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Wednesday, December 2, 2020 – TAKE A SOCIALLY DISTANT TRIP TO ENJOY ART THIS WINTER

By admin

Wednesday,  December 2, 2020

OUR 225th ISSUE

OF 

FROM THE ARCHIVES

OUT-OF-DOORS

EXCITEMENT

THIS WINTER

Thanks to our wonderful friends at

UNTAPPED CITIES NEW YORK (C)

One of the best ways to celebrate the season is to enjoy wonderful public art this winter.

Most are free and easily accessible.  

Many of the sites are available by NYCFerry.

http://Photo by Yunkai. Courtesy of LuminoCity Festival.

December this year is going to be an unusual holiday season for many New Yorkers, with winter ahead amidst a worsening pandemic. Despite this, the holiday spirit is high in New York City, with many exciting, socially distanced art events and installations coming this month. Whether you are spending Christmas and New Year’s Eve alone or with family and friends, don’t forget to check out the many vibrant holiday light shows throughout the city. Brookfield Place is returning strong this month with Luminaries and Light Up Metrotech, while LuminoCity Festival is coming back to Randall’s Island Park.

This holiday season, let it GLOW at The New York Botanical Garden in an all-new outdoor experience illuminating NYBG’s landmark landscape and the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory. With lots of room to spread out, explore a glowing world of color and light featuring the Haupt Conservatory as the centerpiece—its iconic exterior a glittering canvas. Washes of brilliant colors, thousands of dazzling lights, and picture-perfect installations fill the Reflecting Pool and enliven surrounding gardens and collections. Also during your visit, enjoy artistic ice sculpting, music, and pop-up performances by The Hip Hop Nutcracker. Due to COVID, the annual Holiday Train Show will only be open to NYBG Members, Patrons, and Bronx Community Partners.

http://Photo by Julienne Schaer

Socially distant winter video art installation Light Year returns to Dumbo this month. Some of the largest outdoor video art installations in New York City will be projected on the Manhattan Bridge each first Thursday of the month from dusk to 10pm at dimensions of 65 by 40 feet. The full installations are approximately 30 minutes in length, and on December 3rd, the first installation, ”Thresholds and Beyond 1”, will show the places where disparate realities meet, overlap and create hybrid realities.

Light Up MetroTech in Downtown Brooklyn, presented by Brookfield Properties. The event takes place during varied hours over December 2 and December 3, and visitors can walk amongst an exhibition of beautifully carved ice sculptures celebrating “nature emerges” by the talented NY-based Okamoto Studio. This event is free and open to the public, however, for health and safety reasons, a limited number of people will be admitted into the ice sculpture exhibition at MetroTech Commons on Myrtle Street between Bridge and Lawrence Streets at one time.

The holiday installation Luminaries returns to Brookfield Place in Lower Manhattan this month, with a series of mesmerizing light shows and new touchless wishing in the Winter Garden. Designed by the LAB at Rockwell Group, the light show features a canopy of colorful lights emitting from hundreds of lanterns suspended among the palms, along with contactless wishing stations located on the ground. These wishing stations allow visitors to send a motion-activated wish to the canopy of lanterns above, prompting a magical display of lights and colors to appear. For each wish made at the stations, Brookfield Place will donate $1, up to $25,000 to Relief Opportunities for All Restaurants (ROAR). Luminaries runs from November 27 to January 3. 7.W

Long Island City-based sculptor, Jack Howard-Potter, makes large, often kinetic, figurative steel sculptures that can be seen in city governments, sculpture parks, and public art shows around the country. The outdoor public arena is the perfect setting for the academic roots to be easily recognizable and accessible, bridging the gap between the fine art institution and the public. It all comes together in an effort to brighten the landscape and shift one’s gaze to break the daily routine with something beautiful. Torso II, Swinging II, Messenger of the Gods will be on-site at Court Square Park in Queens through September 12, 2021.

Photo by Daniel Avila, courtesy of NYC Parks

Located in Hunter’s Point South through next September, this work is one of French sculptor Gaston Lachaise’s best-known, monumental works dating from the late 1920s. The buoyant, expansive figure represents a timeless earth goddess, one Lachaise knew and sought to capture throughout his career. This vision was inspired by his wife, who was his muse and model, Isabel, that “majestic woman” who walked by him once by the Bank of the Seine. This work is a tribute to the power of all women, dedicated to ‘Woman,’ as the artist referred to his wife, with a capital W. Lachaise devoted himself to the human form, producing a succession of powerfully conceived nude figures in stone and bronze that reinvigorated the sculptural traditions of Auguste Rodin and Aristide Maillol.

WEDNESDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY

Can you identify this site?

send you submission to 
ROOSEVELTISLANDHISTORY@GMAIL.COM

TUESDAY’S PHOTO OF THE DAY

WANDA AND SPEEDY WERE THE GREATEST PAIR OF FELINES.
THEY WERE NOT CONJOINED, BUT NOW ARE CELEBRATING THEIR TOGETHERNESS IN KITTY HEAVEN.
CLARE BELLA AND JAY JACOBSON ADMIRED THEM

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 image are copyrighted (c)
Roosevelt Island Historical Society
unless otherwise indicated

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