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AccessibilityArt in the Parks
Through collaborations with a diverse group of arts organizations and artists, Parks brings to the public both experimental and traditional art in many park locations. Please browse our list of current exhibits and our archives of past exhibits below. You can also see past grant opportunities or read more about the Art in the Parks Program.
Public Art Map and Guide
Find out which current exhibits are on display near you, and browse our permanent monument collection.
Search Current and Past Exhibits
2004
Brooklyn
Noah Baen, Persephone
Winter 2004 to Winter 2005
Lentol Garden, Brooklyn
Please note: This is a past exhibit that is no longer installed in the park.
Within yards of the gritty Brooklyn Queens Expressway, an ecological sculpture by artist Noah Baen reclines under a hawthorn tree. Persephone was installed on January 11 in Lentol Garden, a bucolic park on Graham Avenue north of Meeker Avenue in Williamsburg. Persephone is a quilt of leaves clustered within garden netting, its form recalling a sleeping figure slowly reuniting with the landscape. Named for the Greek goddess connected with the cycle of seasons, Persephone will sleep under her tree through the winter, spring, summer and into fall. As the seasons progress, the natural processes of growth and decay will gradually break down the leaves. Seeds, gathered with the leaves or blown in, may sprout, causing plants to grow up through the sculpture. Eventually, fall will return and another year's withered leaves will descend upon Persephone.
Manhattan
Fritz Koenig, The Sphere
March 11, 2002 to Present
The Battery, Manhattan
Please note: This is a past exhibit that is no longer installed in the park.
Fritz Koenig's The Sphere, a 45,000 pound sculpture made of steel and bronze, adorned the fountain at the World Trade Center's Tobin Plaza from 1971 to September 11, 2001. Bent and damaged, but still recognizable, the sculpture has been relocated to Battery Park, where it stands as a powerful temporary memorial commemorating the lives of those lost in the World Trade Center attack and in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. On September 11, 2002, a dedication was held to officially recognize the artwork as an interim memorial and to light an eternal flame in memory of those lost.
The Sphere is on long-term loan from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
Media Advisory
Kim Sillen Gledhill, The Tile Project, Destination: The World
November 11, 2004 to October 31, 2005
between West 3rd Street & Bleecker Street
Mercer Playground, Manhattan
Please note: This is a past exhibit that is no longer installed in the park.
The Tile Project, Destination: The World is an international arts project currently being exhibited in 23 locations around the world, from Azerbaijian to Vietnam. The exhibition includes 120 four-inch tiles designed by 120 artists from forty countries. The tiles on view represent a diversity of artistic styles and approaches to materials. Participating artists created tiles in ceramic, glass, and metal and applied imagery using hand-painted glazes, photography and digital imagery, and three-dimensional molding to create small works that come together to form a larger international art collaboration. Mounted to the fence surrounding the park in back-to-back sections, the tiles can be viewed from the street and from inside the park. The project was organized by TransCultural Exchange, with support from UNESCO and other international partners. For more information about the project, including a complete list of artists, visit the TransCultural Exchange website.
Related Info: Press release
Julian Opie, Animals, Buildings, Cars and People
October 28, 2004 to October 14, 2005
Broadway, Park Row & Chambers Street
City Hall Park, Manhattan
Please note: This is a past exhibit that is no longer installed in the park.
With nine installations in and around City Hall Park, this exhibition of sculptures by contemporary British artist Julian Opie will be the artist's most comprehensive U.S. solo show to date, featuring new commissions alongside some of his most iconic works. Succinct and colorful, Opie's graphic depictions of modern life portray the familiar physical world, from fashion models to farm animals, from skyscrapers to village churches. Opie distills his images from the world around him, rendering them in the universally recognizable style of commercial graphics. He reduces the thing at hand to its most essential lines and color planes. The resulting images – straightforward pictograms with bold lines, clean edges, and bright surfaces – read as clearly as traffic signs. Animals, Buildings, Cars and People was organized by Public Art Fund and sponsored by Forest City Ratner Companies.
Mark di Suvero, Aesope's Fables - Beyond Double Tetrahedron
June 2004 to March 2005
between 5th and Madison avenues, East 23rd and East 26th streets
Madison Square Park, Manhattan
Please note: This is a past exhibit that is no longer installed in the park.
Marking the fifth year of Mad Square Art, a program of the Madison Square Park Conservancy, three monumental sculptures by the internationally renowned sculptor Mark di Suvero will be on view in Madison Square Park. The three sculptures on view demonstrate the expressive range of di Suvero's epic steel constructions, from the classically vertical Double Tetrahedron to the organic forms in Beyond. A force in contemporary sculpture since the 1950's, di Suvero is one of the most important American artists to have emerged from the Abstract Expressionist era. His sculptures have been exhibited in citywide exhibitions in Paris, Venice and Stuttgart and his works are in the collections of museums in the U.S. and abroad.
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Tom Otterness, Tom Otterness on Broadway
September 20, 2004 to March 18, 2005
Locations along Broadway, Manhattan
Please note: This is a past exhibit that is no longer installed in the park.
Tom Otterness on Broadway, an exhibition of 25 bronze sculptures by New York sculptor Tom Otterness stretching from Columbus Circle to Washington Heights, represents the first large display of temporary public art on the Broadway Malls, the landscaped medians on Broadway from 60th to 168th Street. Considered one of the premier public artists working in the United States, Tom Otterness has exhibited widely and completed commissions in North America and abroad. His stylized bronze figures combine into sculptural ensembles that explore the range of human experience, from grand ambition to common foibles, plucking imagery and themes from popular culture and subtly transforming them into humorous commentary. Tom Otterness on Broadway is a collaboration of the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation, The Broadway Mall Association, Marlborough Gallery and Tom Otterness Studio.
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Allan McCollum, Perfect Vehicles
September 2, 2004 to January 15, 2005
Doris C. Freedman Plaza
Central Park, Manhattan
Please note: This is a past exhibit that is no longer installed in the park.
Public Art Fund presents three new Perfect Vehicles at the southeast corner of Central Park. This will be the first time in more than a decade that McCollum has made new works in this iconic sculptural series, and it will also be the artist's first-ever outdoor exhibition in New York. McCollum, who came to the art world's attention with his Surrogate Paintings of the late 1970s, has continued to create wide-ranging conceptual artworks that deftly examine the nature of art and other culturally valued objects, the practice of museum display, and the relationship between originals and copies. Installed at the southeast entrance to Central Park, McCollum's Perfect Vehicles will form an unlikely counterpart to the more traditional statuary at nearby Grand Army Plaza and elsewhere throughout the park. More information available at www.publicartfund.org.
Dorothy Frankel, Relationship-Connection, I Love You#1, L.O.V.E. #2
June 2004 to December 2004
Carl Schurz Park, Manhattan
Please note: This is a past exhibit that is no longer installed in the park.
Located along John Finley Walk at 86th Street, Dorothy Frankel's bronze sculptures depict human hands "speaking" the words for love and connection in sign language. The three works are part of a larger series of work based on sign language that Dorothy Frankel completed in recent years. Slightly larger than life, the sculptures are modeled in terra cotta from a life model and then cast in bronze. "The hand gestures of these sculptures represent a form of visual poetry and communicate powerful and positive images of the human condition," said Frankel, who lives and works in Sag Harbor, New York. Reflecting Frankel's interest in surface color and texture, the patinas range from earthy red to dark green, and the bronze castings capture the imprint of the artist's hands.
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Leonard Ursachi, Refuge
September 18, 2004 to December 19, 2004
Duarte Square, Manhattan
Please note: This is a past exhibit that is no longer installed in the park.
Standing at the intersection of Canal Street and Avenue of the Americas, Leonard Ursachi's Refuge, a bunker-shaped structure enveloped in white feathers, is a study in contrasts. Located at the border of Lower Manhattan, this seemingly fragile structure will stand out from a high traffic setting and will invite passersby to escape for a moment from the hectic urban streetscape. "Every border has its bunkers – physical and psychological —reminding us where it is we belong," said Ursachi. "My bunker projects, with their twin references to war and home, address the complexities inherent in the creation and maintenance of identity." Refuge has no entrance, and in lieu of windows, there are two recessed, sky-blue mirrors. One can only imagine the interior – the artist wants visitors to Duarte Square to be confronted by their own reflection in the mirrored windows as they approach the artwork. It is through this reflective imagining that Ursachi challenges viewers to rethink their environment and to find their own personal refuge in the artwork.
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Roy Lichtenstein, Roy Lichtenstein at City Hall
November 18, 2003 to October 2004
City Hall Park, Manhattan
Please note: This is a past exhibit that is no longer installed in the park.
"Roy Lichtenstein at City Hall" includes four sculptures: Element #E in Tweed Courthouse, Woman: Sunlight, Moonlight in the lobby of City Hall, and Brushstroke Group and Endless Drip in City Hall Park. Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1997) was an important New York artist and a central figure in the emergence of Pop Art in the 1960's. Although best known for his paintings, Lichtenstein was also a prolific sculptor, and in the 1980's he began making monumental brushstroke sculptures. Brushstroke Group, Endless Drip and his other sculptures from this period capture the movement and color of painting on a grand scale. "'Roy Lichtenstein at City Hall' is a part of our ongoing effort to bring contemporary art to the City's parks, public spaces and treasured landmarks," said Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. "I hope this exhibition will attract New Yorkers and visitors from around the world to Lower Manhattan." The exhibition was a result of a collaboration between Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Public Art Fund.
Visit the Public Art Fund website for more information.
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