Art in the Parks

This exhibition is presented with the Fund for Park Avenue  and Marian Goodman Gallery.

This orchestrated, immersive work will illuminate the park with a roving cast of characters and iconography, referencing the Hudson River School (the country’s first regional artistic movement which gave birth to the initial land preservation movement), social media bots, inventor Samuel Morse’s final painting, The Muse, The Headless Horseman, IBM’s chess-playing computer Deep Blue, Mary Rogers’ infamous murder at Sibyl’s Cave in New Jersey, the 19th century utopian society of Oneida, and experimental music developed in the South Bronx and Lower Manhattan, among others. The exhibition will create a lyrical exploratory experience for audiences as they move through the area, inviting them to make multiple readings between the past and the present.

Screenings take place on Tuesdays through Sundays, from 7:00 p.m. – 10:00 p.m. This exhibition is presented by the Public Art Fund. 

Washington 20/20/20 is an African architectural adornment to the solid granite base of the existing park monument. The work references the 20% of the colonial population that were enslaved Africans; the 20,000 slaves in New York State in 1776 when Washington retreated from New York City; and the 20% of Washington’s continental army that was African at Yorktown, Virginia, where he was able to defeat the British in 1781.

Created from fiberglass and covered with an intricate pattern, the 23-foot-tall Wind Sculpture (SG) I will rise above the plaza, reminiscent of the untethered sail of a ship billowing in the breeze. Its unique, hand-painted pattern in turquoise, red, and orange — colors that the artist associates with his childhood on the beaches of Lagos — is inspired by Dutch wax batik print, which Shonibare has called the “perfect metaphor for multilayered identities.” This is the first work in a second generation of his celebrated Wind Sculpture series and continues Shonibare’s ongoing examination of the construction of cultural identity through the lens of colonialism. The work creates an opportunity to reflect on social issues, including the movement of people and ideas across borders and the role of monuments in heterogeneous societies. 

This exhibition is presented by Public Art Fund.

The Rose Crystal Tower stands 31-feet tall and is composed of Polyvitro crystals and steel. Polyvitro—an invention of Chihuly Studio—is the artist’s term for a plastic material which he casts into individual chunks which resemble glass, but are lighter and more resilient. Chihuly first used Polyvitro crystals in the composition “Crystal Mountain,” a 40-foot sculpture featured in the artist’s landmark exhibition, Chihuly in the Light of Jerusalem 2000.

Dale Chihuly is an American artist known for revolutionizing the Studio Glass movement and elevating the perception of the glass medium from the realm of craft to fine art. Over his 50-year career, the artist has become known for his iconic glass sculptures and ambitious architectural installations in historic cities, museums and gardens around the world.

This site-specific project in the park’s Cloisters Lawn, created by Icelandic sculptor Steinunn Thorarinsdottir, features three androgynous, humanlike figures in dialogue with suits of armor cast from a custom 3D scan of a carefully chosen suit of armor from The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s permanent collection.

The androgynous figures central to ARMORS are made to represent the general human psyche rather than a distinct sex or ethnic identity. Though the installation’s incorporation of armor unavoidably references the current global prevalence of war, ARMORS isn’t principally about any one war or even the concept of war. Rather, it uses the suit of armor as an iconographic tool; a collective symbol of guardedness and power standing antithetically to—yet in curious dialogue with—the nude, open spirit of the humanlike figure.

This exhibition is presented by Madison Square Park Conservancy.

Urban life is completely disconnected from natural experience, and there is no true nighttime darkness in New York City. dusk.space brings the experience of a serene field on a summer evening to Lower Manhattan. Although this remote country field at dusk is synthetically recreated, it is designed to evoke the sensations and feelings of the real thing, while always being obviously and unequivocally manufactured. The exhibition aims to get people to think about the meaning of the authenticity of experience in a technologically advancing world. Virtual reality does not necessarily involve wearing a headset. This is the first public artwork to be displayed in Peck Slip.

This exhibition is presented by the Old Seaport Alliance.