Central Park

NYC PARKS OPENS “CITY AS ECOSYSTEM” IN ARSENAL GALLERY

On Display from September 13 – November 23, 2018

NYC Parks presents the new art exhibition, “City as Ecosystem: NYC Urban Field Station Artists Residency,” on view in the Arsenal Gallery in Central Park. This show highlights projects explored in a variety of media by New York City Urban Field Station (NYC UFS) resident artists Katie Holten, Matthew Jensen, Mary Mattingly, Lize Mogel, Heidi Neilson, and Adam Stoltman, and will be on view through November 23.

“This exhibit offers many fascinating perspectives on the natural world in New York City,” said NYC Parks Commissioner Mitchell J. Silver, FAICP. “From vivid photographs to intricate drawings and maps, there is so much to discover in ‘City As Ecosystem.’ Parks is proud to be a partner to the Urban Field Station, which serves as a fascinating intersection between art and science.”

The NYC UFS Arts and Humanities Residency Program brings art and science together to foster new ideas and programs on urban conservation, environmental stewardship, land management, and community resilience. By engaging artists in thinking about social-ecological systems and natural resource management, the program applies creative approaches to make complex systems and concepts more accessible. The NYC UFS is a partnership between The USDA Forest Service, NYC Parks, and the Natural Areas Conservancy.

The NYC UFS artist residency program embeds artists with UFS staff, projects, and sites, resulting in a wide variety of projects. Katie Holten’s “New York City Tree Alphabet” assigns drawings of local tree species to letters of the Latin alphabet to generate public engagement with nature and conservation. “The Forest Between” by Matthew Jensen is a survey of New York City’s street trees and tree stewards, resulting in a book and a series of walking maps. Mary Mattingly’s “Swale” is a floating food forest built atop a barge that travels to piers in New York City. Lize Mogel has spent the past two years studying the Catskill communities that provide New York City with water. Placed temporarily in parks and public places on city shorelines, Heidi Neilson’s “Moon Arrow” is a sculptural arrow that continually points at the moon. Over the past three years, Adam Stoltman has photographed parks’ ecological and cultural diversity, as well as the many ways in which New Yorkers utilize parks.

Located at historic Fort Totten Park in Queens, NY, the NYC UFS is both a physical place to conduct research and a network of relationships among scientists, practitioners, and facilities focused on urban ecology. The NYC UFS generates research and tools covering natural resource management and social-ecological systems to improve both the health of natural resources and people’s lives in the city. A research facility with lab space, the facility also includes residential quarters, allowing visiting scientists to reside and work in New York City on a temporary basis for data collection and partnership work. The Arts and Humanities Residency Program was started in 2016. Find out more at: https://www.nrs.fs.fed.us/nyc/slc/arts/.

In conjunction with the project, Parks will host "Science of the Living City Seminar – “NYC Urban Field Station Artists in Residents: Two Years of Bridging the Worlds of Art and Ecology” on October 23 at 6:00 p.m. in the Arsenal Gallery. Attendees will have the opportunity to meet the current group of NYC UFS resident artists, as well as past artists, and to hear them talk about their work and its possibilities.

The Arsenal Gallery is dedicated to examining themes of nature, urban space, wildlife, New York City parks and park history. It is located on the third floor of the Parks Department Headquarters, in Central Park, on Fifth Avenue at 64th Street. Gallery hours are Monday – Friday, 9 a.m. – 5 p.m. Admission is free. For more information on the Arsenal Gallery, please call 212-360-8163.

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Harlem Meer Center (formerly Lasker Rink)

Harlem Meer Center