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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
2019
Manhattan
Art Students League, Model to Monument
May 22, 2019 to May 21, 2020
Riverside Park, Manhattan
Map/Directions (in Google Maps)
Please note: This is a past exhibit that is no longer installed in the park.
Now in its seventh year, the Art Students League’s Model to Monument (M2M) sculptors are addressing the theme “Coming Ashore” with monumental works exploring topics of immigration, refuge, fluidity, organic and ancient forces. The artists are: Damon Hamm & Jeff Sundheim (Wavehenge), Gaia Grossi (Gaea), and Frank Michielli (Moiré.) “The scale and ambition of these installations reflect a long tradition at The League to support great sculpture and elevate the daily lives of New Yorkers,” says Executive Director Michael Rips.
This exhibition is presented by the Art Students League.
Bob Lobe, SUPERSTORM
May 20, 2019 to May 19, 2020
Duarte Square, Manhattan
Map/Directions (in Google Maps)
Please note: This is a past exhibit that is no longer installed in the park.
Using the repoussé technique, artist Robert Lobe has recreated a tree that was torn out of the ground during Superstorm Sandy. Lobe hammered aluminum around the felled tree and corresponding bolder to replicate their shattered forms. Though the original tree was located in along the Appalachian Trail in Northwest New Jersey at Harmony Ridge Farm and Campground, this sculpture also acts as a temporary memorial to and reminder of the storm’s devastation in downtown Manhattan, the artist’s home.
This majestic sculpture embodies the current conversations around climate change and global warming. Though the crippled tree is ominous and threatening, Lobe has also captured the beauty of the original tree and its surrounding environment.
Nicolas Holiber, Nicolas Holiber: Birds on Broadway, the Audubon Sculpture Project
May 17, 2019 to May 9, 2020
Dante Park and Broadway Malls from 64th Street to 157th Street, Manhattan
Map/Directions (in Google Maps)
Please note: This is a past exhibit that is no longer installed in the park.
Nicolas Holiber: Birds on Broadway, the Audubon Sculpture Project features ten oversized sculptures of New York City birds that are in danger of extinction due to climate change, displayed along the Broadway malls, a tree-lined greenway between 64th and 157th Streets in Manhattan. Each sculpture is made entirely out of reclaimed, untreated lumber, allowing for the city’s natural forces to affect it and highlight the environmental challenges faced by each species. Holiber gives meaning to materials that had no use is amplified when paired with the exhibition’s alarming message about climate change. The birds in this exhibition were chosen from the National Audubon Society’s 2014 Birds and Climate Change Report. From among the 145 threatened species that reside in or migrate through New York, Holiber decided to showcase the American bittern, brant, common goldeneye, double-crested cormorant, hooded merganser, peregrine falcon, red-necked grebe, scarlet tanager, snowy owl, and wood duck.
This exhibition is presented by Broadway Mall Association, Gitler &_______ Gallery, and the New York City Audubon Society.
Leander Knust, Re-Material Wall
April 14, 2019 to April 13, 2020
West 111th Street People’s Garden, Manhattan
Map/Directions (in Google Maps)
Please note: This is a past exhibit that is no longer installed in the park.
The solar panel atop Leander Mienardus Knust’s Re-material Wall powers an electroforming process that slowly transfers copper molecules from suspended pipes to individual wires each floating in a solution-filled jar. Over time these molecules accumulate and take unique forms as a physical trace of their carrier electricity while the steel rusts, wood warps, vines grow, and piping disappears.
This project is part of NYC Parks GreenThumb’s Art in the Gardens program.
Ruth Ewan, Silent Agitator
April 3, 2019 to March 31, 2020
The High Line, Manhattan
Map/Directions (in Google Maps)
Please note: This is a past exhibit that is no longer installed in the park.
For the High Line, Scottish artist Ruth Ewan presents a monumental-scale, double-sided clock on the park at 24th Street, also visible from street level. The clock is based on an illustration originally produced for the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) labor union by the North American writer and labor activist Ralph Chaplin. The illustration was one of many images that appeared on “stickerettes,” known as “silent agitators,” millions of which were printed in red and black on gummed paper and distributed by union members traveling from job to job. The clock nods to the round-the-clock organizing work of the IWW, and the ubiquity of the clock in labor struggles: both the ways that factory owners separated private and public time and the fights for the now-diminishing labor rights we have today, such as the five-day work week and eight-hour workday. The installation is Ruth Ewan’s first public artwork in the United States.
This exhibition is presented by the Friends of the High Line .
Various Artists, En Plein Air
April 19, 2019 to March 30, 2020
Multiple locations
The High Line, Manhattan
Please note: This is a past exhibit that is no longer installed in the park.
?En Plein Air, inspired by the unique site of the High Line, examines and expands the tradition of outdoor painting. The title refers to the mid-19th century practice of en plein air painting (French for “in the open air”). The inclination to paint outside was one reaction to the overwhelming transformations of life in urban centers, as nature and cities redefined each other under the pressure of modernization—a history that connects to that of the High Line, a remnant of the industrial era of the neighborhood. The artists in the exhibition not only bring painting outside but imagine nature as context, subject, and collaborator. They approach the history, methodologies, and content of outdoor painting from a variety of perspectives. The High Line is an apt site for the consideration of the importance of landscape painting in our time, as the natural features of the park juxtapose with the artificial scenery of the surrounding billboards, building facades and walls, and variety of advertisements. Through the participation of an international group of artists, En Plein Air challenges the kinds of work traditionally associated with public art—sculptures and murals—by presenting freestanding, outdoor paintings that can be viewed in the round and in dialogue with the surrounding landscapes.
Artists who are part of this exhibition include Ei Arakawa, Firelei Báez, Daniel Buren, Sam Falls, Lubaina Himid, Lara Schnitger, Ryan Sullivan, and Vivian Suter.
This exhibition is presented by the Friends of the High Line.
Anina Gerchick, BIRDLINK
June 10, 2019 to March 2, 2020
Sara D. Roosevelt Park, Manhattan
Map/Directions (in Google Maps)
Please note: This is a past exhibit that is no longer installed in the park.
BIRDLINK is an interactive habitat sculpture whose mission is to support migratory birds by inserting native plant systems throughout the urban and suburban corridors through which they travel. There, people can learn about the challenges facing bird populations, and enjoy more space. BIRDLINK attracts the wild birds that reside or migrate through the city with native plants at the empty lower and middle canopy levels. It responds to community interests, highlights the shared the urban ecosystem and bridge cultural differences through the universal of birds. This park in a busy, economically and culturally diverse neighborhood also hosts the African M’Finda Kalunda Garden and the Chinese Hua Mei Bird Garden for exotic caged songbirds.
Leonardo Drew, City in the Grass
June 3, 2019 to December 15, 2019
Madison Square Park, Manhattan
Map/Directions (in Google Maps)
Please note: This is a past exhibit that is no longer installed in the park.
City in the Grass presents a topographical view of an abstract cityscape atop a patterned panorama. Building on the artist’s signature techniques of assemblage and additive collage, the installation extends over 100 feet long with a richly textured surface that invites visitor engagement.
For City in the Grass, Drew has crafted a sprawling work of varied materials that undulates across the lawn and, at various points, crescendo into rising towers. These sculptures grow in and around a patterned surface made of colored sand that mimics Persian carpet designs and reflects the artist’s interest in East Asian decorative traditions and global design more broadly. Bringing together domestic and urban motifs, City in the Grass invites the Park’s visitors to walk on its surface and to explore the abstract terrain of the work from all angles.
This exhibition is presented by Mad. Sq. Art
Alice Mizrachi and Joe Blens, Untitled
November 10, 2018 to November 10, 2019
William B. Washington Memorial Garden, Manhattan
Map/Directions (in Google Maps)
Please note: This is a past exhibit that is no longer installed in the park.
Working together with gardeners at William B. Washington Memorial Garden, Alice Mizrachi and Joe Blens took the gardeners’ desire to commemorate previous generations of garden members and created a beautiful mural. Along the leaves of each flower are their names delicately inscribed, forever a reminder of past caretakers of the land.
This exhibition is presented by Alice Mizrachi, in partnership with GreenThumb, William B. Washington Memorial Garden, and Building Healthy Communities, funded through the Fund for Public Health NYC.
Alex Katz, Park Avenue Departure
August 26, 2019 to November 10, 2019
Park Avenue Malls from 52nd Street to 59th Street
Park Avenue Malls, Manhattan
Map/Directions (in Google Maps)
Please note: This is a past exhibit that is no longer installed in the park.
Lining the central reservation between 52nd and 59th Street, each of the seven works in this exhibition is an iteration of Park Avenue Departure, an eight-foot-tall cut-out depicting artist Alex Katz’s wife, Ada, formed of porcelain enamel and steel. Katz began producing cut-outs in 1959. Depicting characters from New York’s cultural coterie, the works move beyond representation, acting as vehicles for the artist’s lifelong exploration into formal arrangement and the complexities of surface. The Park Avenue presentation adds a third dimension: the works shift in their composition according to the sightlines of the viewer. The repetition of the sculpture—which depicts the back of a figure such as an anonymous pedestrian would be seen from behind whilst walking the street—is akin to optical illusion, compelling viewers to double-take.
This exhibition is presented by the Fund for Park Avenue and Paul Kasmin Gallery.
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