Art in the Parks

Exhibits by Year:

Current Exhibits

Citywide

LEAP, A View from the Lunch Table: Students Bringing Issues to the Table
May 28, 2009 to September 2009
Various Locations

Description:
Students from ten New York City public middle schools, with two schools representing each borough, have transformed lunch school tables into personalized canvases and created colorful works of public art that touch upon critical social issues in their community and across the globe. The tables, which have been installed in ten community parks across the five boroughs, are a way of giving young teens the chance to voice their opinion and reach out to the public in hopes of inspiring social change through their art. LEAP (Learning through an Expanded Art Program), which has provided public arts–based education to over two million students K-12 throughout New York City, has empowered its students with this project. The program included visits with artists such as Tom Otterness, Dennis Oppenheim, and Kenny Scharf.

Artworks can be found at: Inwood Hill Park and Tompkins Square Park in Manhattan; Commodore Barry Park and Green Central Knoll in Brooklyn; Crotona Park and Claremont Park in Bronx; Juniper Valley Park and Parsons Greenstreet in Queens; and Silver Lake Park and Stapleton Playground in Staten Island.

For more information, please visit the LEAP website.

Bronx

Katie Holten, Tree Museum
June 21, 2009 to October 11, 2009
Grand Concourse, Bronx

Description:
Celebrating the 2009 centennial of the Grand Concourse in the Bronx, Katie Holten's Tree Museum requires no admission fee. The outdoor project features 100 trees along a four–and–a–half–mile stretch of the Concourse. Each tree is marked off with a vinyl sign indicating its species and a phone number linked to an audio program featuring stories, sounds, and knowledge of each tree and its surrounding site. 100 audio files correspond to the 100 trees and are each recorded by various locals, poets, artists, and musicians from the Bronx community, while other segments record the sounds of trees, animals, insects, and water. In the words of Katie Holten, the museum is intended to, “give a voice to the inhabitants, the streets, and neighborhoods from the past, present, and future,” which are all interconnected. The Tree Museum is a collaborative project by the Bronx Museum of Arts and Wave Hill, in cooperation with the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation.

Brooklyn

Wiktor Szostalo and Agnieszka Gradzik, Tree Huggers Project
September 1, 2008 to August 1, 2009
Person Square (Myrtle and Carlton avenues), Brooklyn

Image: "Mohawk Girl," Tree Huggers Project

Description:
The Myrtle Avenue Brooklyn Partnership, NYC Parks & Recreation (Parks), and the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) have collaborated to inaugurate the Partnership's new Myrtle Avenue Public Art program with the 11-month installation of pieces from the Tree Hugger Project at the park triangle at Carlton and Myrtle, and on NYCHA Ingersoll housing development grounds near Myrtle and Prince.

Tree Hugger Project artists Wiktor Szostalo and Agnieszka Gradzik's ongoing public art project combines sculpture made of natural, found, and free materials such as twigs, vines, and tree branches with a simple environmental message. The Project is an ongoing work of Environmental Art designed to help us rediscover our relationship with nature at a very personal and intimate level.

These art installations are part of the larger Myrtle Avenue Arts & Enterprise Initiative which represents a multi-faceted effort to establish the retail corridor as an access point to visual art and cultural activities for community members of diverse socio-economic backgrounds. The Tree Hugger Project serves as a kick-off for the Partnership's new public art program, launching both an open call for proposals for temporary sculpture pieces for locations along Myrtle Avenue as well as a request for sponsors to support future artists and their installations. Seed funding for the new program was provided by the Lily Auchincloss Foundation and Myrtle's Business Improvement District.

Julia Vogl, Leaves of Fort Greene
May 23 to July 12, 2009
Fort Greene Park, Brooklyn

Image: Julia Vogl, Leaves of Fort Greene

Description:
Leaves of Fort Greene relies on the movement of sunlight. In this work, people can walk between large panels of Plexiglas to catch the light streaming through painted images of enlarged foliage. The images painted on the Plexiglas mimic the diversity of the park's foliage and symbolically represent the diverse population of the Fort Greene community. Come picnic and play near this project and encounter the ever-changing combinations of pattern, color, and light!

Manhattan

Spencer Finch, The River that Flows Both Ways
Fall 2008 to Fall 2009
High Line, Manhattan

Description:
The River that Flows Both Ways is a bank of colored glass windowpanes along the tunnel over Chelsea Market. For his project, Stephen Finch took one day to photograph the Hudson River's surface 700 times, taking one shot every minute. These images have been transferred onto 700 panes of glass and placed onto pre–existing windows, which have been installed in a semi–enclosed tunnel between 15th and 16th streets, above the New York City High Line, from which the river can be seen. The piece, which uses a single pixel point from the photographs for each pane of glass, is a study on the ever–changing color of water. The tunnel itself transforms throughout the day as the levels of light shift with time. The title is the translation for the Native American name of the Hudson River, Muhheakantuck.

Finch was born in New Haven, Connecticut and is currently based in Brooklyn, New York. His works constantly seek to unveil the nature of light, color, perception, and memory. This project was organized by Creative Time, with cooperation from Friends of the High Line and NYC Parks.

Julie Farris and Sarah Wayland-Smith, A Clearing in the Streets
May 22 to October 1, 2009
Collect Pond Park, Manhattan

Image: Julie Farris and Sarah Wayland-Smith, Clearing in the Streets, 2009 Photo courtesy of the Public Art Fund

Description:
A Clearing in the Streets is an urban viewing structure that provides a glimpse of a natural habitat in a city setting and demonstrates, in real time, how landscapes evolve. This ten–sided plywood structure is punctuated with viewing slots that reveal an idealized meadow of wildflowers growing among a panoramic mural of a vast blue sky. Starting from seeds and young plants, the meadow will flourish over the duration of the piece turning into a lush native habitat.

This is a project of the Public Art Fund.

Richard Baronio, Spotted Leaf
June 2 to September 25, 2009
Fort Tryon Park, Manhattan

Description:
Richard Baronio’s Spotted Leaf is perfectly suited for its temporary home at the Heather Gardens in Fort Tryon Park. Inspired by his love for gardening, Baronio’s work pays homage to the beauty found in nature. Through the technique of addition and subtraction, Baronio allows his work to grow on its own, never forcing its shape into any particular form. Made from welded stainless steel, Spotted Leaf is an improvisational piece created using this process.

John Morton, Central Park Sound Tunnel
June 10 to September 10, 2009
Central Park Zoo, Manhattan

Description:
Avant–garde composer John Morton's rich sonic collage, Central Park Sound Tunnel, resonates in the pedestrian tunnel between the Central Park Zoo and Children's Zoo adjacent to 5th Avenue. Beginning every half–hour with the ringing of the Delacorte chimes, this 20–minute, 6–speaker sound installation incorporates field recordings made in Central Park over the last year. Randomly–generated selections of ambient sounds such as horses clopping, baseball games, sprinklers whirring, and birds are woven together to form complex ever–changing compositions that echo through the cavernous tunnel. The installation runs every day from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m.

Jessica Stockholder, Flooded Chambers Maid
May 1 to August 15, 2009
Madison Square Park, Manhattan

Image: Jessica Stockholder, Flooded Chambers Maid

Description:
The Flooded Chambers Maid is anchored by a 1300 square foot arrow-shaped platform sprawling across the northern end of the park's Oval Lawn. The platform—a wildly colorful and intricately–patterned combination of custom cut and colored industrial steel and molded fiberglass grating—emerges from a shock of colored rubber mulch to spread itself across the lawn, enveloping a tree and stretching to reach the pathway surrounding the Oval Lawn.

The platform's dynamic pop colors spill from the edge of the platform and Oval Lawn across the bordering pathway, leading to an equally colorful staircase and viewing platform installed on one of the smaller adjacent lawns. From this elevated perspective, visitors are invited to view the installation’s garden: swaths of bright flowers and boldly colored plastic bins and buckets that sweep across the small adjoining lawn.

This project is organized and sponsored by the Madison Square Park Conservancy.

Nathalie Pham & Avani Patel, America's Chinatown Voices
May 9 to August 8, 2009
Columbus Park, Manhattan

Image: Nathalie Pham & Avani Patel, America's Chinatown Voices

Description:
America's Chinatown Voices consists of 80 panels mounted on the fence encircling Columbus Park. Local voices, ideas, stories, images, and statements will be painted by the artists on these wood panels. Every weekend throughout the summer, the artists and volunteers will come to repaint many of the panels with new comments and thoughts, renewing each artwork.

To rouse community support and participation, the slogan has been created, which means “A Gathering of the Arts in Chinatown”, or “yi wei tang ren jie.” This is a rare opportunity for the community to see and hear itself, to create images to reflect itself, and to rally the community to come together and express what is important to them.

To add stories or images to this rotating exhibition please log on to the America's Chinatown website.

This project is organized and sponsored by the Asian American Arts Centre.

James Surls on Park Avenue
March 14 to July 24, 2009
Park Avenue Malls, Manhattan

Image: Big Bronze Walking Eye Flower, 2009

Description:
James Surls is an internationally renowned artist known for creating monumental wood and metal sculptures. Based on natural forms, Surls’ constructions are created using his own iconic imagery of diamonds, vortexes, needles, and flowers. The New York City Parks Public Art Program is pleased to present an exhibition of seven large-scale bronze and stainless steel sculptures that will line the Park Avenue Malls from 50th Street to 57th Street.

East Texas born James Surls has been based in Colorado since 1998. His artwork has appeared in numerous international and national solo and group exhibitions. Surls was given the Living Legend Award by the Dallas Visual Art Center in 1993 and is currently represented by the Charles Cowles Galley, the Gerald Peters Gallery, and the Barbara Davis Gallery.

Queens

Ethan Long, Dirt Sculpture, DDP 2.0
May to October 2009
Rockaway Beach & Boardwalk at Beach 30th Street, Queens

Description:
Far Rockaway resident Ethan Long has created a rammed-earth sculpture along the Rockaway Beach Boardwalk. This large-scale earthwork resembles a minimal cube during the day, but as night falls a series of fiber-optic lights dotting the structure’s surface are revealed. These lights glint like stars against the dirt structure adding a cyberelectric dimension to this powerful tribute of the dexterity of environmental elements.

State Fair
May 10 to August 2, 2009
Socrates Sculpture Park, Queens

Image: Arbol de la Vida--, John Deere Model–790, Margarita Cabrera
Photo by Jonathan Kuhn

Description:
Curated by Alyson Baker, Mark Dion, and Marichris Ty, State Fair is a group exhibition themed around American rural life and uses the platform of the state fair as a means to examine topics such as animal husbandry, specialized horticulture, small scale farming, culinary arts, and the pageantry within these fields that occurs at fairgrounds across the country. The show will also incorporate work that references traditional craft, and the myriad of amusements, rides, competitions, and entertainment that are presented as part of state fairs. Featured artists include Margarita Cabrera, Jennifer Cecere, Emily Feinstein, Charles Gute, Jeanine Oleson, Risa Puno, Dana Sherwood & The Black Forest Fancies, Stephen Shore, Jason Simon, William Stone, and Bernard Williams.