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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
2006
Brooklyn
Rebecca Pollock, Become
December 2005 to December 2006
Taaffee Place, Park & Myrtle avenues
Taaffe Playground, Brooklyn
Please note: This is a past exhibit that is no longer installed in the park.
This mural covers a temporary wall adjacent to Taaffee Playground. The subject of it relates to the omnipresence of litter in the neighborhood surrounding the playground. The artist selected the black plastic shopping bag as a symbol of this urban problem. "Rather than focus on the carelessness that this object represents when found in the street, I've chosen to sculpt it into another kind of debris: a leaf," says Rebecca Pollock, the artist. "Become encourages others to make similar leaps of the imagination with all the elements of their environment. I hope that this image will promote a spirit of making something beautiful out of something ugly and making the most out of limitation."
Ms. Pollock is enrolled in the MFA program at the School of Visual Arts.
Brooklyn Working Artists Coalition, Garden of Delights: 24th Annual BWAC Outdoor Sculpture Show
August 12, 2006 to October 13, 2006
Main Street and East River
Brooklyn Bridge Park, Brooklyn
Please note: This is a past exhibit that is no longer installed in the park.
This annual exhibition includes sculptures by local artists, including: Courtney Kessel Clevenger, Allan Cyprys, Thea Lanzisero, Alexandra Limpert, Doug Makemson, Jack R. Howard Potter, Rodger Stevens, Naomi Teppich, and Tyrome Tripoli. The exhibition continues in Empire-Fulton Ferry State Park.
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
Alexander Calder, Alexander Calder in New York
April 2006 to October 30, 2007
City Hall Park, Manhattan
Please note: This is a past exhibit that is no longer installed in the park.
This major exhibition of sculpture by Alexander Calder is the first multi-work presentation of the artist's iconic sculptures in New York's outdoor spaces. Alexander Calder in New York is the fourth exhibition sponsored by Forest City Ratner Companies that the Public Art Fund has organized in City Hall Park since 2003. The exhibition includes five of Calder's large metal "stabiles" (what Calder called his freestanding, nonmoving sculptures) and one of his signature hanging mobiles, which will be shown in the dramatic rotunda of City Hall.
It's My Park segment about Alexander Calder exhibition.
Liz Larner, 2001
October 29, 2006 to May 1, 2007
Doris Freedman Plaza at East 60th Street
Central Park, Manhattan
Please note: This is a past exhibit that is no longer installed in the park.
Liz Larner is best known for her engaging investigations into the physicality of objects in space. 2001 is Larner’s virtuoso reinterpretation of the two quintessential geometric forms of modernist sculpture – the sphere and the cube. Twelve feet high, deep and wide, and painted in green and purple iridescent urethane, 2001 is an enigmatic shape-shifter: its contour and color change with the viewer’s angle and the overall light conditions so that it seems to be both at rest and undergoing metamorphosis.
Larner lives and works in Los Angeles. She received a BFA from California Institute of Arts (1985). Her work has been featured in the Whitney Biennial (2006), Regen Projects, Los Angeles (2005); Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2002); Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2001); Kunsthaus Graz, Austria (2006).
Organized by the Public Art Fund.
Hester Street Collaborative, Avenue of the Immigrants
June 2006 to April 2007
Allan Street Malls between Hester & Grand Streets, Manhattan
Please note: This is a past exhibit that is no longer installed in the park.
This project, in honor of the co-naming of Allen Street to "The Avenue of the Immigrants", celebrates a broad range of immigrants, artists, activists, and even buildings that have contributed to the rich cultural history and diversity of these communities. This site-specific installation is the culmination of a two-year intergenerational collaboration between local residents, cultural organizations, and public school students at M.S. 131 participating in Hester Street Collaborative's Ground Up program. This project is designed to strengthen the community led effort to reclaim the Allen and Pike Street corridors.
Ursula von Rydingsvard & Czara Belkami, Mad. Sq Art: Ursula von Rydingsvard
May 2006 to February 28, 2007
Madison Square Park, Manhattan
Please note: This is a past exhibit that is no longer installed in the park.
Four major sculptures by Ursula von Rydingsvard will be on view, including the artist's first translucent outdoor work. The centerpiece is Damski Czepek, a new sculpture for the Park's luxuriant Oval Lawn. In the tradition of the artist, Damski Czepek begins with a quotidian household object remembered from childhood—here, a bonnet, which the sculptor transforms into an evocative abstract form. Mad. Sq. Art: Ursula von Rydingsvard is a production of the Madison Square Park Conservancy.
Marcia Raff, Feynman's Fancy and Columns 1, 2 and 3, Series III
August 2006 to January 2007
Broadway between 72nd-73rd Streets
Verdi Square, Manhattan
Please note: This is a past exhibit that is no longer installed in the park.
These stainless steel sculptures are based on the physicist Richard P. Feynman's diagrams of the interactions of electrically charged particles. Marcia Raff, the artist, has participated in public art projects in multiple locations in the United States and Israel. She is a member of the Royal Society of British Sculptors, International Sculptors Society, USA, and the National Arts Club, New York City.
Matthew Geller, Awash
September 2006 to December 24, 2006
Leonard Street, between Centre & Lafayette Street
Collect Pond Park, Manhattan
Please note: This is a past exhibit that is no longer installed in the park.
Awash, a sculptural installation by Matthew Geller, invites the public to sit and swing beneath a cooling stream of water. Geller’s steel-and- Plexiglas structure provides shelter from its own inclement weather. A water tank sprays water onto a skylight incongruously mounted on a "sidewalk bridge," much like the ones that protect pedestrians at construction sites. Inside the bridge hang several seats recalling both old-fashioned porch swings and traditional park benches, allowing up to eight people to sit and talk while rain splashes romantically on the skylight overhead. The swings and spraying water hark back to an earlier time, when Collect Pond Park was known a fishing and recreation lake. After suffering the effects of too-dense urbanization, the Collect was drained by the City and became the home of the notorious "Five Points" district, immortalized in the book and film Gangs of New York.
Cristobal Gabarron, Mysteries of Columbus
October 10, 2006 to December 3, 2006
Columbus Circle to 168th Street, Manhattan
Please note: This is a past exhibit that is no longer installed in the park.
On view along Broadway is an installation of eight colorful abstract sculptures by Spanish artist Cristobal Gabarron. The explorer Christopher inspires the works, which appear on the occasion of the five hundredth anniversary of his death. The sculptures can be seen at: Simon Bolivar Plaza (6th Avenue and Central Park South); Columbus Circle (59th Street); Dante Park (63rd Street); Broadway and 79th Street; Montiefore Park (Broadway and 137th Street); Broadway and 157th Street; and at Mitchel Square (Broadway and 168th Street).
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