Art in the Parks

Photoville NYC 2022 marks the 11th year of the annual festival and its third year bringing photography to all five boroughs in New York City. The festival celebrates and showcases photographers and organizations from New York and around the world and vitally broadens the possibilities of art experienced beyond museum and gallery spaces. At Photoville NYC 2022, the beauty and specificity of New York’s myriad outdoor settings become backdrops for arresting visions of multitudinous and diverging realities.

Locations: Exhibitions in parks can be found in Barretto Point Park and Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx; Anchorage Plaza and Prospect Park in Brooklyn; Bella Abzug Park, Coleman Skate Park Park, and St. Nicholas Park in Manhattan; Astoria Park and Travers Park in Queens; and Alice Austen House and South Beach Promenade in Staten Island. 

This exhibition is presented by Photoville.

BENCHMARKS is a comprehensive student arts residency program that inspires young people to tackle major social issues and become engaged citizens. Students create large-scale, meaningful artwork on benches for public display, to effect social change. Issues such as racism, gender inequality, drug abuse, homelessness, and religious intolerance are addressed through research and facilitated discussion. The project culminates in a visit to a guest artist’s studio and in the creation and public display of issue-based works of art on benches in parks citywide. This program serves up to 1,250 New York City public school students in grades 5-9 in 35 schools in disadvantaged communities citywide.

The benches can be found in Rev. T. Wendell Foster Park in the Bronx, Prospect Park Parade Ground in Brooklyn, Thomas Jefferson Park in Manhattan, and Flushing Meadows Corona Park in Queens. 

This exhibition is presented by the Center for Educational Innovation’s Arts Education Program.

"Power Flowers” is a vibrant temporary art installation that brightens and beautifies the entrance to Bronx Park at Webster Avenue and 204th Street. Consisting of circular medallions that are individually designed to resemble flowers or actually based on flowers, they were created using the handcraft technique of crochet. The crocheted medallions are multi-colored and densely worked, thereby creating an explosion of color which will be seen from a long distance.

This exhibition is presented by Mosholu Preservation Corporation.

In honor of the Boricua community, “Belonging” is a visual ode to the majestic and resilient community. Its convergent waves serve as a metaphor for the universal pride that all Puerto Ricans carry within and the soulful commitment to their advancement-whether on the island or in New York City. Standing together forever, united as one, familia.

This artwork is exhibited as part of NYC Parks’ Creative Courts initiative, which works with partner organizations to transform dated sports courts and asphalt plazas into vibrant and welcoming places with original murals that re-engage communities with their local parks.

This exhibition is presented by Nike.

The ultimate challenge is climbing the highest mountain, testing yourself to reach your greatest accomplishment. Once you conquer it, you achieve all the glory.

This exhibition is presented by Hoops in the Sun and Project Backboard.

This mural is inspired by Concrete Plant Park and the wealth of activities and opportunities it gives the community to connect with nature. The imagery walks you through the park trail, navigating through the food forest, neighboring plants, and the Bronx River.

This exhibition is presented by the Bronx River Alliance and Bronx Health REACH.

Please note: Concrete Plant Park will be closed from November 1, 2021 through March 1, 2022 due to nearby construction. The mural will not be viewable during this time. For more information about this closure, please visit our Concrete Plant Park page. 

Joanne Howard’s public art installation The Elders is comprised of small brass sculptures cast from carved apples. Howard carves faces into apples before letting them sit for a period of time. As the apples dehydrate, their faces take on the role of wizened elders. Howard sees these miniature characters as guardians of nature, here to protect the natural environment and also to gently remind passersby of the preciousness and precarious state of our green spaces.

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. 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, bridges cultural differences through the universality of birds, and serves as an educational tool.

This interactive installation of multiple cut out figures made of plywood are applied with collage and photographs from Mardok’s @ny.strong photography project. As people walk through the portals they’re transported into the energy of the protests of 2020: the unified experience of citizens across ethnicities and genders fighting for freedom and justice for Black lives. The team has also collaborated with the Bronx River Art Center on a program focused on public art and activism, offered to a team of young adults who are creating their own sculptures and photographs. Their work will be shown in a group exhibition responding to the Black lives Matter movement, in conjunction with the installation of KaN+Mardok’s sculptures at Poe Park in the Bronx.

The Plywood Protection Project is an initiative to collect the plywood used by NYC businesses to board up their windows during the protests of 2020 and redistribute it to artists, extending and repurposing the life of this material. Arts not-for-profit worthless studios collected over 200 boards of plywood and initiated an open call for artists, eventually selecting five local makers to participate in a unifying public art project across all five boroughs of New York. This piece is one of the five created by the project, each installed in a different borough of New York City.

This exhibition is presented by worthless studios.

This project is about connecting the history of the Aqueduct Walk, tying its role in public health during the cholera epidemic to the community's resilience through COVID-19 today. Community members' family photos and memories in and around Aqueduct Walk were collected through email and in-person scanning events. These photos are displayed alongside historical photos of the area, collected in partnership with the Bronx Community College, and oral history interviews with longtime community members.