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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
2012
Brooklyn
Leonard Ursachi, Well
October 29, 2011 to August 25, 2012
Cadman Plaza Park, Brooklyn
Map/Directions (in Google Maps)
Please note: This is a past exhibit that is no longer installed in the park.
Leonard Ursachi’s sculpture, with its wellhead, lever and bucket, is suggestive of a traditional rural well. “The well is a shared resource and gathering place. Its iconography is mythic—the source from which life and knowledge spring; a receptacle for our dreams and desires. I’m interested in the significance of the well today,” states Ursachi. “There are still communities that depend on wells, the health of which is affected by conditions that originate both locally and across the globe—pollution, industrial waste, climate change, wars.”
For the wellhead, Ursachi cast blocks in transparent, water-blue acrylic with embedded crushed, empty plastic water bottles. He created the mold for the blocks from an antique cobblestone salvaged from a Brooklyn street when it was being torn up. The bottom surface of the wellhead is mirrored and like a traditional well, viewers will see their own reflections when they peer into the opening. Ursachi made the wellhead’s base, bucket, and lever from wood he salvaged from the East River, a block from his DUMBO studio.
Various, Brooklyn Utopias: Park Space/Play Space
April 5, 2012 to June 24, 2012
Old Stone House
Washington Skate Park, Brooklyn
Map/Directions (in Google Maps)
Please note: This is a past exhibit that is no longer installed in the park.
Brooklyn Utopias: Park Space, Play Space at the Old Stone House is an exhibit and event series that brings together 19 artists and arts groups to consider the history, politics, and planning surrounding public parks and recreation spaces in Brooklyn and beyond. Exhibiting artists tackle issues such as parks’ relationship to eminent domain and gentrification, the process behind public space design, and debates involving the use of public/private space raised by the recent Occupy protests. Projects in all media include abstract “utopian” maps, whimsical visions of imaginary play spaces, a virtual reality park design smartphone app, a text-based public art installation, and photo and video journaling Brooklyn’s lesser-known natural environments. The exhibit corresponds with re-opening of the newly renovated Washington Park/J.J. Byrne Playground.
Exhibiting Artists: Stephanie Beck, Lynn Cazabon, Center for Urban Pedagogy, Tamara Gayer, Christine Gedeon, Groundswell Community Mural Project, Rebecca Hackemann, Husk, Bettina Johae, Karen Kaapcke, Jess Levey, Cheryl Molnar, Will Pappenheimer, Marina Zamalin
Please see below and visit http://brooklynutopias.wordpress.com for more information!
And be sure to join us for our Park Space, Play Space events!
- Saturday, April 28, 5 – 8 pm: Circle Rules Federation brings you a new kind of football
- Saturday, April 28 , 5-7 pm: Collective sky-gazing with Kat Shchneck
- Saturday, April 28, 5-7:30 pm: Public Voice/Public Dream mural workshop with Triada Samaras and CORD
- Saturday, May, 19, 12 pm: Eminent Domain Bike Tour with Bettina Johae
- Saturday, May 19, 5-10 pm: Interactive Games with Gigantic Mechanic
- Saturday, May 19, 5-7 pm: Augmented Reality Workshop with Will Pappenheimer
- Saturday, June 16: 5 pm: Pining For You – a collective wedding ceremony celebrating queer culture with artist Tracy Candido
- Tuesday, June 19: 7 pm: A closing reception and discussion with the Old Stone House, Groundswell Community Mural Project and the Center for Urban Pedagogy.
Ruth McKerrell, Ancient, Goatie Boy, and Goat as Wolf
June 1, 2011 to May 30, 2012
Fort Greene Park, Brooklyn
Map/Directions (in Google Maps)
Please note: This is a past exhibit that is no longer installed in the park.
McKerrell’s three sculptures, originally made of reclaimed Styrofoam, have been cast in aluminum, giving them a timeless presence reminiscent of traditional garden statuary. Two sprightly goats and an alert deer will animate this welcoming space. Attracted to the naiveté and purity of animals, McKerrell has focused on them in her recent drawings and sculptures. A native of Scotland, she frequented local farms as a child and even owned a pet goat, which inspired Goatie Boy. A regular visitor to the Central Park Children’s Zoo, she creates studies from direct observations, as well as historical paintings, and anatomical reference books. However, her final works are made entirely from memory, working intuitively as she imbues her playful subjects with plasticity, life, and undeniable charm. McKerrell is attracted to the “freeness and rawness” of her modeling materials, which permit her to work spontaneously, and comments that they enable her to “create textured surfaces suggestive of an animal’s tactile form.”
McKerrell is the recipient of the Clare Weiss Emerging Artist Award. Clare Weiss (1966-2010) was the former Public Art Curator for Parks. During her tenure she curated more than 100 outdoor public art installations throughout the city and organized complex, thought-provoking, and visually compelling thematic exhibitions for the Arsenal Gallery. The Clare Weiss Emerging Artist Award will be granted annually to one emerging artist. The location will change annually, and will be determined based on the site’s visibility and location within a neighborhood historically underserved by public art.
This exhibition was made possible through generous support by the Claire Weiss Emerging Artist Award and the Myrtle Avenue Brooklyn Partnership.
Kate Newby, All parts. All the time.
April 14, 2012 to April 29, 2012
Cooper Park, Brooklyn
Map/Directions (in Google Maps)
Please note: This is a past exhibit that is no longer installed in the park.
​Kate Newby’s work is often developed as an intervention in public space. All parts. All the time. engages two sites, Olive St. Garden and Cooper Park, both within blocks of ISCP in East Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Using semi precious and industrial materials to create an embedded concrete puddle in the center of Cooper Park, as well as hanging porcelain chimes and a concrete rock bench Olive St. Garden, Newby engages with the conditions of lived space, intervening in these specialized locations. ​
As with past works, Newby’s installations are developed in response to everyday built environment; carpets, windows and curtains, steps and passageways. Each gives evidence to the space as an inhabited or occupied site, but can also be used to interrupt, reconsider or challenge the unspoken norms of an environment or situation.
This exhibition is presented by the International Studio & Curatorial Program.
Manhattan
Virginia Overton, Untitled
September 12, 2012 to September 2013
Stacked Parking at West 20th Street
The High Line, Manhattan
Map/Directions (in Google Maps)
Please note: This is a past exhibit that is no longer installed in the park.
Brooklyn-based artist Virginia Overton is known for her sculptures that incorporate raw materials and found objects, often using and re-using elements until they naturally decay. For High Line Art, Overton will transform an old pickup truck into a sculpture installed on the stacked parking next to the High Line at West 20th Street.
This exhibition is presented by the Friends of the High Line
El Anatsui, Broken Bridge II
November 2012 to Spring 2013
Western Wall between West 21st and West 22nd Streets
The High Line, Manhattan
Map/Directions (in Google Maps)
Please note: This is a past exhibit that is no longer installed in the park.
El Anatsui, the celebrated contemporary artist based in Nigeria, is known for his monumental wall tapestries, which are intricately composed of metallic bottle caps culled from discarded Nigerian liquor bottles and woven together with copper wire. For High Line Art, the artist will present a newly-configured installation of Broken Bridge, a monumental drapery made of pressed tin and mirrors, which will hang on an outdoor wall adjacent to the park. Composing a stunning visual of wave-like patterns and folds, the work will reflect the surrounding landscape and mark the artist’s first outdoor installation in the United States.
This exhibition is presented by the Friends of the High Line.
Art Students League, 2nd Annual Model to Monument (M2M)
June 22, 2012 to May 2013
59th to 72nd Streets
Riverside Park South, Manhattan
Map/Directions (in Google Maps)
Please note: This is a past exhibit that is no longer installed in the park.
In its second consecutive year, The Art Students League of New York’s “Model to Monument” program will return to Riverside South with seven new sculptures designed by its students. These accomplished artists, though quite varied in their chosen themes and media, are addressing the over-arching theme of flux. This emerged naturally during the course of discussions about what the participating artists find unique and inspirational in the public space of Riverside Park. Included in the exhibition are Sequoya Aono, Roberto Franzone, HakSul Lee, Damien Armondo Vera, Olga Rudenko, Michael Cloud Hirschfeld, and Renata Pugh.
A collaborative installation created by the team is also on concurrently on view in Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx. The sculpture titled, Mask, by M2M’s previous roster, has been altered- revamping the object into a new work they call, BioMask- a more tree like version of last year’s monumental sculpture.
This work was made possible by the Art Students League’s Model to Monument Program and the Riverside Park Fund.
State of Veracruz, Olmec Head
October 10, 2012 to May 5, 2013
1st Avenue
Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, Manhattan
Map/Directions (in Google Maps)
Please note: This is a past exhibit that is no longer installed in the park.
Donated by the Government of the State of Veracruz, this stone and dust temporary sculpture is a replica of the first majestic Olmec head to be uncovered in San Lorenzo Tenochtitlan in 1964. The symbolism of its carvings shows an inverted jaguar paw with a circle, possibly referencing chalchihuitl- a green stone representing water and everything precious. Standing over ten feet tall, the facial features of “The King” correspond to what was considered beautiful at the time: a slight strabismus, deformed cranium, and ear covers. The State of Veracruz hopes that this sculpture will be enjoyed and admired by the city and its visitors.
Katherine Daniels, St. Nicholas Park Mesh
December 13, 2012 to April 22, 2013
St. Nicholas Park, Manhattan
Map/Directions (in Google Maps)
Please note: This is a past exhibit that is no longer installed in the park.
Katherine Daniels highlights the park’s eclectic, though largely overlooked, history through a series three contemporary weavings on the park’s basketball court fences. On the southern end of the park, the chain link fence hosts an abstract vine design based on Native American textiles and recounts the Indian path Weekquaeskeek, which passed along what is now St. Nicholas Avenue. The central installation of crosiers, or hooked shepherd staffs, references the park’s namesake and the three churches that border the park. Located near the Hamilton Grange, home of founding father Alexander Hamilton, the northernmost court is adorned with a zig-zag pattern of “quilt squares.” This monumental brocade represents the park’s early American history as a military campground during the Battle of Harlem Heights, where General George Washington positioned himself during the Revolutionary War in 1776.
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