9. Battery Park City
The Real World by Tom Otterness
The neighborhood of Battery Park City, featuring parks like Rockefeller Park and The Esplanade, feature a number of notable sculptures by famous artists like Tom Otterness and Louise Bourgeois. Rockefeller Park is the home of Otterness’ installation The Real World, depicting “animals and people, bankers and robbers, laborers and pilgrims, predators and prey, all rubbing shoulders in his delightfully loopy narrative world.” Like many of his works, Otterness’ The Real World features a number of sculptures bringing attention to political issues like money, evident in one in which tiny workers roll pennies towards a multi-armed tool. Also featured in Rockefeller Park is Sunrise, Sunset (Revolution) by Autum Ewalt and Dharmesh Patel, which consist of nine triptychs of varying heights that correspond to the Sun’s path from east to west horizons.
Nearby Wagner Park features Louise’ Eyes, carved in granite with pupils represented by large polished nodules. The park is also home to Tony Cragg’s Resonating Bodies, a pair of bronze sculptures resembling a giant lute and tuba respectively with a wave-like relief on its surfaces.
The Esplanade houses a number of landscape works like South Cove, which features everything from a rock garden to an arching wooden jetty to atmospheric blue lights. The Esplanade also features Martin Puryear’s Pylons, two intricately decorated stainless steel columns; one is solid, while the other is an airy spiral, and a segment of the Berlin Wall.