As we approach our “early” spring, New York City’s outdoor art exhibitions have continued to unfold in creative, new approaches. These works range from new murals adding color to our city, to exhibitions that rely on nature to add dimension to our beautiful parks. Too cold to go outside? Don’t worry, there are some new indoor artworks as well. Keep reading for 10 new installations not to miss in the month of March!
1. Bridge Over Tree at Brooklyn Bridge Park
Siah Armajani, Bridge Over Tree, 2019, photograph by Timothy Schenck, courtesy Public Art Fund, NY
Siah Armajani’s public art installation Bridge Over Tree debuted at Walker Art Center in Minneapolis in 1970. This month, nearly fifty years later, the piece will be on display again in a re-staging at Brooklyn Bridge Park starting February 20th. The piece blurs the line between art and architecture, as does most of Armajani’s work which consist largely of outdoor structures. Bridge Over Tree is a 91-foot-long walkway with a shingled roof and stairs at the middle that arch over a small tree. The piece, presented by the Public Art Fund, will be installed between the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges on the Empire Fulton Ferry lawn. Bridge Over Tree is the only outdoor piece associated with Siah Armajani: Follow This Line, a new retrospective exhibit of Armajani’s career at the Met Breuer.
The installation will be up until September 29, 2019.
2. The Vessel
Premiering this month is the highly anticipated beehive-shaped structure at Hudson Yards known as The Vessel. Designed by Thomas Heatherwick and Heatherwick Studio, the massive metallic structure towers over the public plaza in front of The Shops at Hudson Yards. The Vessel is made up of 154 interconnecting flights of stairs and 80 landings, which leads to a total of about 2,500 individual steps. The first piece of the structure was put in place on April 18, 2017 and the completed structure will open to the public on Monday, March 16th. Entry will be given based on ticketed times for the first two weeks. You can reserve tickets here.
3. Mark Manders: Tilted Head
On March 6, Dutch artist Mark Manders’ largest single cast bronze sculpture will open at the Central Park entrance at 60th Street and 5th Avenue. Public Art Fund will debut Tilted Head, a 13-foot-tall human head made of clay-looking bronze, which is commissioned for Doris C. Freedman Plaza. Tilted Head is Mark Manders’ “largest single cast bronze sculpture to date” and is being brought to New York City for the first time. The mysteriously unfinished sculpture’s cracks juxtapose the tranquil expression on the head’s face.
The installation will be on display until September 1, 2019.
Untapped Cities Insiders got a first look at the first major installation inside The Bellewether, a new space run by The Vanderbilt Republic, the group responsible for producing creative and immersive experiences inside the Gowanus Loft. Inside The Bellewether, an 8,000 square foot raw space in midtown that was once an electrical repair company, visitors can now experience FlOW, a series of immersive installations curated by Creative Director and Executive Producer George Del Barrio. The exhibit, which is comprised of various pieces of art and performances, is presented as part of Circular City Week New York, a weeklong festival exploring the principles of circular economics. The pieces in the show were selected from applications to an open call which sought work that touched on the ideals of circular economics and contained a form of human expression. The experiences presented, which include a dance performance with dancers clad in “techno coccons,” video art, an interactive play and more were created by Cynthia Alberto, Inkyoung Bae and Chanan Ben Simone, Philippe Halaburda, Irene Mamiye, Sanem Odabasi, and University City Food Hub and Claudia Sohrens.
The show will run through March 10th.
5. Spring/Break Art Show
Rendering courtesy of Noah Scalin
Times Square Arts and Spring/Break Art Show will present Times Square Immersive on March 5th. Times Square Immersive is the presentation of four outdoor sculptures in Broadway Plaza in Times Square. These four works are part of Spring/Break Art show and coincide to the theme of the show, “FACT AND FICTION”. The installations will “blur reality and fantasy with delight and warning.” Artist Noah Scalin of the work pictured above sought to recreate the typical New York City pedestrian signal. Instead of “Don’t Walk”, Scalin replaces the message with “Don’t Wake”.
The four outdoor sculptures will be on display until March 31st.
6. Black and Light by Oscar Oiwa
Photograph courtesy of Visionaire
The latest installation presented by Visionaire inside the rotating gallery of The Cadillac House is Black and Light by Japanese-Brazilian artist Oscar Oiwa. Black an Light features a hand-drawn landscape-style work that spans the surface of a 2,700 square foot inflatable canvas. Oiwa’s drawings, created with just a black felt-tip pen, give life to two new original characters, Light Rabbit an Shadow Cat, who are hidden within the intricate illustration. Oiwa has been working on the drawing since February 25th and will continue to draw until the piece is completed on March 11th. At that time, visitors will be allowed to enter the inflatable canvas and completely immerse themselves in Oiwa’s work. Before the grand reveal, Oiwa’s drawing will be live-streamed via a GoPro on a screen outside of the installation until March 8th.
The installation will be on view until March 30th.
7. Lost and Found at Snark Park
Photograph by Noah Kalina courtesy of Snark Park/Team Camron
Snark Park is Snarkitecture’s new permanent exhibition space in Hudson Yards and its inaugural exhibition, Lost and Found, will be opening to the public on March 15. Lost and Found will “encourage visitors to lose themselves in a labyrinth of massive, inhabitable columns, some of which are large enough to occupy and many of which offer unique audible, visual, and tactile experience.” Described as a “modern-day enchanted forest,” the exhibition hopes to challenge visitors to interact with the installation and reveal secret worlds through the material changes and twists of Lost and Found. This exhibition will be one of three hosted by Snark Park this year, and will be on display through August 2019.
8. The Orchid Show at the New York Botanical Garden
Photograph courtesy of New York Botanical Gardens
Escape the freezing temperatures and step into an exotic, colorful world at The Orchid Show: Singapore at the New York Botanical Gardens. The Orchid Show at the NYBG premiers annually, this year being the 17th annual exhibition. Orchids from Gardens by the Bay and Singapore Botanic Gardens partnered to combine each of their iconic elements- the Supertrees of Gardens by the Bay and the Arches of Singapore Botanic Gardens’ National Orchid Garden.
The exhibition will be running until April 28, 2019.
9. The Armory Show 2019
SO CLOSE by JR (from 2018), Photograph by Teddy Wolff, Courtesy of The Armory Show
The Armory Show is hosted annually at Piers 90, 92, and 94, and is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year. The Armory Show’s 2019 edition will include 194 galleries from 33 different countries, all soon to be accessible in central Manhattan. The show will be on display starting March 7th and run through March 10th, 2019. Since its founding in 1994, The Armory Show has served as a center for the international art world as it will include artworks from five continents this year.
10. Times Square Midnight Moment
Courtesy of Ka-Man Tse for Times Square Arts
Every night from 11:57pm until midnight a digital art exhibition takes over the giant electronic billboards in Times Square. Started in 2012, Midnight Moment has become the world’s largest and longest-running digital art exhibition with an estimated annual viewership of 2.5 million people. Every night this month the 1976 film Head of a Sad Young Woman by pioneering video artist Peter Campus will take over the Times Square billboards. For the entire film, a woman stares directly into the camera lens as if glowering at the viewer. The woman’s giant eyes will gaze at passersby in Times Square thanks in part to a partnership with The Bronx Museum of the Arts’ survey exhibition peter campus: video ergo sum, which is on view from March 6 until July 22, 2019. The artist will also host a public discussion at The Armory Show with Tina Rivers Ryan, Assistant Curator at the Albright-Knox Gallery, on March 10th at 3:00pm.
11. St. John’s Terminal Mural
Photo Courtesy of Oxford Properties
To add to the growing excitement about the renovation of the historic St. John’s Terminal, a new mural has been revealed along the side of the terminal. The mural was created by Lance Johnson, a local New York artist whose work is also on display at 69 East 125th Street in Harlem. The mural is intended to be a sneak preview of the redevelopment of St. John’s Terminal by Oxford Properties. As soon as prospective tenants begin to move in, the mural hopes to motivate and inspire them.
Keep reading for more art installations to catch this month!
12. Tats Cru Houston Bowery Wall Mural
Photograph by Martha Cooper, Courtesy of Goldman Properties
The Houston Bowery Wall has been a canvas for great art since the 1970s when Keith Haring painted a mural there. In the ensuing decades a variety of artists have been commissioned to leave their creative mark on the wall. The latest group to be added to this line-up of talent is the Tats Cru who debuted their mural at the end of January. According to the Bowery Boogie, the Bronx-based group is the first full graffiti crew to paint a mural on the wall. The mural, which replaces JR’s anti-gun piece, is a representation of New York City, with a special homage to the Lower East Side. Within the colorful mural you will see a nod to the history of the wall itself and a to the nearby Liz Christy Garden, the first community garden in New York City.
13. M.C. Escher Exhibition and Experience
Installation view, ESCHER. The Exhibition & Experience at Industry City, June 8, 2018–March 31st, 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 on display at Industry City in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. The exhibition has been extended to run through March 31st. 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.”
14. Guardians of Jackson Heights
Photograph by Annabelle Popa
Artist Annabelle Popa drew on her childhood growing up in Jackson Heights to create Artsite’s latest mural. Popa’s Guardians of Jackson Heights was inspired by her ramblings through the gardens and courtyards of the neighborhood where she would find a variety of “guardian” animals along the pathways. The mural can be found on the wall of Image Heights Pharmacy along 76th street at 37th avenue, a location that has overhead lighting so the mural can be viewed at night, and was long enough for Popa to create a narrative that reveals itself as viewers walk along the block. The artist told the Queens Council on the Arts that she hopes the mural will inspire people in the neighborhood to use their imagination and see elements of Jackson Heights that may be overlooked.
The mural will be on display through Spring 2019.
15. Louis Vuitton Windows
Photo Courtesy of Louis Vuitton / Ricky Zehavi
In celebration of Virgil Abloh’s debut collection as Men’s Artistic Director for Louis Vuitton, the Fifth Avenue store now has on display a 12-story piece of art! The oversized figure stands inside the store creating an optical illusion that extends onto the street and throughout the store. Abloh’s collection drew inspiration from the classic 1939 film “The Wizard of Oz.” The window installations the accompany the giant art piece draw on the same aesthetic themes with technicolor skies, fields of flowers and the yellow brick road. There is also a short residency inside Chrome Hearts in the West Village which will feature a range of tailored to casual ready to wear pieces, shoes, leather goods and multi-colored accessories from Abloh’s debut collection in an exclusively designed and conceptual space.
To celebrate the launch of the Women’s Spring/Sumer 2019 collection, Louis Vuitton has also installed “Postcards From the Future” at the Fifth Avenue store. These digital window installations, created by Es Devlin under the artistic direction of Nicolas Ghesquière, represent different cities as live postcards “from a moment not yet lived.”
16. 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.
17. 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)
18. 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.”
19. 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.
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.
21. Arlene Shechet: ‘Full Steam Ahead’ in Madison Square Park
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.”
22. 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.
Museums across New York City always contain fascinating exhibits, but this month there are especially exciting retrospectives on some of the world’s most iconic artists. This February at the Brooklyn Museum, visitors can explore the life and work of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo in their new exhibit, Frida Kahlo: Appearance Can be Deceiving. For the first time ever in the United States, the museum will exhibit a collection of her clothing and other personal possessions such as hand-painted corsets and prosthetics that she used. The exhibit is also the largest exhibition of Kahlo’s work to be held in the U.S. in ten years. Appearances Can be Deceiving will be on display until May 12, 2019.
Flow Separationby 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.
FlowSeparation will be on view through May 12, 2019 in various locations through New York Harbor.
25. 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.
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.
27. 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.
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
29. 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.
30. 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.
31. Sonic Gates Sound Sculpture Walk on Staten Island
Sonic Gatesis 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 Waterfrontby 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.
32. “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.
Siah Armajani, Bridge Over Tree, 2019, photograph by Timothy Schenck, courtesy Public Art Fund, NY
Photograph by Noah Kalina courtesy of Snark Park/Team Camron
Installation view, ESCHER. The Exhibition & Experience at Industry City, June 8, 2018–March 31st, 2019. Photo by Adam Reich. Courtesy Arthemisia.
Photo by Rashmi Gill via Madison Square Park Conservancy
Photo by Nicholas Knight courtesy of Public Art Fund
Photo by Rose DeSiano Courtesy of New York City Department of Parks & Recreation
Photo by Alexander Atkins, courtesy of the artist
Photograph courtesy of Design Trust for Public Space
