August 29/30 Weekend Edition – New Art Ready for Your Viewing
WEEKEND EDITION
AUGUST 29-30, 2020
The
143rd Edition
A SUMMER OF ALL KINDS OF PUBLIC ART
“WOMEN’S RIGHTS PIONEERS”
IN
CENTRAL PARK
“LATTICE DETOUR”
ON THE ROOF OF
THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM
“KING NYANI”
IN
HUDSON YARDS
“BECAUSE ONCE YOU ENTER MY HOUSE….”
AT
SOCRATES SCULPTURE PARK
WOMEN’S RIGHTS PIONEERS
The first monument honoring real women in Central Park was unveiled Wednesday –commemorating the centennial anniversary of the 19th Amendment’s ratification and its certification. “We have broken the bronze ceiling,” Meredith Bergmann is the renowned sculptor who created the Women’s Rights Pioneers Monument, which honors suffragists Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. “It seems especially appropriate that today, on Women’s Equality Day, we are unveiling a new statue in Central Park for the first time in over six decades: the first statue of real, nonfictional women, the first statue of an African American and significantly a statue that depicts three great Americans working together,” former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in remarks at the event.
(USA Today)
Already on view in NYC Parks are Eleanor Roosevelt and Harriet Tubman
LATTICE DETOUR
On the roof of the Metropolitan Museum this new sculpture is being revealed this first week of the reopening:
Héctor Zamora’s sculpture “Lattice Detour,” a curved wall of terra cotta bricks, is over 100 feet long and 11 feet high.Credit…Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times
KING NYANI
KING NYANI
There’s a giant gorilla sculpture in Hudson Yards
BY DANA SCHULZ
Photos by Tina Sokolovskaya
To raise awareness and funds for the critically endangered gorilla species, public artists Gillie and Marc Schattner have created a massive sculpture of the animal that arrived this week in Hudson Yards’ Bella Abzug Park.
Titled King Nyani, Swahili for gorilla, it’s the world’s largest bronze gorilla sculpture and can fit two to three humans just in its hands. Photos of King Nyani’s installation by Tina Sokolovskaya Gillie and Marc have dedicated a large part of their career as artists to bringing attention to the world’s endangered species through their Love The Last project.
Two years ago, they brought a 17-foot-tall sculpture of three rhinos to Astor Place and Downtown Brooklyn. As a protest of the sale of rhino horns, it depicted the last three Northern White Rhinos Najin, Fatu, and Sudan. Photo by Tina Sokolovskaya And the artists get passionately involved in their projects. King Nyani is based on the head of a family of silverback mountain gorillas that Gille and Marc encountered on a trip to Uganda.
They say they were moved to tears watching the gorilla exhibit empathy and kindness as opposed to the “scary” image so often portrayed. “It was beautiful watching the silverback interacting with his family. He was so gentle and loving and clearly cared deeply for his family,” said Marc. Gillie added, “We knew we had to let the world know about this loving and gentle side of gorillas. They are often so misunderstood and thought of as scary and dangerous animals. But if they were able to see the silverback, maybe they wouldn’t be so scared.”
But due to illegal poaching, war and deforestation, there are only about 1,000 mountain gorillas and fewer than 3,800 eastern lowland gorillas left in the wild. “We couldn’t sit back and do nothing when these amazing creatures that are genetically so similar to us are in danger,” said Marc.
Inspired by the movie scene where King Kong grabs the woman in his hand, King Nyani’s hand is open for visitors to sit and interact with him. “We wanted to create a sculpture where the public could really get close to the silverback, both physically and emotionally. Being able to sit in his hand and look up to into his gentle face we hope they will fall in love and join the movement to save the gorillas,” explains Gillie.
Through a partnership with the Hudson Yards-Hell’s Kitchen Alliance and NYC Parks, the sculpture will be on display in Bella Abzug Park as of August 24, 2020 and will remain on view for nine months.
BECAUSE ONCE YOU ENTER MY HOUSE IT BECOMES OUR HOUSE
Because Once You Enter My House It Becomes Our House’,
2020 Plywood, posters, steel, LEDs, and performances 44 × 44 × 21 ft
at Socrates Sculpture on Vernon Blvd.
Jeffrey Gibson’s ‘Because Once You Enter My House It Becomes Our House’ serves as an homage to ingenuity of Indigenous North American peoples and cultures, to pre-Columbian Mississippian architecture, and to queer camp aesthetics. Gibson designed the multi-tiered structure to reference the earthen architecture of the ancient metropolis of Cahokia, which was the largest city of the North American Indigenous Mississippian people at its height in the thirteenth century. The earth mound of the pre-Columbian ziggurat is represented in Gibson’s multi-tiered monument with a plywood structure adorned with a vibrant surface of wheat-pasted posters. The posters integrate geometric designs inspired by the Serpent Mound located in Ohio, another monument of the Mississippi Valley, alongside texts that operate as activist slogans. Gibson also curated Indigenous led performances to activate the structure over the course of the installation. Image by Scott Lynch
WEEKEND PHOTO
WHAT AND WHERE IS THIS?
SEND RESPONSE TO: ROOSEVELTISLANDHISTORY@GMAILCOM
WIN A KIOSK TRINKET.
FRIDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
SIDE DOOR OF CHAPEL OF THE GOOD SHEPHERD
VICKI FEINMEL.#1
JAY JACOBSON #2
NOW AT THE KIOSK
YOUR OWN SUV TAXI $4-
KIOSK OPEN WEEKEND 12 NOON TO 5 P.M.
SHOP IN PERSON OR ON-LINE
ROOSEVELTISLANDHISTORY@GMAIL.COM
ELEANOR ROOSEVELT AND HARRIET TUBMAN ALSO ARE ALREADY REPRESENTED IN NYC PARKS
EDITORIAL
The Metropolitan Museum is re-opening this weekend. I will be thrilled to see my old friends there. We all have our favorite galleries. Mine are the European Galleries, American Wing and Costume Institute. I just remembered I joined the Met as a member for the museum’s 100th anniversary……..and this is there 150th anniversary. I re-joined again, not at the $10- level of 5 decades ago. It was a big deal with Thomas Hoving running the museum and paying over $2.300,000 for Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer. Hoving was the wonder man who took the museum and made it a hip place to visit and made people really want to visit a museum.
I will admire the grand floral displays in the lobby and enjoy having part of the city being “normal”.
Judith Berdy
Funding Provided by:
Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation Public Purpose Funds
Council Member Ben Kallos City Council Discretionary Funds thru DYCD
Text by Judith Berdy
Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to
Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS
Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website
Edited by Deborah Dorff
ALL PHOTOS COPYRIGHT RIHS. 2020 (C)
PHOTOS IN THIS ISSUE (C) JUDITH BERDY RIHS
Copyright © 2020 Roosevelt Island Historical Society, All rights reserved. Our mailing address is:
rooseveltislandhistory@gmail.com
Leave a comment