Flushing Meadows Corona Park

NYC PARKS AND THE ALLIANCE FOR FLUSHING MEADOWS CORONA PARK UNVEIL A NEW ART IN THE PARKS INSTALLATION

NYC Parks and the Alliance for Flushing Meadows Corona Park have unveiled a new public art installation by Queens-based artist, Yvonne Shortt at Flushing Meadows Corona Park. Addressing the theme “Flushing Meadows Corona Park: A Park for the Future”, the artwork is located on the lawn alongside David Dinkins Circle.

“I am pleased to bring this installation to Flushing Meadows Corona Park,” said NYC Parks Commissioner Mitchell J. Silver, FAICP. “With this new exhibition, we have achieved the goal of our Art in the Parks program, which is to promote the less frequented core of our parks and support local artists. We are excited to unveil this immersive piece, and congratulate Yvonne Shortt on her installation.”

Yvonne Shortt’s Pavilion Landing tells the story a group of intergalactic children whose spaceship has landed in the park after a long journey seeking a ray of hope generated by the 1964-65 New York World's Fair. Shortt spent several days in the park working collaboratively with park visitors to build sculptures of children out of clay. She then made molds from the clay forms, which were used to cast multiple concrete sculptures at David Dinkins Circle. Their spacecraft, inspired by the Tent of Tomorrow’s iconic suspension roof, is fabricated in concrete and aluminum with a clear plastic top that enables visitors to see the ship’s control center with several children at the helm.

Funded by the inaugural 2019 Art in the Parks: Alliance for Flushing Meadows Corona Park Grant, the grant supported the creation of two site-specific, temporary, public art installations. The second exhibition, Hospicio Cabañas (Playable Stage for Thunder Hawk) by Karl Orozco, was on view for a month at the 49th & 111th Street entrance to the park, but was damaged beyond repair. Hospicio Cabañas was a playable stage in the arcade hit Super Street Fighter II and served as home court for Thunder Hawk, the first Mexican video game character. The piece was a pixelated mosaic created with colorful dried corn kernels.

Generously funded by the Alliance, each grantee received an award of $5,000 to create their proposed artwork. Grant recipients were selected through an open application process and chosen by a committee of arts professionals and Queens community members, as well as NYC Parks and Alliance representatives. Proposals were judged according to artistic and creative merit, response to the theme and surrounding community, and suitability to the site.

Know Before You Go

World's Fair Marina

Flushing Meadows Corona Park