2022 Arsenal Gallery Exhibits

September 15, 2022 – November 10, 2022

Las flores de mi país

Celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month with Las flores de mi país. Presented by NYC Parks' Latino Society, in collaboration, with NYC Parks' Arts & Antiquities division, the exhibition features artworks by more than 20 artists that explore interpretations of Latinx culture with imagery of native flora. The works use botanicals as inspiration, symbols, a medium to create designs, a historical reference, and in textile design that reflects a culture or tradition.

Las flores de mi país (“The Flowers of my Country”) is presented by NYC Parks’ Latino Society and NYC Parks' Arts & Antiquities. A virtual exhibition tour and discussion will be co-hosted with GreenThumb on September 27, 2022 at 6:00 p.m. Please RSVP to attend.

Image: Ilse Abril, Flor del Desierto, 2022, Mixed media.

June 24, 2022 – September 2, 2022

Streets In Play: Katrina Thomas, NYC Summer 1968

See New York City in 1968 through the lens of photographer Katrina Thomas with “Streets in Play". Curated from the NYC Parks Photo Archive collection, the exhibition features more than 40 of Thomas’ photographs of “Playstreets” or residential blocks closed to traffic and equipped with recreational and cultural activities. With dynamic black-and-white images that document carless streets and children engaged in inventive and self-directed forms of play, the 1968 images speak to present-day questions of whom and what purposes city streets might serve.

Katrina Thomas (1927-2018) was hired to document Mayor Lindsay’s 1968 Task Force initiatives and later donated those photographs to NYC Parks. Her images were commissioned to use for publicity, fundraising appeals, and official reports, and intended to offer visual proof that the city was compensating for a lack of investment in low-income, racially segregated neighborhoods. But Thomas’ exceptional eye transcended the task. Her photographs represent one of the most complicated yet revealing collections of imagery in the Photo Archives—shaped by the tension between the demands of a commissioned project and Thomas’ personal perspective.  

Curated by Rebekah Burgess, NYC Parks Photo Archivist, and Mariana Mogilevich, historian of architecture and urbanism and Editor in Chief, Urban Omnibus.

Image: Katrina Thomas. Lower East Side, Playstreets, 1968. NYC Parks Photo Archive.

March 25, 2022 – June 2, 2022

Parks Now: Honoring the Olmsted Legacy

See recent innovative park designs that build on Olmsted’s legacy in New York City with "Parks Now: Honoring the Olmsted Legacy", on view at the Arsenal Gallery in Central Park. Olmsted created a new kind of civil engineering that blended function and beauty, producing sanctuaries that had a profound impact on the cityscape. With renderings, site plans, and photos, the exhibition highlights Olmsted’s New York City projects, a feature on greenways then and now, and a selection of 10 new and reimagined parks that incorporate his design principles, including former industrial sites, waterfront parks, plazas, and neighborhood playgrounds: 

• Bronx: Hugh Grant Circle/Virginia Park, Concrete Plant Park 
• Brooklyn: Lincoln Terrace Playground, Sunset Park Playground 
• Manhattan: Monsignor Kett Playground, Central Park’s Harlem Meer Center (formerly Lasker Rink and Pool) 
• Queens: Elmhurst Park, Bayswater Park
• Staten Island: Faber Park, Richmond Terrace 

April 26, 2022 marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903), a pioneering landscape architect famous for his work co-designing Central Park, Prospect Park, and other well-known urban green spaces. From the democratization of public parks to the contouring of landscape and terrain to create a variety of visual experience, Olmsted was a seminal force in the design of our parks and how they are used.

Image: Concrete Plant Park, Bronx, 2009, NYC Parks / Jim Mituzas

January 21, 2022 – March 11, 2022
Please note: the gallery is closed on March 3 and March 4.

The NYC Parks Renaming Project: Celebrating Black Leaders

In celebration of Black History Month, "The NYC Parks Renaming Project: Celebrating Black Leaders" highlights some of the parks and park features that the agency has recently renamed to honor the Black experience in New York City.

In June 2020, the agency pledged to demonstrate how it stands in solidarity with the Black community in its fight to combat systemic racism. Since then, Parks has named 28 parks spaces to acknowledge the legacies of Black Americans, encourage discourse about their contributions, and work to make the park system more diverse and reflective of the people it serves. The exhibition includes historical and contemporary photographs accompanied by texts detailing the park histories and biographies of the honored individuals.

Image: NYC Parks / Daniel Avila

December 2, 2021 – January 6, 2022

39th Annual Wreath Interpretations Exhibition

Celebrate the holiday season with this quirky and one-of-a-kind exhibition! NYC Parks’ annual Wreath Interpretations exhibition is back in person at the Arsenal Gallery after going virtual last year. Welcoming the holiday season with a variety of inventive and surprising wreaths, this year’s exhibition includes wreaths by nearly 40 artists, designers, and creative individuals of all ages who have used unexpected materials to reinvent the traditional holiday symbol.  

Drawing on timely themes including the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change, to more personal subject matter, artists this year have created their wreaths using yo-yos, reused sardine cans, bicycle tubes, vintage maps, natural materials, and more.  

Image: Tom Fitzgibbon, Roundabout, 2021, Wood, steel, wire, LEDs, CPU, acrylic, clothespins