9. There’s a sculpture hidden on the roof
When visiting The MoMA’s sculpture garden, don’t forget to look up! One of the easiest-to-miss works of art in the collection is Water Tower by British artist Rachel Whiteread. Originally commissioned by the Public Art Fund and installed on a SoHo rooftop in 1998, the sculpture is a resin cast of a once-functioning cedar water tower.
“One of my first times in America I noticed the water towers on the rooftops of New York City and I enjoyed these objects. I didn’t really know what they were, I didn’t really know why they were there, but as these weird wooden barrel-like objects sat on top of many rooftops in very awkward ways, it occurred to me that they were like part of the furniture of the city, sort of street benches, they’re just something that no one really took much notice of,” Whiteread said. “Something that I often do is try to give those places and spaces that have never really had a place in the world some sort of authority and some sort of voice. So I decided that what I wanted to do was to cast one of these water towers in clear resin. I wanted to make a jewel on the skyline of Manhattan.”
