Within the well-patrolled boundaries of Madison Square Park, it’s hard not to see Hugh Hayden’s Brier Patch as just another amenity, offering a pleasant opportunity for virtue signaling.
Madison Square Park
Posted inOpinion
In Manhattan, a Makeshift Forest Is Haunted by the Ghosts of Imperialism
The location of Maya Lin’s “Ghost Forest” next to the Flatiron building evokes for me, a Filipina American, the legacy of the architect Daniel Burnham.
Posted inArt
Arlene Shechet Smuggles Politics into Madison Square Park
The tireless artist, on the vanguard of experimental sculpture, has decided that the Trump Era requires public art to be political.
Posted inArt
Transforming Walking and Talking into Poetry at Madison Square Park
From July 4 to 8, MC Hyland will be in residence among Josiah McElheny’s sculptures, exploring the connection between walking and poetry.
Posted inArt
Is It a Trojan Horse?
In 1989, after a protracted litigation, a jury of five voted four to one in favor of removing Richard Serra’s “Tilted Arc” (1981) from Federal Plaza in Manhattan, where it had stood for nearly a decade.
Posted inArt
Seeing the World from Nature’s Many Perspectives
Brooklyn-based artist Teresita Fernández is well known for using unconventional materials and creating large-scale sculptures and installations that draw our attention to visual perception.
Posted inArt
Crystal Balls of Cast-off Technology Illuminate a Park in Manhattan
Experiencing Paula Hayes’s Gazing Globes in Madison Square Park is recommended for after sunset, when the spheres are illuminated in the night like crystal balls of divination.
Posted inArt
12 Marble Snowmen Laugh at Snowmageddon
Serendipitously anticipating the city’s underwhelming blizzard, a troupe of marble snowmen — the latest installment in Swiss artist Peter Regli’s Reality Hacking series — was installed in Manhattan near Madison Square Park this past Sunday.
Posted inArt
The Folly of Performance
Performance art doesn’t have to be so heavy. It can be light, like diving head-first into the trash, in Tamar Ettun’s case.
Posted inArt
Water Towers as Monuments to Immigration and Identity
Never had a water tower — its silhouette ubiquitous to New York’s skyline — been examined so carefully. Each was elevated eight feet above the ground on black stilts, and locals and tourists approached them curiously, standing beneath and craning their necks upward to see the contents within.