2. Lightscape at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden
Through January 9, 2022, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden (BBG) will host Lightscape, an after-dark illuminated spectacular celebrating the beauty of winter. The exhibition will feature a festive trail winding through the garden’s 52-acre landscape complete with colorful light displays highlighting the trees, landscape, and architecture and site-specific music and sounds. More than 18 works of art will be on display and will be animated with over one million lights. One standout display will be the Mandylights’ Winter Cathedral, a 100-foot tunnel adorned with thousands of LED lights in the shape of a traditional Gothic arch. Covering the Cherry Esplanade will be the animated light show Sea of Life by Ithaca. Other attractions will include Ashley Bertling’s Fire Garden, which uses bespoke structures to fill the garden with real fire from candles, accompanied by seasonal music, and Frog Man’s Laser Pond, which involves laser beams being shot across the water in the Japanese-Hill-and-Pond Garden to the sound of music.
Lightscape will also directly highlight the work of local artists including Jacqueline Woodson’s site-specific poems, collectively known as Remember the Light Inside You, which will be projected onto trees, shrubs, and hillocks near Bluebell Wood. Through this series of poems, Woodson aims to engage visitors’ senses and immerse them fully into the beauty of nature, even during one of the darkest times of the year. For nonmembers of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, tickets are priced at $34 for adults and $18 for children ages 3-12. BBG member admission tickets are $30 for adults and $16 for children.