Celebrating and Mourning the Northern White Rhinos at Astor Place

Visitors to Astor Place in Manhattan can currently see this sculpture by artists Gillie and Marc Schattner, titled The Last Three. The artists wanted to draw attention to the plight of the Northern White Rhino. At the time that the sculpture was created, there were only three Northern White Rhino still alive in the entire world, two females (Najin and Fatu) and one male (Sudan). What makes this sculpture even more striking is that Sudan died less than a week after the sculpture was dedicated. The Northern White Rhino is virtually extinct, as both Najin and Fatu are sterile. (Although scientists are considering whether Sudan’s sperm could be used to artificially inseminate a Southern White Rhino.) The sculpture is a solemn reminder of the devastating effect humans have had – and still continue to have – on wildlife in Africa.

A few additional interesting facts about this sculpture: It was crowdfunded and is valued at $200,000. The sculpture was cast at a foundry in Thailand, and the three rhinos were actually put together on site at Astor Place. The entire sculpture weighs almost seven tons! The sculpture has also experienced some controversy, as not all art critics have been impressed with its design, and wildlife conservationists have expressed concerned that the artists’ expressed goal of raising money to support conservation hasn’t had entirely transparent results. Still, the sculpture makes one think!

Want to see this sculpture for yourself? It is currently located at Astor Place in Manhattan, near the Cooper Union. It is easily reached by public transportation. If traveling by subway, take the 6 train to Astor Place, or the R train to 8th Street.

Art with a Message in Long Island City

A couple of years ago I wrote about a great art installation in Long Island City called the Top to Bottom Mural Project. For that project, dozens of street artists painted a variety of murals on all four sides of a three-story building. This spring, a new art installation appeared on the same building, covering the original murals. This project is a bit of a mystery. I’ve done some research, but I haven’t yet figured out who has painted it. It looks like the work of one artist or group of artists working together on a single concept. The murals appear to portray refugees from different geographic places and different eras. It’s a powerful work of art – there’s something different to see everywhere you look. Some are in color, while others are in black and white. The figures are woven throughout spans of glass windows. Some are small, no more than a single story in height. Others are as tall as the building.

Anything I might say about these murals is not nearly as effective as they are, so let me get to the photos. I’ve chosen a variety of shots to give you a sense of the project’s magnitude and impact, but there’s even more to see if you go there in person.

If you want to see these amazing murals for yourself, the building is located at 43-01 21st Street in Long Island City. If traveling by subway, the closest subway stations are the F train’s 21st Street/Queensbridge station and the E, G, and 7 trains’ Court Square Station. (The M stops at Court Square on weekdays, but not on the weekend.) If I ever figure out who the artist is, I will update the post later. Note: If you wish to take photos of the murals, I recommend going on a cloudy day. The sun casts shadows on the murals that make photography challenging!

Candy Flags at the Port Authority Bus Terminal

Anyone whose ever been to the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Manhattan knows that it is not our finest example of urban architecture, but it actually contains some great public art. I’ll leave the discussion of the permanent art installations for another day, but today I want to focus my attention on a temporary pop art installation of “Candy Flags” by artist Laurence Jenkell. Titled Crossroads of the World, the exhibition consists of large fiberglass sculptures in the shape of individual wrapped pieces of candy, each one decorated with a different country’s flag. The art is fun and whimsical, adding color to an otherwise drab space. (Although I couldn’t avoid random caution signs and cleaning supplies nearby the art occasionally!)

Here are just a few of the candy flags I found while exploring the Bus Terminal:

United States

Australia

South Africa

Germany

India

Turkey

Mexico

Great Britain

There is also a gallery space which is opened limited hours. Although it was closed the day I visited, I could still see into the space and spotted these intriguing works of art.

Want to see this installation yourself? It is located in the Port Authority Bus Terminal, near Times Square in Manhattan. It is easily reached by subway from either the Times Square/42nd Street/Port Authority subway stations. I believe the installation will be at the Bus Terminal until December 2018.

David Bowie Is Here: A Subway Station Installation

I often write about the public art in NYC subway stations, but the recent David Bowie installation in the Broadway – Lafayette subway station in Manhattan was a real treat. The installation, titled David Bowie Is Here, celebrated Bowie’s life and music in New York City. It was meant to draw attention to a David Bowie exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum. Unfortunately, the subway station installation just ended, but the museum exhibition continues until July 15.

Everywhere you looked in the station there was something to see – photographs representing Bowie’s albums and career, quotes about his views of living in New York City, even song lyrics on the station steps! There was also a map showing locations where Bowie lived and worked in the neighborhood surrounding the station. For anyone who loved David Bowie’s music, the installation was a real treat!

Here are some of the images I captured of the installation, but there were many more.

At some point, I’ll go to the points on the map and write a post about what I find. I’m also hoping to make it to the Brooklyn Museum exhibition before it closes!

A Monument to Raoul Wallenberg on First Avenue

Sometimes I just choose a neighborhood or street in New York City to walk for a few hours, looking for things I haven’t noticed before. Even when I’ve been to that neighborhood many times before, I still find something new every time. That’s the beauty of the city – it’s impossible to ever see everything, do everything. Not long ago I decided to take a walk north on First Avenue in Manhattan, starting on the Lower East Side and ending by the Queensboro Bridge. I walked 60 city blocks in all, a distance of three miles. And, as always, I discovered new things. The most interesting to me was this monument, located on a traffic island in the middle of First Avenue at East 47th Street.

As I approached, I wondered what it might be. Thankfully, the five stone pillars gave a good basic explanation. This site, technically part of the NYC Parks system, is a monument to Swedish Diplomat Raoul Wallenberg. Like me, you might wonder what a monument to a Swedish diplomat is doing in New York City. I had never heard of Raoul Wallenberg before, but the description on the monument, along with more information about Wallenberg on the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s website, educated me about Wallenberg’s importance.

I learned that Wallenberg, who was born in Sweden in 1912, attended university in the United States in the 1930s. After he returned to Sweden, the U.S. War Refugee Board recruited him to go to Budapest, Hungary, in an effort to save as many Hungarian Jews as possible. Wallenberg arrived in Budapest in July 1944, and between that time and January 1945, when Soviet troops entered the city, he and his colleagues were credited with saving approximately 100,000 Jews. He did so by issuing certificates of protection from the Swedish government.

While Wallenberg’s actions helped to save many lives, his personal story had a more tragic ending. The monument explains that he was detained by Soviet forces in January 1945, and no one knows what ultimately happened to him.

By looking closer at the ground surrounding the pillars, I learned more about the the monument’s materials. The five columns are made of black diabase, a type of stone quarried in Wallenberg’s native Sweden. Even more symbolic are the paving stones at the columns’ base; a gift from the city of Budapest, the stones come from the streets of the city’s former Jewish ghetto. I found the replica of Wallenberg’s briefcase, cast in bronze in Sweden, particularly poignant. Further research gave me the names of the monument’s designers: Swedish artists Gustav and Ulla Kraitz.

In 1981, the U.S. Congress voted to make Raoul Wallenberg an honorary U.S. citizen. Wallenberg’s monument is located near the United Nations Headquarters in Manhattan, and there are also other things named after him in the city, including a public school (P.S. 194) in Brooklyn, the Raoul Wallenberg Forest in the Bronx, an the Raoul Wallenberg Playground in Highbridge Park in the northern part of Manhattan.

Socrates Sculpture Park: Nari Ward Exhibition

We’ve visited the Socrates Sculpture Park before, quite some time ago (you can find that post here), but I kept seeing photos of the summer exhibition on social media and had to get there before it ended. For the first time in its history, the park hosted an exhibition featuring a single artist, Nari Ward. Ward was born in Jamaica but currently makes his home in New York City. The exhibition, titled Nari Ward: G.O.A.T., again, was both challenging and intriguing.

One of the things that makes this exhibition unique is that the art was created on site. As visitors roamed around the park, the most common features of the exhibition were the concrete goats. The park’s website contains this explanation of the exhibition’s name and the artist’s use of goats to convey his message:

Nari Ward: G.O.A.T., again examines how hubris creates misplaced expectations in American cultural politics. … G.O.A.T. is an acronym for Greatest of All Time, a phrase commonly used in American sports, made famous by Muhammad Ali, and in hip-hop, most notably, as the title of Queens native LL Cool J’s best-selling album. The title alludes to the African-American experience and political theater – common themes in Ward’s work.

The figure of the goat features prominently in Nari Ward: G.O.A.T., again as the artist’s articulation of social dynamics, conjuring the animal’s attributes and symbolic connotations, from an ambitious climber of great heights to an outcast. A flock of goats cast from lawn ornaments traverse the landscape, both in groups and as solitary individuals, manifesting the show’s title. The appropriation of the word goat, turning an insult into a moniker for excellence, demonstrates the power of wordplay, while the modifier again implies historical repetition. Scapegoat, a forty-foot long hobby toy further develops the goat metaphor and highlights another strand of the show: the satirization of virility, masculinity, and monument.

Intrigued about these goats? Here are some photos of the exhibition. It had rained heavily the day before our visit, hence the puddles, but there were plenty of dry spots to walk on.

The exhibition also included a piece titled, “Apollo/Poll.” Here’s a description of the piece from the park’s website, as well as a photo of what it looked like.

The visual anchor of the show is Apollo/Poll, a towering sign that reads ‘APOLLO’, the letters ‘A’ and ‘O’ blinking on and off to spell out “POLL.” The red LED-lit letters echo that of the iconic neon beacon hanging over Harlem’s Apollo Theater, a renowned venue for African American musicians and entertainers. Ward imagines the sign as a reflection on the enterprise and art of self-promotion, performance, originality, and the meaning of communal acceptance.

But the Nari Ward exhibition was not the only thing I found in the park. There were also these examples of community art projects, although I couldn’t find specific explanations of them.

And there was also this discovery, a free mini-library. Visitors were invited to take a book or leave a book at the site.

This exhibition has now ended, but another great exhibition has recently opened. If you’d like to visit the park, you can find directions here on the park’s website.

A Walk Along Library Way

Pedestrians traveling 41st Street in Manhattan between Fifth Avenue and Park Avenue may notice special street signs if they pay close attention – that two-block stretch is known as Library Way. Embedded within the sidewalk at regular intervals you will find 96 unique bronze plaques. The plaques were designed by sculptor Gregg LeFevre, and each one contains a literary quote. The quotes were chosen by a committee of literary experts picked by the Grand Central Partnership, New York Public Library, and New Yorker magazine. Although the plaques were installed in the late 1990s, the two blocks were officially renamed Library Way in 2003.

Library Way’s location is not an accident. The street leads straight to the main entrance of New York Public Library’s historic Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, which I’ve previously written about here.

Here are some of my favorite plaques. I think that many of my book-loving and library-loving friends and fellow bloggers, including Anabel of The Glasgow Gallivanter, would enjoy this literary-themed public art.

And I’ll end with this one final quote, which will be particularly meaningful for Americans enduring our current political situation.

There are many more for you to discover if you go to Library Way. I hope you have the opportunity to do so!

Subway Station Art: Lexington Avenue-63rd Street Station

I’ve written before about the Second Avenue subway line, which opened for the first time on January 1 of this year. Each of the three new stations has unique public art. (I wrote about those stations here, here, and here.) The new subway line connects with the rest of the system at the Lexington Avenue-63rd Street Station. When the new platform was added at that station, a new entrance was added as well at 3rd Avenue and 63rd Street. MTA Arts & Design added art on three levels: first, on the platform level next to the elevators from the platform to the mezzanine; second, on the mezzanine level; and third, at the street level. All of the art celebrates the old elevated train line that was demolished in 1942.

First, the platform level. There’s a semi-transparent set of panels separating the elevator area from one end of the track. Superimposed upon those panels are stylized photographs of the old elevated train line.

On the mezzanine level is my favorite art at this station, artist Jean Shin’s installation, Elevated. Shin’s work on this level focuses on the people in the neighborhood who would have been the elevated train’s riders before its demolition.

Finally, at the street level are more of Shin’s mosaics – these showing the girders that held up the old elevated line’s tracks being torn down.

If you’d like to see this subway station art for yourself, you can take the F or Q to the Lexington Avenue-63rd Street station. Make sure you enter or exist from the 3rd Avenue entrance/exit, as the Lexington Avenue entrance/exit does not provide access to this art.

JMZ Walls in Brooklyn

There are many different neighborhoods with rich street art traditions in New York City. You might go to Queens, to Long Island City and Astoria, which I’ve written about before here, here, and here. There’s more in the Bronx – as well as Staten Island – and I’ll explore those more in the future in this blog. In Manhattan, you can find murals in Washington Heights (the Audubon Mural Project, which I wrote about here), Harlem (here‘s just part of what’s offered), East Harlem (more on that here), Chelsea, Little Italy, Chinatown, Alphabet City, and the Lower East Side (including the First Street Green, which I wrote about here). And finally, there’s even more offered in Brooklyn – Dumbo (see here), Williamsburg and Bushwick (more on those coming soon), and others.

For this post, I thought I would focus on one particular street art project in Brooklyn, known as JMZ Walls. JMZ Walls is named after the J, M, and Z train lines which run along Broadway in this part of Brooklyn. In fact, you can find all of these murals within just a block or two of Broadway. I’ve also included a few murals from the Dodsworth Street Mural Project, an earlier mural project whose boundaries seem to overlap with JMZ Walls. In fact, it’s really hard to tell where one ends and the other begins.

Here is a description of JMZ Walls by its founders, taken from its website:

JMZ Walls is a group of Bushwick residents who love the diversity and identity of Bushwick. We are committed to providing a unique collaborative experience for artists and our community. We endeavor to seek out available walls for local and global artists to create pieces that will be viewed by the greater Bushwick community. Our goal is to not only beautify our neighborhood, but to provide imaginative works of art the residents of Bushwick would not otherwise have access to. We believe that the streets have the potential to be a gallery to recount the history and progression of New York and the larger global community.

There are so many murals it is impossible to feature them all in a single blog post, so I will concentrate my attention here on my favorites, as well as others that show the diversity of the art work in the neighborhood. Artists’ names – and Instagram accounts, when available – are located below each photo.

BK Foxx (Instagram: @bkfoxx)

WERC (Instagram: @w3rc)

Key Detail (Instagram: @keydetail) and Yu-Baba (Instagram: @juliayubaba)

A Visual Bliss (Instagram: @avisualbliss) and Mr. Prvrt aka Justin Suarez (Instagram: @mrprvrt)

Lexi Bella (Instagram: @lexibellaart)

Kaldea Nakajima (@kaldea)

MURRZ (Instagram: @_murrz) and JCORP (Instagram: @jcorptm)

Ramiro Davaro-Comas (Instagram: @ramirostudios)

Marcelo Ment (Instagram: @marceloment)

Marcelo Ment (Instagram: @marceloment)

La Femme Cheri (Instagram: @la_femme_cheri) and Kimmy Grace (Instagram: @magicalblahblah)

Vince (Instagram: @vballentine99)

Kwue Molly (Instagram: @kwuemolly)

Huetek (Instagram: @huetek)

Thiago Valdi (Instagram: @thiagovaldi)

L7Matrix (Instagram: @l7matrix)

Caro Pepe (Instagram: @caro.pepe)

Tee Marie/Brooklyn Tee (Instagram: @brooklyntee)

Zesoner (Instagram: @zesoner)

Fumero (Instagram: @fumeroism)

Eelco Virus (Instagram: @iameelco)

Shiro (Instagram: @shiro_one)

Adam Kiyoshi Fujita (Instagram: @adamfu)

Turtle Caps (Instagram: @turtlecaps)

Shower Scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho – BK Foxx (Instagram: @bkfoxx)

Want to explore the JMZ Walls and Dodsworth Street Murals for yourself? The easiest way to access them is from the J, M, and Z trains. All of the murals I’ve posted photos of here are located off of Broadway between the Kosciuszko Street station and Marcy Street station. You can also access them from the stations in between, including the Myrtle Avenue, Flushing Avenue, and Lorimer Street stations.

Seated Ballerina at Rockefeller Center

Recent visitors to Rockefeller Center in New York City might have discovered this interesting sculpture by artist Jeff Koons titled Seated Ballerina.

Part of what makes this sculpture unusual is that it’s inflatable nylon – not something you normally see in an outdoor public art installation. It’s scale is also impressive. As you can see from the photograph above, the sculpture towers over bystanders. It is 45 feet high, not including the wooden base.

 

What also makes this sculpture special is Koons’s intent in creating this work. Koons wanted the sculpture to bring public attention to the plight of missing and exploited children in the United States and around the world during National Missing Children’s Month. As part of that goal, efforts have been made to raise donations for the International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children.

The Rockefeller Center website provides this additional description of the sculpture:

Often referencing historical imagery and found objects, Koons based Seated Ballerina on a small porcelain figurine. The sculpture acts as a contemporary iteration of the goddess Venus, and symbolizes notions of beauty and connectivity. Its reflective surface mirrors its immediate environment and engages with each viewer.

I thought I’d leave you with one final view of the sculpture. I think this photograph shows some of the interesting details, including the sculptures structure.

Seated Ballerina was only on exhibition until July 5, 2017, so I’m afraid that if you haven’t already seen it you will have to rely on the photographs instead.