Art in the Parks

Community Heroes aims to bring together residents in the neighborhoods of Fort Greene, Clinton Hill, and Farragut, and celebrate those who empower and nourish these neighborhoods. Individuals were selected as representatives of the community, or heroes, from a pool of nominations collected during a community outreach process. Community Heroes seeks to tell the stories of the neighborhoods’ unsung heroes through the collaboration of newer residents and long-time residents, often people of color whose families have lived in the community for generations. Community Heroes continues to collect nominations for heroes and seeks photographers to take their portraits.

Brooklyn Utopias: Along the Canal is a multi-site exhibition of artworks by more than 200 artists on view outdoors at Coffey Park in Red Hook, outdoors at J.J. Byrne Playground in Park Slope, and indoors in the Great Room at the Old Stone House. Participating artists consider what a “Utopia” (or ideal place) would look like for the communities of the neighborhoods bordering the Gowanus Canal. These include Gowanus, Carroll Gardens/Cobble Hill, and Red Hook.

This exhibition is presented by the Old Stone House and Arts Gowanus.

This immersive and interactive monument engages Prospect Park visitors in a system of reflections, refractions, and nonlinear photo-history that celebrates acts of “leisure and activism”. Viewers experience the historical narrative of Prospect Park through historical photographs from private collections, public archives and New York journalists. The sculpture features three objects of optical illusion—stereoscopes, lenticulars, and prisms—which combine to blend reflections, rainbow-colored light, and history into a singular working system alluding to the intertwined chaos and harmony of public spaces.

This exhibition is presented by Photoville.

This exhibition is presented by BRIC and Prospect Park Alliance.

The Roots of Tuckahoe Marble is an 8 foot-tall, public Tuckahoe marble, bronze, and glass sculpture.

Tuckahoe marble became extremely popular in the early 1800s and was used to build Borough Hall, the Washington Memorial Arch in Washington Square, and more. This historic Tuckahoe marble has mostly been quarried but there were remains in a former marble quarry turned Marriott Suites construction site in Tuckahoe, New York.

This Tuckahoe marble is encased inside of molten glass, generating a transparent, crystalline form. This form is embedded in a bronze cast piece of an organism known as Pando found in Utah's Fishlake National Forest. The glass and marble form merges with the bronze. This work suspends the marble structural material in glass, crystallizing its impermanence while contextualizing it in relation to Pando. Pando has been growing for at least 80,000 years and is the world's largest organism by mass. It has created a forest of thousands of genetically identical quaking aspen trees, which all stem from a single root system.

The Roots of Tuckahoe Marble is coupled with The Sound of Pando In Collaboration with Jerry J. Adams and the SoundMapApp The Sound of Pando is the recorded electrical differential between the leaves and the roots of Pando translated into sound.

The Roots of Tuckahoe Marble is sponsored, in part, by the Greater New York Arts Development Fund of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs administered by Brooklyn Arts Council (BAC).

The Roots of Tuckahoe Marble is a sponsored project of New York Foundation for the Arts.

For the first time since the start of the global COVID-19 pandemic the Red Hook Community Justice Center’s photography program held in person classes during the fall of 2021 in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.Though classes were based in Sunset Park, students traveled from different parts of New York City, some even as far away as The Bronx and Queens Village. Students learned about photography basics and techniques and how to document their lives, interests, and the world around them. Whether it was iconic architecture, dramatic sunsets, hidden nature sprinkled around us, tattoo culture, or the familiar tale of a New York City entrepreneur, the students re-learned how to take a deep breath in and appreciate the world around us. 

This exhibition is presented by Photoville.

This project is sponsored, in part, by the Greater New York Arts Development Fund of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, administered by Brooklyn Arts Council (BAC), The Laundromat Project’s Bed-Stuy Create & Connect Fund and city artist corps grants. The exhibition is also made possible by the collaboration of partners Holes in the Wall Collective and Koda.

This exhibition of photos printed on vinyl banners hung on the fences surrounding Washington Park is a nod to a 1964 book by Leo Marx, which considers why the American Pastoral ideal remains a cultural symbol even after massive industrial growth. Green roofs are now reversing the process he outlined. The Machine is at home on the rooftops of our buildings, and green roofs are the intruders. Although there are no people in this series, man-made machines are evident. These picture prompt thinking about how people impact the landscape and how the American pastoral ideal is still deeply embedded in the minds of Americans across the urban-rural divide.

Nina Chanel Abney’s whimsical new mural celebrates the feeling of first arriving in New York City. When she moved to New York in 2005, Abney would meander through the city streets from Chelsea to Times Square, seduced by the hustle and bustle, bright lights, and the idea of a sleepless city. All of the “touristy” icons that most lifetime and long-time New Yorkers take for granted were gratifying and glossy to Abney, a self-described Midwestern suburbanite. "NYC LOVE" is representative of Abney’s first years as a student and tourist in New York City—an ode to the feeling of newness and unfamiliarity that breeds excitement and possibility.

This mural is presented by Friends of the High Line.