on November 12th. It will be the first retrospective on Andy Warhol by an American museum since 1989, and the largest monographic exhibition at the Whitney Museum’s Meatpacking location since it opened. According to the Whitney Museum, “The exhibition positions Warhol’s career as a continuum, demonstrating that he didn’t slow down after surviving the assassination attempt that nearly took his life in 1968, but entered into a period of intense experimentation.”

There will be 350 works, and a partial preview has been open since October 12th. The exhibition will be up through March 31st, 2019.

21. OY-YO at Brooklyn Museum

Deborah Kass’ OY-YO sculpture made a splash when it debuted in Brooklyn Bridge Park in 2015. Meant to be seen in both ways, it serves as a welcome point between different cultures. OY-YO spent some time in Williamsburg after Dumbo, and has just arrived at the Brooklyn Museum, joining other works in the Something to Say exhibition of text-based works by Brooklyn-based artists Brooklyn Hi-Art! Machine, Kameelah Janan Rasheed, and Hank Willis Thomas. 

According to the press release, “In Prospect Heights and neighboring Crown Heights, OY/YO takes on new meaning, as it speaks to the longstanding, complex, and ever-evolving social dynamics between Black, Latinx, and Jewish communities in the neighborhood. At the Brooklyn Museum, OY/YO will function as a new greeting, welcoming visitors to the museum connecting to a diverse audience, while also saying “hey” to locals.

OY-YO will be on view at Brooklyn Museum until June 30th, 2019.

22. Arlene Shechet: ‘Full Steam Ahead’ in Madison Square Park

Photo by Rashmi Gill via Madison Square Park Conservancy

Until April 28th, 2019, Madison Square Park will turn its main plaza into a sculpture court with works in wood, porcelain, and cast-iron. The site-specific installation by Arlene Shechet entitled “Full Steam Ahead” hopes to overturn the traditional notion of a sculpture court. According to the Madison Square Park Conservancy, Shechet’s work “riffs on the concept of the staid sculpture court—a mainstay of traditional museum display—as a cloistered experience.” Instead, the human-scale sculptures invite gathering, interaction and seating. Arlene Shechet stated about the project: “My hope has been to reimagine the hardscape of the Park with delight and surprise. New Yorkers rely on the sidewalks, the pavement, and the street as the core of their urban lives. Full Steam Ahead becomes a lively and human amphitheater, softening the hardscape through sculptural intervention evocative of 18th-century garden landscapes.”

23. Viewfinding in Riverside Park

Photo courtesy Sarah E. Brook

Viewfinding, a large-scale public art installation in Riverside Park by Gowanus-based artist Sarah E. Brook, will feature a series of reclaimed lumber and cast-acrylic panels, with engraved text written by 26 queer-identified poets. The acrylic material is selected for its translucency and will shift in color depending on the sunlight and time of day. The poets selected include not only established ones, but also not yet published ones as well.

Viewfinding will be located along the Hudson River in Riverside Park at 67th Street and will be up until August 22nd, 2019.

24. ‘Kathy Ruttenberg on Broadway: in dreams awake’


‘Ms. Mighty Mouse’ on 79th Street; Photo by Lynn Lieberman/Gotham to Go

The Broadway Mall Association debuted Kathy Ruttenberg on Broadway: In Dreams Awake. The exhibit includes six works featured on the Broadway center mediums, located on 64th, 72nd, 79th, 96th, 117th, and 157th Streets.

Each sculpture — described as a combination of human, animal and plant forms — is made from cast silicon bronze, and range between 6 feet to 15 feet in height. (Some even feature LED lighting!) The sculptures take inspiration for their surroundings; for instance, Ms. Mighty Mouse on 79th Street dreams of the cheese at nearby Zabar’s and All the World’s a Stage, which depicts a singing figure, is an allusion to the nearby Lincoln Center.

The exhibit will be on view through February 2019.

25. Dorothy Iannone: ‘I Lift My Lamp Beside the Golden Door’ on the High Line

Photo by Timothy Schenck courtesy of Friends of the High Line

Dorothy Iannone’s mural I Lift My Lamp Beside the Golden Door debuted on the High Line near West 22nd Street earlier this year. The mural features three colorful interpretations of the Statue of Liberty accompanied by the words “I Lift My Lamp Beside the Golden Door”. The piece pays homage to the final line of Emma Lazarus’s poem “The New Colossus”, which is engraved on the bronze plaque mounted inside the Statue of Liberty’s pedestal.

Each statue painted in this mural is shedding a single tear, evoking the current polarizing debates surrounding immigration and disputed symbolism of the Statue of Liberty in relation to immigration policy. The work will be on view until March 2019.

26. Dazzle Boat from Public Art Fund

Photo by Nicholas Knight courtesy of Public Art Fund

Flow Separation by New York artist Tauba Auerbach is a piece that converts the historic Fireboat John J. Harvey into what the Public Art Fund calls a “contemporary dazzle ship.” The concept of the “dazzle ship” dates back to World War I, when British painter Norman Wilkinson came up with the idea to strategically paint war ships in a way that created optical illusions that distorted the forms of the boats. Thus, they puzzled the soldiers on enemy ships who struggled to track the movements of the British ships.

2018 marks the anniversary of the end of World War I, and Auerbach’s installation prompts us to reflect upon this history. The piece evokes themes of innovation and abstraction, for Auerbach was inspired by the forms of objects as they move through water. She employed the method of transferring ink on water onto paper to achieve the pattern on the display boat.

Flow Separation will be on view through May 12, 2019 in various locations through New York Harbor.

27. James and Karla Murray’s ‘Moms-and-Pops of the L.5.S.’

Image courtesy of James and Karla Murray

James and Karla Murray’s exhibit Moms-and-Pops of the L.E.S. is part of 10 Uniqlo Park Expressions that are on view across the city. This piece is a pop-up that debuted last month in Seward Park on the Lower East Side. Moms-and-Pops is a life-sized structure that displays four large photographs of mom-and-pop ships that have closed in the Lower East Side, such as Cup & Saucer and Chung’s Candy & Soda Stand.

The installation seeks to highlight the disappearance of small businesses like bodegas, coffee shops, luncheonettes, delis, and newsstands that used to be numerous in the Lower East Side. The artists state that the piece seeks to represent the “small businesses that were common in the Lower East Side and helped bring the community together through people’s daily interactions.”

A combination of metal and wooden materials makes the sculpture weather-proof and capable of lasting the entire year, perhaps a nod to the legacy of these now extinct businesses of the Lower East Side.

Moms-and-Pops of the L.E.S will be on view until June 19, 2019.

28. Rose DeSiano: ‘Absent Monuments’

Photo by Rose DeSiano Courtesy of New York City Department of Parks & Recreation

Rose DeSiano’s Absent Monuments, also part of the UNIQLO Parks Expressions Grant, is on view in Queens’ Rufus King Park until June 2019. The installation is constructed of several mirrored obelisks that feature Dutch Delft photographic tiles that explore the history of the park, as well as floral tiles inspired by Native American patterns. The mirrored surfaces confront the viewer with their reflection and subtly prompt them to reflect on their own identity and their situation within the history of Jamaica, Queens, which is full of colonization, war, abolitionism, immigration, and rural urbanization. Simultaneously, the tiles pay homage to the history of Native American people and address the patterns of cultural displacement that have occurred in Queens.

29. Zaq Landsberg: ‘Islands of the Unisphere’

Photo courtesy Zaq Landsberg via NYC Parks

Around the Unisphere in Flushing Meadows Corona Park sit the sculptures that comprise Zaq Landberg’s Islands of the Unisphere (yet another of the UNIQLO Parks Expressions Grant program). The Unisphere monument, a fixture of the park, is a large sculptural globe with recognizable land masses, but without labels and borders. Landberg expanded on this famed monument by choosing islands off of the Unisphere, recreating them at scale, and placing them horizontally on the grass. The islands act as seating, stages, and meeting places, community spaces that encourage people to forge connections and reflect on the tremendous diversity of Queens.

Unisphere will be on view until June 10, 2019.

30. AGORA Group Installation on The High Line

AGORA on The High Line is an outdoor group exhibition by nine artists explores the role of art and artists in defining, creating, and using public space. The name of the exhibit is inspired by the same ancient Greek word, which literally translates to a gathering place — a fitting name as New York City’s public spaces have served as a home to a plethora of artworks over the decades, ranging from WPA murals to graffiti tags.

AGORA will focus on the power of art to change society. As such, it addresses current issues, including women’s rights, mass incarceration, the environment and immigration. For instance, the work above, “C.R.E.A.M.,” by Sable Elyse Smith, is an altered replica of the Hollywood Sign that reads IRONWOODLAND — a reference both to the Ironwood State Prison and to “Hollywoodland,” the segregated real estate development that was advertised by the original sign. The exhibit will be on view until March 2019 at various locations along The High Line.

Next, check out The Top 10 Secrets of the High Line.

31. Shed Murals at the World Trade Center

Vesey mural by Chinon Maria and Sebastian Mitre

While construction of 2 World Trade is on hold, a collection of corrugated metal sheds housing mechanical equipment have been spruced up by artists from around the world to make the area look less like a construction zone and more like a hip pedestrian throughway. The sheds, which are bounded by Greenwich, Vesey and Church Streets and the Oculus transportation hub, feature murals by Australian illustrator Brolga, Los Angeles-based artist Todd Gray, Korean-born Joohee Park, aka Stickymonger, the husband and wife team of Chinon Maria and Sebastian Mitre, Japanese-born, New York resident Riiisa Boogie, and Bronx native Hektad. When all of the murals are complete there will be 8 colorful works to see!

Mural by Todd Gray

32. El-Space Installation in Sunset Park

During NYCxDesign Week, we were honored to be a partner of The Design Trust for Public Space in the launch of El-Space, a long-term pilot installation located under the Gowanus Expressway in Sunset Park at 36th Street and 3rd Avenue, just adjacent to Industry City. El Space is the product of a five year, critical exploration in how New York City can better activate the forgotten, unfriendly spaces beneath aging elevated infrastructure and culminates in this first pilot installation that showcases what an alternative walkway beneath the Gowanus Expressway could look like.

El-Space was designed with input from the diverse local community through charettes and on-site pop-up workshops, including work with students at Sunset Park High School and members of a Community Advisory Board.The design tests strategies for lighting, green infrastructure, and urban design for replicability, aesthetics, and of course, how the public uses and engages with it. El-Space will be installed for about a year, used to test and refine strategies for future permanent activations. For the passerby, it’s a cool visual addition to an industrial space and for the community, it has created a new meeting spot.

33. Rebecca Manson in Tribeca Park

Photo by Alexander Atkins, courtesy of the artist

In July, Tribeca Park unveiled artist Rebecca Manson’s first public sculpture, a monumental public art piece titled Come Closer and the View Gets Wider. The piece consists of thousands of handmade, glazed porcelain parts that are fused together to create a magnificent eight-foot orb.

As the title and the composition of the piece suggests, the perspective at which the piece is viewed impacts the viewer’s perception. Each of the thousands of hand-crafted parts appear rather insignificant on their own and from afar, appear to blend in to the seamless piece. Collectively, the small pieces are crucial to creating the whole piece, which stresses the impact of small things coming together to create something greater. The work will be on display until July 2019.

34. Sonic Gates Sound Sculpture Walk on Staten Island

Photograph courtesy of Design Trust for Public Space

Sonic Gates is a public art installation that features a series of eight sound sculptures and murals in Staten Island placed along the waterfront, on Bay Street, and in Tappen Park. The installation is part of a larger project titled Future Culture: Connecting Staten Island’s Waterfront by the Design Trust for Public Space in partnership with Staten Island Arts.

Works include the piece in the photograph above, which was made by Arthur Simms and is on display in the harbor off the Stapleton Esplanade, and a piece by DB Lampman, on display in Tappen Park, which consists of an assemblage of wind chimes that hang over the head of its viewers and encourages them to engage with the piece using senses besides sight.

“The Future Culture pilots will highlight our borough’s rich cultural assets, from the Bay Street commercial corridor bustling with restaurants, stores and art centers, to Parks locations where dynamic community activities are taking place, to the spectacular waterfront, where we are reflecting Staten Island’s deep maritime heritage,” said Elizabeth Bennett, Executive Director at Staten Island Arts.

Akin to the Design Trust for Public Space’s initiatives to reactive underutilized spaces under elevated highways (to be covered later in this article), this initiative looks to “inspire Staten Islanders and visitors to walk the underused pathways and unleash new possibilities for regenerating public spaces as a valuable community asset,” said Susan Chin, Executive Director, Design Trust for Public Space.


35. “River Rising/Sube el Rio” at Starlight Park

River Rising/Sube el Rio: An Exposition of Science, Art and Technology is an outdoor public art sculpture exhibition in Starlight Park in the Bronx. The exhibit opened on June 30, in a weekend of parades, dancing, and live music to celebrate the revitalization of the Bronx River and Starlight Park.

The installation is composed of eight large-scale public art sculptures by various artists curated by the Bronx River Art Center. The sculptures are meant to be enjoyed as “modern pavilions” that can be utilized as public community spaces. The sculptures pay homage to the 1918 Bronx International Exposition of Science, Arts and Industries.

The installations will be on view until June 29, 2019.