Tuesday, December 5, 2023 – GREAT ART TO SEE THIS MONTH
FROM THE ARCHIVES
NEW PUBLIC ART
TO SEE THIS MONTH
PART 1
ISSUE #1139
UNTAPPED NEW YORK
Rendering Courtesy of Soloviev Foundation
The East Side of Manhattan is about to get a glow-up. Internationally acclaimed artist Bruce Munro will unveil a new Field of Light installation at Freedom Plaza, between 38th to 41st Street east of First Avenue in Manhattan, on December 15th. The installation, which spans more than six acres, will feature “17,000 lowlight, fiber-optic stemmed spheres that will illuminate with a slow subtle change of hue.” Guests are invited to fully immerse themselves in the lights as they walk a winding path along the East River waterfront. Made possible by The Soloviev Foundation, this installation is free and open to the public, but tickets are required. The show is currently sold out through February, but March tickets will be released on February 1st, here.
Courtesy of the Art Production Fund. Image by Daniel Greer
Artist Debbie Lawson makes her mark on New York City as the first UK-based artist to be featured at Rockefeller Center with her Art in Focus exhibit. Located at the Rink Level of 45 Rockefeller Plaza, Lawson has filled the concourse with a mural mosaic of carpet imagery combined with wild animals like boars, deer, and tigers. Viewers will see wild animal imagery camouflaged in carpet patterns while wandering through the space. Lawson was heavily inspired by the architecture of the Art Deco complex, especially the gilded lions at the 50th Street entrance. She created three royal lions that creep around carpets, featured in the vitrine spaces. Her installation blurs the lines between two and three dimensions, as well as between the natural and built world. Lawson’s work will be on view through January 9th, 2024.
The New York Botanical Garden Holiday Train Show is a beloved annual tradition for the holiday season in NYC! On view through January 15th, the show features recreations of famous New York City sights, from the Statue of Liberty to Yankee Stadium. There are more than 200 buildings in all! Each is meticulously crafted by Laura Busse Dolan and the creative team at Applied Imagination, the family-run company that has been creating the train show scenes since 1992. This year, the show will feature a brand-new outdoor train display. T
Photo by Rachel Fawn Alban
NYC Health + Hospital’s art collection has grown by one more mural this month with the unveiling of Rachel Fawn Alban’s Healing in Community photo mural inside NYC Health + Hospitals/Coler on Roosevelt Island. The mural came together over a series of photography workshops with community members, staff, and patients and visits Alban made to the facility. The final piece, which contains portraits of 34 members of the Coler community, is a tribute to each subject’s contributions to that community. A total of nine new murals have been created this year as part of NYCHH’s Community Mural Project. Those murals, along with the existing 26 murals that were part of the project, can all be seen in a new book, Healing Walls: New York City Health + Hospitals Community Mural Project 2019-2021.
Photo Credit: Sebastian Bach
A new art installation comes to Brooklyn at the Lena Horne Bandshell in Prospect Park. Conceptual photographer Kevin Claiborne created a mural featuring phrases like “Where can Blackness reach” and “Where is Black enough,” superimposed upon the repeating face of an unidentified Black youth from Harlem in the early 1900s. The mural offers viewers critical self-reflection and an examination of the Black experience. Guests are encouraged to dive deeper into the origins and embodiment of Blackness with this mural, on view through April 24th, 2023.
TUESDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
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TUESDAY, JANUARY 9TH, 6:30 P.M.
NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
Affordable Housing and the Future of New York’s Open Space
Learn the history of affordable housing in New York City and how Roosevelt Island, created in 1975, is an integral part of that history. Hear about ideas of open space that were supported by this approach to housing and how they are being reconsidered today.
Matthias Altwicker, AIA LEED AP, is an architect and an associate professor of architecture at New York Institute of Technology. Both his practice and research focus on housing and open space, including collaborations with the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) and municipal administrations in New York City and Long Island.
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