Monday, March 5, 2021 – ALL OVER THE CITY ARTISTS HAVE BEEN CREATING FUN PROJECTS

By admin

329th Issue

MONDAY, APRIL 5, 2021

GREAT NEW

OUT-OF-DOOR ART

BLOOMING FOR SPRING

  FROM UNTAPPED NEW YORK

Reclining Liberty by Zaq Landsberg, Marcus Garvey Park

Spring is a great time to be out and about in New York City seeing public art. It’s not too cold, it’s not too hot, it’s usually just right. There is an abundance of new public art on display this month, from up in the Bronx, where an eagerly awaited exhibition by Yayoi Kusama will be featured at New York Botanical Garden, to Prospect Heights, Brooklyn where a meditative sound installation bellows among blossoming cherry trees. You could promenade through the city taking in culture and art without ever being inside. Check out the new and ongoing public art on display and plan to make a day of fresh air art experiences.

 

Reclining Liberty by artist Zaq Landsberg is set to premiere, after much delay, in Morningside Park on April 26. The slightly weary-looking Lady Liberty, posed on her side, head propped up by her hand seems to be waiting, like most of us, for better days that surely are coming.

The sculpture is composed mostly of plaster resin and coated with oxidized copper paint to mimic the copper patina of the real Statue of Liberty. The artist, in explaining his draw to monuments states, “They are literally where the political and the aesthetic meet.” You can visit the public art statue at the base of the stairs at 120th Street and Manhattan Avenue in Harlem.

Artists Gillie and Marc created this bronze statue of late U.S. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to commemorate her in the struggle for gender equality and human rights. The statue, located in downtown Brooklyn is one of ten statues of notable women installed in NYC by the artists to increase the representation of women in public sculpture from 3 to 10% . The double-step base represents the Supreme Court and the climb she made to get there.

Narcissus Garden by Yayoi Kusama Photo Courtesy of New York Botanical Garden

The long-delayed garden exhibition KUSAMA: Cosmic Nature will open at New York Botanical Garden on April 10th. The exhibition will be a comprehensive survey of the Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama lifelong obsession with the natural world. KUSAMA: Cosmic Nature will include programs, a publication, and exhibits both in the gardens and within the surrounding buildings of the 250-acre landscape.

The enormous bronze needle and button public art sculpture you may have seen on 7th Ave next to the garment district info kiosk has a companion for the summer titled Pin Cushion. The giant floral arrangement has transformed the Garment District Alliance kiosk into a delightful place to stop, look and get information about the district.

Pin Cushion was created by Patricia Gonzalez and Carlos Franqui of Floratorium and is made up of 50+ bales of curly willow, nine wisteria bales, and hundreds of faux hydrangeas, poppies, greenery, and butterflies. New Yorkers are encouraged to stop by and visit the exhibit through the summer.

The Flag Project 2021 is a public art installation celebrating the medium of photography with 83 winning submissions produced as flags flown on the iconic flagpoles of Rockefeller Center. The public art installation also features guest photographers, invited by Aperture, who have helped define New York in photographs, including Kwame Brathwaite, Renee Cox, Elliott Erwitt, Duane Michals, Ryan McGinley, Susan Meiselas, Nan Goldin, and Tyler Mitchell.

The 2021 Flag Project installation will showcase the diversity, energy, endurance and imagination of NYC with photographs of, for or inspired by the city’s faces, objects and textures. The Flag Project is on display through April 30.

Aperture and Rockefeller Center present an outdoor exhibition of New York City street and subway photographs by Jamel Shabazz, who is known for his authentic and spontaneous depictions of NYC life. Jamel’s career began in 1980 and spans forty years. Fourteen of Shabazz’s portraits will be displayed in the heart of the city, installed on seven-foot-tall lightboxes across Rockefeller Center’s public plazas. From youth culture to a wide range of social conditions, Shabazz’s street photographs are an endearing and truthful depiction of his subjects from the 1980s to the present. You can see them in the Rockefeller public plazas alongside the Flag Project installation.

Renowned for his pop culture-inspired characters in paintings and sculpture and playful use of abstraction with meticulous execution, the show covers drawings, paintings, bronze sculptures, objects and monumental wooden sculptures of his well known COMPANION character. Museum visitors can digitally interact with the art through AR (augmented reality) app on their smartphones. The exhibition is on view through September 5, 2021.

MONDAY PHOTO
IMAGE OF THE DAY

Send your entry to ROOSEVELTISLANDHISTORY@GMAIL.COM

WEEKEND PHOTO

HALL OF FAME OF GREAT AMERICANS
BRONX COMMUNITY COLLEGE, FORMERLY NYU UPTOWN
JAY JACOBSON, M. FRANK, ANDY SPARBERG, T. VISEE,
WILLA KLEIN
ALL GOT IT RGHT!!

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)

Sources: 

UNTAPPED NEW YORK

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