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A new street art hotspot has some unconventional holiday decorations!
From giant menorah lightings to New Year's Day hikes, check out our picks for how to spend the holidays in NYC!
Rock n Roll, Photograph by Scott Lynch, Courtesy of Socrates Sculpture Park
This November brings with it a slew of new public art installations to check out all over New York City. From theatrical “Show Globes” in Times Squares, to a zig-zagging rainbow sidewalk piece in the Flatiron District, holiday installations are here. Debuting this month there will also be a series of site-specific works inside the Brooklyn Army Terminal, a giant sculpture with a message about the drug epidemic and so much more. Check out all of the new public art pieces coming to New York City!
Photograph Courtesy of NYCEDC
When Artists Enter the Factories is a site-specific art exhibition inside the Brooklyn Army Terminal that explores the relationship between manufacturing and art-making. Inspired by the large-scale exhibition, Terminal New York, which was held at this same location in 1983, When Artists Enter the Factories features work from sixteen different artists including Peter AC Nelson, Annesofie Sandal, Ben Sloat and more. Throughout the shows run, viewers are welcome to partake in a range of material and conceptual actions led by artists based in Brooklyn and other parts of the world. Pieces of art will be on display throughout the varied spaces within the US military supply base including the old train tracks in the atrium.
The exhibition will run through November 22, 2019, and will be available for public viewing daily from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm in October, and to 4:00 pm in November.
Rock n Roll, Photograph by Scott Lynch, Courtesy of Socrates Sculpture Park
Every year, a select group of artists are chosen to receive the ‘Socrates Annual’ fellowship, and have their work displayed inside the Socrates Sculpture Park. The new commissions are produced on-site in an outdoor studio over the course of the summer. The works selected engage the Park’s unique history, landscape, and the surrounding community.
For the 2019 exhibition, projects range from a soundscape of the sounds of animals and man-made objects, to a monument to the invasive Ailanthus plant. Several artist projects examine storytelling, from an homage to a Native American myth in which North America exists on a turtle’s back, to a suggestion that a giant has fallen asleep under the Park’s blanket of grass, its exposed nose becoming refuge for a wandering monitor lizard. This group of sculptures will be on display through March 8th, 2020.
A new sculpture by Brazilian artist Rubem Robierb has fluttered into Tribeca Park. The 13-foot wide fiberglass sculpture is a pair of opalescent white butterfly wings that are made for you to stand in front of. The strong yet graceful image is dedicated to the transgender lives that have been lost. The sclupture, which is part of Robierb’s “Dream Machine” series, is named after Dandara dos Santos, a trans woman who was murdered in Brazil in 2017.
Robierb hopes the sculpture, which symbolizes rebirth, will inspire those who see it to spread their wings and follow their own dreams. The sculpture is a monument to the bravery of members of the trans and gender non-conforming communities. It aims to raise awareness for the necessity of LGBTQ+ protections.
Breaking through the sidewalk, amongst the new construction and historic buildings of Downtown Brooklyn, a giant, muscular arm, pointing upwards, rises towards the sky. This new public artwork at the intersection of Tillary and Adams Streets is a sculpture by artist Hank Willis Thomas. The 22.5-foot bronze arm greets people near the Brooklyn entrance to the Brooklyn Bridge. Titled Unity, the piece is meant to represent the ambitious attitude of Brooklyn.
Modeled after the arm and hand of NBA athlete Joel Embiid, the sculpture is of an outstretched arm pointing towards the sky with its index finger. The sculpture, which took five years to create, was commissioned by New York City’s Percent for Art program. In a press release for the sculpture, Thomas said, “This sculpture is a homage to, and celebration of, the unique and multifaceted character of the borough of Brooklyn. The spirit of Brooklyn has always been about upward mobility and connection to roots.” Thomas also said the sculpture was a call to action to have people literally look up. All around the area where the sculpture is placed, and all over Brooklyn in general, new buildings are rising up. Some see the sculpture as Brooklyn loudly proclaiming itself as the #1 borough. We’ll let you decide for yourself.
Canstruction 2018, Photograph Courtesy of Arts Brookfield
Canstruction is a mix of an annual design competition and a unique food charity drive. Every year, teams of architects, engineers, and contractors build sculptures made entirely out of unopened cans of food. The large scale structures are placed on display and later donated to City Harvest for distribution to those in need. Awards are given out for Best Original Design, Best Structural Ingenuity, Best Meal, Most Cans, People’s Choice, Cheri C. Melillo Award and two Honorable Mention. On display in Brookfield Place, the exhibition is free to the public but it is encouraged that you bring a can (or cans!) of healthy food to donate at the Information Desk located on the second level. The can structures will be unveiled on November 7th and will remain on display through November 21st.
Every Tuesday in the coming weeks, five abstract photographs curated and shot by the Untapped New York Team will appear on LinkNYC kiosks throughout all five boroughs. The photographs, which highlight the architecture of New York City in close-ups and from unique angles, are part of our collaboration with LinkNYC for Name This Spot, an interactive photo scavenger hunt.
Every Monday, the locations are revealed on the LinkNYC Instagram. Buidlings that have been revealed so far include The Woolworth Building, The Brooklyn CHildren’s Museum, the Tent of Tomorrow, and more. The Name This Spot photographs could be from anywhere within Manhattan, Brooklyn, Staten Island, Queens and the Bronx. If you think you the buildings featured in any of the shots, tell us on Instagram by tagging @UntappedCities and @LinkNYC.
Image courtesy of Mountainside
An 800-pound spoon is coming to Chelsea to sit in front of the Mountainside Treatment Center. The travelling FDA Spoon is part of a campaign called the Opioid Spoon Project. Created by artist Domenic Esposito, the giant utensil made out of heavy gauge steel and holding a murky brown substance measures nearly 11 feet long and 5 feet tall. The work is a statement on the on-going opioid crisis and has traveled to various locations across the country including the Health and Human Services Department’s Washington, DC.
Esposito created the sculptures after seeing his own brother struggle with opioid addiction for over a decade. He said the spoon, “embodies the pain I have felt dealing with substance use disorder in my family.” The sculpture will be unveiled in New York City on November 7th and remain on view through November 22nd. The reveal will be accompanied by a panel discussion with the artist at 6:00pm to 8:00pm on November 6th which is free and open to the public.
Holiday decorations are starting to pop up around New York City this month. One of the first holiday installations to see are the Times Square Show Globes. Presented by the Times Square Alliance, the Show Globes celebrate the creativity of Broadway designers and the power of live theater with these. The designs were inspired by some of the most-loved musicals on Broadway and invite passersby to admire the imagination and talent that give life to every show. The four Show Globes will be inspired by the designs of Ain’t Too Proud – The Life and Times of The Temptations, Dear Evan Hansen, The Lion King, and Wicked. The Show Globes were designed by members of each show’s production team and inspired by the themes and characters of the show.
Photograph Courtesy of Hou de Sousa
Ziggy is an winning installation that will anchor “23 Days of Flatiron Cheer” this December. Presented by The Flatiron Partnership, this dynamic installation will be unveiled on November 18th at the intersection of 23rd Street, Broadway and Fifth Avenue. The colorful new installation is made up of painted rebar and 27,000 feet of iridescent cord. The lightweight structure will dynamically filter its surroundings with shifting patterns, color, and light. Its winding form will frame views of the Flatiron District’s many attractions and landmarks, while also serving as seating for locals and visitors seeking a moment of rest. The piece was created by Hou de Sousa, a New York-based architecture, art, and design studio focused on culturally progressive and environmentally responsible projects that foster public engagement and creativity.
Rendering by MASS Design Group
The Writing on the Wall is a traveling installation composed of essays, poems, letters, stories, diagrams, and notes written by individuals in prison around the world. The materials are displayed in a recreated prison setting. The installation, which is a collaboration between Hank Willis Thomas and Dr. Baz Dreisinger, will be on view on the High Line at 14th Street through November 10, 2019. By emulating a prison cell, the presentation of The Writing on the Wall recreates these largely unseen spaces in a public sphere. The arrangement of the installation is based on measurements of cell blocks so that visitors can be fully immersed in the written and typed words of the incarcerated. The writings were accrued, with the authors’ permission, by Dr. Dreisinger during her years teaching in US and international prisons. As a presentation of the crisis of global criminal justice systems, these letters humanize the writers by visually conveying the narratives, thoughts, and emotions of the people behind bars.
The project was conceived by professor Dr. Baz Dreisinger and her students at John Jay College of Criminal Justice with conceptual artist Hank Willis Thomas as an effort to spread awareness and inspire efforts to reimagining prison and enact justice reform. As a traveling installation and part of the Incarceration Nations Network, the project has previously been exhibited in its pilot format in Detroit, New Orleans, Miami, Philadelphia, and other sites in New York City. In conjunction with the installation of The Writing on the Wall on the High Line, the park will present related public programming.
Rendering of Anish Kapoor sculpture at 56 Leonard St. © Anish Kapoor, 2017
Internationally celebrated, Turner Prize-winning artist Anish Kapoor will have her first permanent public artwork in New York City at 56 Leonard Street. The sculpture has been a key element of the building’s design since the beginning and will be integrated into the architecture of the Tribeca tower. Kapoor’s monumental mirror sculpture is an enigmatic balloon-like form that will sit at the base of the 60-story structure and seemingly both prop up the building and be squashed by it. The sculpture weighs 40 tons and measuring 48 feet long by 19 feet high. Kapoor’s untitled work will be unveiled this November at the corner of Church Street and Leonard Street
Photograph by Steven Brown Studio, Courtesy of ArtBridge
ArtBridge is one of two organizations chosen for the City Canvas pilot program to beautify New York City by installing artwork on construction fencing. Throughout the next two years, ArtBridge will commission new works of art from the city’s pool of emerging talent. The program officially launched in September of 2019, and the first two murals appeared on 23rd Street between 10th Avenue and at 9th Avenue on the London Terrace Gardens building. All of the pieces take on different subject matter and styles. The photo above features Savory Haven by award – winning, Queens-based artist, Lisk Feng. Located on the scaffolding of the Tangram building in Flushing, Queens, the piece is intended as an homage to the people and foods of Flushing.
A new poetry jukebox has popped up outside in Bella Abzug Park near Hudson Yards. Previous jukeboxes have appeared in the East Village and Greenwich Village. The poetry jukebox first appeared at the Howl! Festival 2017 where coffeehouse owners from the Czech Republic introduced the funky speaker as part of an installation. The over two dozen poems were curated by Bob Holman and BC Edwards and represent a collective response to social justice. The jukebox in Bella Azbug Park through April 2020.
Ka-Man Tse for Times Square Alliance
Every month a new video installation takes over the screens of Times Square at midnight for Midnight Moment, the world’s longest running digital art exhibition. This month from 11:57 PM to midnight, the screens will be taken over by Maria Constanza Ferreira’s film Via. In the film, Ferreira knits together vivid and colorful satellite images to create abstract views of seemingly endless roads from around the world to abstracted and aerial perspectives of Earth. The patterns take on a frenzied pace and movements reminiscent of natural systems such as blood flow, flight patterns, and atom vibrations.
Midnight Moment is the world’s largest, longest-running digital art exhibition, synchronized on electronic billboards throughout Times Square nightly from 11:57pm to midnight. Presented by the Times Square Advertising Coalition and curated by Times Square Arts since 2012, it has an estimated annual viewership of 2.5 million.
Keep reading to check out installation still on view from previous months!
+POOL, the project to create a filtering pool for the East River has been gaining steam, with the city recently putting out a request for proposals for the innovative idea. On October 3rd, the organization will be putting on a unique light installation off Pier 17 at the South Street Seaport in a 50×50 foot outline of the pool. Designed by PLAYLAB INC & Family New York with collaboration from scientists at Columbia University’s Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO), the LED lights will change color based on the quality of water analyzed in real time. According to +POOL, “an algorithm was created that will inform the changing of the lights by predicting swimmable water computed based on environmental conditions and data pulled from sondes placed in the river on site.”
There will be a launch party on October 3rd to launch the installation, sponsored by Heinken and The Howard Hughes Corporation. Tickets are free. The pool will be on display through January 3rd, 2020.
Equestrian sculptures and paintings almost always feature a white man in a position of power and dominance. Women appear infrequently, Joan of Arc, for example, and a few women monarchs like Queen Elizabeth II. But an African American or Black person astride a horse? Now that is a rarity. A new monumental equestrian sculpture, Rumors of War, has just arrived to Times Square, by the artist Kehinde Wiley who painted Barack Obama’s portrait in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C.
Everything about this sculpture is meant to provocate, to question, to upend. The man who sits atop the horse is not only young, but also wearing the garb of present day — a hoodie and jeans — and sporting dreadlocks. The horse, rearing its front leg, is reminiscent of Jacques-Louis David’s Napoleon Crossing the Alps. Rumors of War is massive, at 27 feet tall and 16 feet wide, and Wiley’s largest work of his career so far. It sits here first in Times Square, at the center of mass consumption and visual stimuli, but will be headed to Richmond, Virginia, the heart of the Confederacy and its accompanying statues, to stand at the entrance of Virginia Museum of Fine Arts’ entrance on Arthur Ashe Boulevard. The sculpture will be on display through December 1st, 2019.
The latest artist to grace the Bowery Mural on Houston is Japanese artist Tomokazu Matsuyama “Matzu” who started working on the mural last week and is close to wrapping up. Matzu was born in Japan but moved to New York City in 2000 and currently lives and works in Brooklyn. He will be doing a high profile installation for the 2020 Summer Olympics in Japan, building a 24-foot tall sculpture at JR Shinjuku Station consisting of 316 pieces of stainless steel.
When asked how he felt about getting the opportunity to paint the mural, Matzu told Untapped Cities that this will be his biggest mural and that “it is something great because, as every artist knows, this wall is a significant monument for the world. It almost feels like you are contributing to the New York Arts culture in general. Without SoHo you can’t really talk about the arts in New York and arts in the world in general.”
Photo courtesy Andi Potamkin, of Potamkin Development, one of the sponsors of the Uptown GrandScale art project
Over the course of September, more than 50 artists painted 1,500 feet of construction barriers along three blocks of 125th Street around a construction site. This makes it one of the largest street art installations of its kind in Manhattan’s history, according to Uptown Grand Central, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting the 125th Street/Metro-North corridor, who is behind the initiative. Artists who were selected to participate included TooFly, Marthalicia, and Shiro, with priority given to artists from the local community.
It is expected for these works to be up for the long term, as no construction has begun inside the lots surrounded by the fencing. Carey King, Director of Uptown Grand Central, said: “We have learned the power of public art to both uplift the neighborhood and inspire hopes for the future. We are so grateful for the strong community of artists that exists throughout Uptown, and for their dedication to making public space a place that brings us all together.”
Jonathan Prince, Shatter Series, cor-ten and polished steel, in situ at Christie’s Sculpture Garden 2019, courtesy of Jonathan Prince Studio
In Shatter Series, three monumental pieces of cor-ten and polished steel works by artist Jonathan Prince are on display in the Christie’s Sculpture Garden located, within the public courtyard of 535 Madison Avenue. His work has been in other locations within New York City, include Dag Hammarkjold Plaza, Hudson River Park, the IBM Atrium and Building at 590 Madison Avenue. The works are also for sale. Shatter Series will be up until November 10, 2019.
Photo: NYC Parks.
It’s been a while since New Yorkers have seen Keith Haring‘s Crack is Wack mural — it was under protective covering for four years during road construction and has been undergoing a restoration since August. And the version most well-known recently is not the original, which was painted over by the Parks Department back in 1986. Haring was fined but later asked to recreate the mural. It was repainted several times, most recently 2012.
Now, artist Louise Hunnicut has been working to strip the mural down, locating parts of the original mural under multiple layers of paint, and recreate the work. NYC Parks tells us that the mural restoration should be completed “soon” but no official date has been set yet.
Where Robert Indiana’s LOVE sculpture was in Midtown until earlier July has been replaced by a temporary sculpture of a man in business suit shushing passerby. The sculpture by Jim Rennert, who has similar work previously in Union Square, is twelve feet tall, as reported by Gothamist. It’s on display thanks to the Cavelier Gallery, located on 57th Street, who is also behind the Hippo Ballerina (which appears later on this list).
A series of four recycled steel sculptures by Brooklyn-based artist Fitzhugh Karol are located at Front Street at York Street, in front of Bridge Street on the corner of Prospect and Jay Streets, Clumber Corner, and Bar and Grill Park. All four pieces come from one large structure, and as the DUMBO BID describes, Karol’s “process of creation in the studio involves playing with parts and shapes to create visually poetic combinations.” Previously Karol’s work has been seen in Prospect Park and Tappen Park on Staten Island. These sculptures will be on view through April 2020.
The Hippo Ballerina, a work by Danish artist Bjorn Okholm Skaarup that was previously at Dante Park across from Lincoln Center back in 2017 is now at Flatiron Plaza as part of the NYC DOT Public Art installation program. The 15-foot tall, two and a half ton Hippo is made of bronze with polychrome patina, and takes inspiration Edward Degas’s Little Dancer of Fourteen Years and Walt Disney’s Fantasia. She’s been nicknamed “Henrietta’ by the Flatiron/23rd Street Partnership. The Hippo Ballerina will be on view through November 30th, 2019.
Janine Antoni, I open the gates, 2019, Mixed media gilded with 24 karat gold leaf, Installation view of I am fertile ground
in the Catacombs at The Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn, NY (September–November 2019) © Janine Antoni; Courtesy of the artist, Luhring Augustine, New York, and Anthony Meier Fine Arts, San Francisco Photo: Christopher Burke
From September 21 to November 17, a site-specific art installation will be inside the Green-Wood Cemetery catacombs by contemporary artist Janine Antoni. The piece, entitled “i am fertile ground” uses religious iconography “to pay homage to the body’s wisdom,” according to the cemetery, with each work enshrining a gesture. Antoni says, “I gild the active embodiment of the spirit, paying reverence to the knowledge of the boy itself, burned in muscle memory.”
The catacombs will be open to the public, for free, every Saturday and Sunday during the exhibition run with additional public programming to take place including a meditation class, film screening, and artist talk.
The gender balance between male and female statues in New York City is little more even now thanks to a large scale sculpture installation. Created by the husband-and-wife team of the award-winning public artists Gillie and Marc, Statues for Equality aims to remedy the fact that less than 3% of statues in New York City are dedicated to females by creating ten larger than life-sized bronze sculptures of famous women from astronaut Tracy Dyson to actress Nicole Kidman. The new statues honor the important contributions women have made to society and they make their debut today, on Women’s Equality Day 2019.
Recently moved from Sixth Avenue to 32 Old Slip in Lower Manhattan, you will find bronze representations of Oprah Winfrey, P!nk, Nicole Kidman, Jane Goodall, Cate Blanchett, Tererai Trent, Janet Mock, Tracy Dyson, Cheryl Strayed and Gabby Douglas. The subjects of the statues were chosen by a public vote. Each woman is standing atop a blooming flower of her choosing which represents her personality, beyond her technical and social accomplishments. With the addition of these ten figures, the percentage of female statues in the city rises to 9%. The statues will be on display until August 2020.
Photograph taken by Untapped New York Insider Klaus-Peter Statz on our tour with Hudson Square BID
Hudson Square Business Improvement District (BID) has launched a new public art initiative, Hudson Square Canvas, to reflect the neighborhood’s transformation from the functional Holland Tunnel entrance/exit area to a lively community. There are five large scale pieces to take in, all completed in late August.
Greg Lamarche’s “Game Inside Game” features colorful vintage letter forms on the facade of S.O.B’s that reference the neighborhood’s printing press roots. Katie Mertz has painted the columns on 161 Varick Street and the Manhattan Mini Storage at 181 Varick Street in urban hieroglyphics. Brooklyn-based artist Hellbent (aka JMikal Davis) has created a colorful blocky piece at 131 Varick Street, and Claudia Ravaschiere and Michael Moss have a colorful prism of translucent glass at Freeman Plaza East. See a map of the pieces here. The works will be on display until Summer 2020.
Photo: Nicholas Knight, Courtesy of Public Art Fund, NY
Public Art Fund returns with another striking installation at the entrance to Central Park. On September 11th, three whimsical aluminum equine sculptures will be on display by French artist Jean-Marie Appriou. The works, ranging in size from 16 feet tall to 16 feet long, will be inspired by the site and the history of horses here, including the gold leaf statue of William Tecumseh Sherman just across the way and the horse-drawn carriages that still ply the park and pick up at this entrance.
“Jean-Marie Appriou’s unconventional approach to sculpture is almost alchemical,” says Public Art Fund Associate Curator Daniel S. Palmer. “His craftsmanship is informed by a deep knowledge of the historical lineage of sculptors that have preceded him. At the same time, Appriou’s equine sculptures are otherworldly, evoking the silent majesty of horses with nuanced sculptural details that flicker between narrative and poetry.” The horse sculptures will be on display through August 2020.
A series of display cases on Lenox Avenue and 125th Street in Harlem contain an exhibition by Brooklyn artist Tatyana Fazlalizadeh, a Black/Iranian visual artist who is the New York City Commission on Human Rights’ Public Artist in Residence. The series, Stop Telling Women to Smile, is a continuation of a movement started by the artist in 2012 that can be found on walls all across the world. Her artist residency here in New York City aims to “present the experiences of anti-black racism and sexual harassment experienced by New Yorkers through public art.”
Stop Telling Women to Smile showcases portraits of women on each display case, with captions on the back that speak directly to street harassment offenders. One of the cases shows actual written responses on postcards Fazlalizadeh placed in locations around the city, with questions like “What assumptions to people make about you because you are black?” and “What do you want to say back to your harassers on the street?” As Fazlalizadeh writes on the website about the project, “Street harassment is a serious issue that affects women world wide. This project takes women’s voices, and faces, and puts them in the street – creating a bold presence for women in an environment where they are so often made to feel uncomfortable and unsafe.” Fazlalizadeh also has another exhibition, Respecting Black Women and Girls in St. Albans, in Queens at the Daniel M. O’Connell Playground.
Photo of current exhibition on The High Line, En Plain Air
On September 26th, a new exhibition on the High Line will showcase posters from 25 artists or artist groups envisioning monuments —both possible and impossible to build— that question the role of monuments and imagine the future of the built objects. According to the High Line, these proposals include new monuments in a traditional style, revisions to historical statues, new imagined ways to commemorate, and come in many forms: “drawings, photographs, renderings, ‘missing pet’ posters, Wikipedia pages, bold text-based statements, collages, and more.”
The submissions were sourced from a process that brought the exhibition to multiple cities that have repurposed rail infrastructure — Buffalo Bayou, in Houston, Texas, Waller Creek, in Austin, Texas, The 606 in Chicago, Illinois, The Bentway in Toronto, Ontario — and each location chose five local artists or groups to create proposals.
Photo courtesy Julie Stein/NYCEDC
Groundswell NYC and NYCEDC have unveiled a new community painted street art mural entitled Making the Sun Rise at Sunset at the Brooklyn Wholesale Meat Market that stretches 2,400 square feet and is over 150 feet long. Groundswell murals incorporate community input from visioning sessions, and this mural addresses a theme on quality jobs in the industrial zone of Sunset Park. The mural is then designed by the Groundswell Mural Team, with lead artist Raul Ayala, and painted with the help of over 100 community participants. This is the second mural produced in partnership between NYCEDC and Groundswell.
Photo: Nicholas Knight, courtesy of Public Art Fund, NY
This August, 100 bus shelters across the city will feature a series of photographs, titled From Sun to Sun by Elle Peréz, to inaugurate Public Art Fund’s new partnership with street furniture company JCDecaux. This collaboration with the JCDecaux exhibition series further extends Public Art Fund’s history of transforming the city’s advertising spaces, with the intent to showcase photographers in the public realm. In June, in honor of the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising and WorldPride, Public Art Fund re-installed a piece it put up for the 20th anniversary of the uprising — Untitled, a black and white billboard created by Cuban-born artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres at Sheridan Square in Greenwich Village, above Village Cigars and across from the historic Stonewall Inn bar, where it first appeared in 1989.
The featured photographs in the bus shelter installation are a continuation of Peréz exploration of representation, identity and heritage of her Puerto Rican community in the Bronx. They often reveal intimate everyday moments highlighting the beauty of the individual in connection to their environment, and highlight the relationship between people and places. Public Art Fund Assistant Curator Katerina Stathopoulou explains that from sun to sun is a chance to exhibit Perez’s photography “within the diverse communities where the images were made, making this a deeply personal project,” and that Public Art Fund is thrilled for Peréz work “to inspire individuals to embrace points of similarity and humanity among the seemingly disparate people that comprise this city.” The works will be on view until November 24, 2019.
Photo courtesy NYC Parks
A new public art installation by Queens-based artist Yvonne Shortt, has just been unveiled in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park. Shortt’s immersive installation, titled Pavilion Landing, is clearly inspired by shape of the iconic New York State Pavilion (aka Tent of Tomorrow), which was painted in “American Cheese Yellow” color in 2015 as part of a restoration effort. Created in response to the theme “Flushing Meadows Corona Park: A Park for the Future,” it tells the story of intergalactic children whose spaceship has landed in the park. The artist worked with park visitors to create sculptures of children out of clay, which she then cast in concrete.
Funded by the Alliance for Flushing Meadows Corona Park in collaboration with NYC Park’s Art in the Parks program, Pavilion Landing is part of an effort to bring contemporary public artworks to the city’s parks. The goal of the program, as announced by NYC Parks Commissioner Mitchell J. Silver, is to “promote the less frequented core of our parks and support local artists.” Pavilion Landing can be found at the 111th Street and 49th Avenue Park entrance, located on the lawn alongside David Dinkins Circle. It will be on display until June 2020.
Visit this installation while on either our next tour of the Remnants of the World’s Fairs or on an Untapped Insiders special visit inside the Queens Museum with the new President of the museum.
Photo of a mural designed by Keith Haring in 1986. A NYC Health + Hospitals facility has not received a mural since then. Photo: NYC Health + Hospitals/Woodhull
In 1986, Keith Haring designed a mural for Woodhull Hospital in Brooklyn, but no NYC Health + Hospitals facility has received a mural since then. That is changing this month, as NYC Health + Hospitals’ Arts in Medicine program embarks on a community-based mural projects across New York City with nine selected artists. The process is expected to be completed by the end of December 2019. These collaborations between artists, patients, staff, and local community residents are intended not just to promote the work of local artists, but to also build trust and engagement between hospitals and their communities.
Supported by the Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund and the Mayor’s Fund to Advance New York City, the murals will be created both inside and outside NYC Health + Hospital facilities. Eric Wei, MD, MBA, Vice President and Chief Quality Officer of NYC Health + Hospitals, and Chair of the Art Advisory Council, has in particular emphasized how “it is clear from decades of research that arts promote healing in many important ways.” The idea for the collaborative mural process was developed in the belief that art would be more than just an installation, and that the art would also promote healing and create emotionally nourishing spaces.
The artists and their assigned NYC Health + Hospital facilities are: Patricia Cazorla & Nancy Saleme (Bellevue Hospital), Peach Tao (McKinney Hospital), Yvonne Shortt (NYC Health + Hospitals/Queens), Carla Torres (NYC Health + Hospitals/North Central Bronx), Oscar Lett (NYC Health + Hospitals/Kings County), Kelie Bowman (NYC Health Hospitals/Coney Island), Priscilla de Carvalho (NYC Health + Hospitals/Metropolitan Hospital), and Sophia Chizuco (NYC Health + Hospitals/Carter Hospital).
Photo: Nicholas Knight, Courtesy of Public Art Fund, NY
Estructuras Monumentales is a current exhibition in City Hall Park composed of five aluminum sculptures. It is designed by Cuban-born, New York based artist Carmen Herrera, and presented by Public Art Fund in celebration of her first major outdoor exhibition of sculptures. These works are to enliven City Hall Park in Lower Manhattan, where three new sculptures based on historic designs and two sculptures never before seen in the United States will be revealed.
Herrera’s Estructuras series was originally conceived in the 1960s, and featured bold monochromatic colors that are to complement the civic environment. According to Public Art Fund Associate Curator, Daniel S. Palmer, the series “will harmonize with the natural surroundings of this civic setting – City Hall Park serves as the ideal environment for this important exhibition in Herrera’s long career.”
Estructuras Monumentales will be on view from July 11 to November 8, 2019 in Lower Manhattan’s City Hall Park.
Simone Leigh, Brick House, 2019. A High Line Plinth commission. On view June 2019 – September 2020. Photo by Timothy Schenck. Courtesy the High Line
For about two months, Simone Leigh’s Brick House has been admired from afar as it loomed over 10th avenue. This month, visitors can get an up close look at the giant sculpture when the Spur, the newest section of the High Line opened on June 5th. It is the first sculpture to be displayed in the new space, which will host a series of rotating exhibits.
Brick House, a sixteen-foot-tall bronze bust of a black woman. Her head is adorned with an afro and cornrow braids along her hairline. The figure sits atop the Plinth, a new exhibition space at on the plaza of the Spur. Brick House is the first work in the series Anatomy of Architecture by Simone Leigh. The series of sculptures will intermingle architectural forms from West Africa to the American South with the human body.
Brick House will be up until September 2020.
A new sculpture in Duarte Square Park commemorates one of the most intense natural disasters New York City has faced. Inspired by the destruction of Superstorm Sandy, Robert Lobe’s sculpture takes the shape of the storm’s wreckage. Superstorm is made up of hammered metal in the shape of a tree and boulder that were blown apart during the storm. The form was captured by actually taking a cast of the tree and boulder in the forest.
The tree once stood in the forest along the Appalachian Trail in Northwest New Jersey at Harmony Ridge Farm and Campground. During the storm, the tree was blown over and Lobe said “it had become a majestic horizontal sculpture with a flat circular root pattern spiraling vertically into the air, evidence of the shallow yin and yang sloping surface of its former boulder home.” The art piece shows “the unfriendly side of nature” and how superstorms are becoming a more intense and frequent problem as our climate changes. Superstorm can be found at the intersection of Avenue of the Americas and Canal Street until June, 2020.
“En plein air” refers to the 19th century practice of painting outdoors, something inspired by, and a reaction to, the extreme changes happening in urban areas during the Industrial Revolution. The High Line, being a remnant of New York City’s industrial era, is the perfect place to reexamine and re-explore the tradition of outdoor painting, and with the involvement of several international artists, En Plein Air is an annual installation that challenges conventional sculptures and murals with freestanding, outdoor paintings that explore and restructure the relationship between art, nature and the modern urban city.
The first work above at 20th Street is by Firelei Báez, she depicts a Haitian Sans-Souci Palace ruin that looks like it is collapsing into the High Line. As High Line Arts describes, “In this ongoing body of work, Báez examines incarnations of Sanssouci: the 18th century Rococo palace built by Frederick the Great, the palace of Haitian Revolution leader and proclaimed first King of Haiti Henri Christophe, and Haitian revolution leader Jean-Baptiste Sans Souci, who was assassinated by Henri Christophe.” The second work, a series of four resign paintings, above is by Ryan Sullivan, embedded into the rail lines and plantings at 29th Street.
At 26th Street. Japanese artist Ei Arakawa has created two LED light paintings of fish, an interpretation of French painter Gustave Courbet’s 1872 and 1873 paintings, both titled La truite (The Trout). Other works include hundreds of striped flags at the Western Rail Yards by French artist Daniel Buren (known for his columns at the Palais Royal in Paris), ceramic archways by American artist Sam Falls embedded with fossilized plants from the High Line, life-size portraits on reclaimed doors from Georgian townhouses by Tanzanian artist Lubaina Himid, a large-scale sculpture at The Spur by Lara Schnitger, and a series of unstretched canvases inspired by an artist Vivian Suter Argentian home greet visitors at the southern edge of the park.
En Plein Air will be on display at several locations on the High Line from April 19, 2019 to March 30, 2020.
In partnership with New York City Audubon, Broadway Mall Association, New York City Parks Department, and Gitler & Gallery, artist Nicolas Holiber presents, “Nicolas Holiber: Birds on Broadway, Audubon Sculpture Project”. The National Audubon Society posted its Birds & Climate Change Report in September 2014, which cautioned that half of all North American bird species will be endangered over the coming decades as a result of global warming.
Artist Nicolas Holiber chose 12 out of the 145 species of birds that reside in New York City to include in the Audubon Sculpture Project. The twelve sculptures will be made out of reclaimed wood sourced from the city itself and located between 64th and 157th Streets. The project seeks to bring “attention to the plight of birds threatened by climate change while simultaneously bringing beauty to the urban landscape.” This installation will on display until January 2020.
Ruth Ewan’s large-scale, double-sided clock, visible from the street, is based on the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) labor union’s illustrations; the clock was once one of the many images used on “stickerettes,” otherwise known as “silent gators,” and distributed by union members as they travelled from job to job. The clock was an homage to the round-the-clock work of the union, as well as a callout to factory owners and how they divided public and private time. Ruth Ewan’s work now serves as a call to action for today’s labor struggles and the fight for diminishing labor rights, including the five-day work week and eight-hour work day.
Ruth Ewan’s Silent Agitator is the artist’s first public installation in the United States and will be on display on the High Line Park at 24th Street from April 3, 2019 to March 31, 2020.
In Battery City Park at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, an actual artifact from the early twentieth century is now on display. This freight car is not a replica and was actually used by the German National Railway during World War II to transport soldiers, prisoners of war, and then Jews to killing centers.
The freight car is an element of the upcoming exhibition Auschwitz. Not long ago. Not far away. will be on view until January 3, 2020 and include over 700 artifacts from World War II never before seen in the United States.
To mark the 38th commission of the Madison Square Park Conservancy, New York-based artist Leonardo Drew was chosen to create a monumental installation on the park’s Oval Lawn. Drew’s City in the Grass will present a topographical view of an abstract cityscape atop a multi-patterned, undulating and layered panorama. The installation stretches 100 feet long.
City in the Grass is made of varied materials that spread across the lawn and, at various points, ascend into tall rising towers. The sculptures are set in a patterned surface that mimics Persian carpet designs and reflects the artist’s interest in East Asian decorative traditions and global design. The sculpture mixes domestic and urban motifs, spurring viewers to contemplate our relationship to the city we will in. City in the Grass will be on view from June 3, 2019, through December 15, 2019.
Photo courtesy of Yvonne Shortt
Rabbits are invading MacDonald Park in Forest Hills, Queens. Forest Hills resident and artist Artist Yvonne Shortt worked with her studio team and students from York College, Queens College, International High School of Health Sciences, and Academy of American Studies to cast and paint clay sculpted bunnies for her new installation Rigged?. The installation is a maze with stairs and windows that the bunnies are trying to navigate to get to the bunch of carrots on the top level.
A sign on each level leads to the next staircase, until the level just before the top. It is impossible to complete the maze. In a secret entrance at the bottom of the piece, one rabbit hoards a stash of carrots. The rabbit maze is a commentary on the social, economic, and political system. It will be on display from July 10th, 2019 through July, 2020.
Harold Ancart, Subliminal Standard at Cadman Plaza Park presented by Public Art Fund, 2019. Photo: Nicholas Knight, Courtesy of Public Art Fund, NY
In May The Public Art Fund unveiled Subliminal Standard, an interactive commission by Belgian artist Harold Ancart. Set up in the northern end of the Cadman Plaza Park in Brooklyn, Subliminal Standard is a large painted concrete sculpture inspired by the handball courts made popular in the 1900s by U.S. immigrants. The installation will be a place of play and interaction, inviting the viewers to immerse themselves in the piece and consider the relationship between handball courts, playgrounds and abstraction.
Subliminal Standard is Ancart’s first public art commission in the United States, and will be on display until March 1, 2020.
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