IMAGE CREDITS: Nicholas Galanin. In every language there is Land / En cada lengua hay una Tierra, 2023. Corten steel. Courtesy of the artist and Peter Blum Gallery. Photo: Nicholas Knight, courtesy Public Art Fund, NY. Presented by Public Art Fund at Brooklyn Bridge Park, New York City, May 16 through Fall 2023.
On May 16, 2023, Public Art Fund will debut In every language there is Land / En cada lengua hay una Tierra, a monumental corten steel sculpture by artist Nicholas Galanin. The artist’s first public artwork in New York City, this new 30-foot tall sculpture combines references to the US/Mexico border wall and Pop Art, serving as a point of focus to consider the legacy of colonization and its impact on migration and our relationships with Land across generations, cultures, and communities. In every language there is Land / En cada lengua hay una Tierra questions the concept of border walls, which are designed to cut across land and water, restricting access to the migratory routes necessary for various life forms.
Bringing attention to displaced people everywhere, Little Amal Walks NYC, in partnership with St. Ann’s Warehouse, will visit each of our five Boroughs ~ meeting all New Yorkers including civic leaders, community groups.
The giant puppet named Little Amal, imaging a 10-year-old Syrian refugee girl, has traveled over 5,500 miles, brings with her a message of hope and solidarity for displaced people everywhere.
Today, Public Art Fund unveiled a group exhibition at Brooklyn Bridge Park, co-curated by artist Hugh Hayden and Public Art Fund Adjunct Curator Daniel S. Palmer. This is the first time in his career that Hayden will take on the dual role of artist and co-curator. Titled Black Atlantic, the exhibition brings together new site-responsive artworks by Leilah Babirye, Hugh Hayden, Dozie Kanu, Tau Lewis, and Kiyan Williams. Their commissions, wide-ranging both materially and conceptually, create an exchange of ideas among artists of a similar generation that proposes an open, multifaceted, and heterogeneous idea of identity in the United States today. The exhibition will be on view from May 17 through November 27, 2022 throughout Brooklyn Bridge Park.
Web Banner Option B Miho Hiranouchi, Being., 2021 Watercolor, charcoal, pastel, oil ink, 22 x 48 in. Image courtesy of the artist
The Art Students League’s Exhibition Outreach program presents its first student exhibition of 2022, in partnership with ChaShaMa and featuring 25 artists exploring themes of mystery, magic, and light. Titled Searchlight, the exhibition is organized by guest Curator Samuel Rowlett, a League alumnus, and is on view at One Brooklyn Bridge Park January 6–March 10, 2022. The exhibition plays in a range of shadowed depths and colorful surfaces, taking viewers from the small, quiet space of a computer screen to the vast landscape of an entire world. A glowing thread weaves its way through each work on view; it runs through a cloud-covered sun in winter and chases a pair of friends ambling through a forest. Light, and the ways in which it can be filtered and interpreted, appears before us in steel thorns, in driftwood textured with beeswax, and in rich abstractions. What is this guiding light in search of? Where will it take us?
Hindu Lamp Ceremony, Image via Brooklyn Bridge Park
Brooklyn Bridge Park’s Pebble Beach will host the 9th Annual Hindu Lamp Ceremony on Saturday, August 7th. This traditional Aarti ceremony conveys gratitude to mother river, reflects on community, and remembers loved ones.
Claudia Wieser in her studio. Photo: Michael Schultze
On July 29, Public Art Fund will unveil Rehearsal, Berlin-based artist Claudia Wieser’s public art debut. Featuring five distinct large-scale geometric sculptures clad with hand-painted glazed tiles, panels featuring photographs of New York City and Roman and Greek antiquities, and mirror polished stainless steel, Rehearsal will create an immersive experience for park goers to explore. The cluster of sculptures will be located at the iconic terminus of Washington Street, where the Manhattan Bridge frames the Empire State Building. Juxtaposed with the surrounding architecture and natural landscape of Brooklyn Bridge Park, Rehearsal highlights the dynamism of the city and its people. The installation can be seen as both a meeting place and a theatrical set that hearkens back to ancient Roman forums—public spaces where people could assemble, interact, and exchange ideas. Inviting park goers into the installation to explore the painted, photographic, and mirrored details of Wieser’s works, Rehearsal will offer a moment of pause and reflection, and also allow the public to become actors in their own urban narrative. Rehearsal is Wieser’s first-ever outdoor public exhibition and will be on view from July 29, 2021 through April 17, 2022 at Brooklyn Bridge Park’s Main Street Park section.
Concept rendering of detail from Davina Semo: Reverberation, to be on view at Brooklyn Bridge Park Pier 1, Aug 13 – April 18, 2020. Courtesy of Public Art Fund, NY.
Davina Semo: Reverberation will unveil five new painted bronze bells by Davina Semo In Brooklyn Bridge Park this August. The installation will explore our relationship to industrial materials and the built environment that we encounter every day.
Antony Gormley: New York Clearing (2020) was unveiled at Pier 3, Brooklyn Bridge Park as part of the international public art project, CONNECT, BTS, introducing the pioneering global project from Korea connecting five cities and twenty-two artists, each contributing their own unique philosophy and imagination.
A view of Siah Armajani’s ‘Bridge Over Tree’ in Brooklyn Bridge Park from the Manhattan Bridge
The Iranian-born, American sculpture artist, Siah Armajani is best known for his works of public art in bridges, gazebos, gardens, and reading rooms across the United States and Europe.
The artist has arrived in New York with a two-pronged installation and exhibition. The outdoor component will be featured by The Public Art Fund in Brooklyn Bridge Park with the installation Bridge Over Tree (1970), which was first exhibited as a temporary installation at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis nearly fifty years ago (1970). It consists of a 91-foot-long walkway with open, trussed sides and a shingled roof, with a set of stairs at the midpoint that climb and descend over a small evergreen tree. The installation is located on the Empire Fulton Ferry Lawn at Brooklyn Bridge Park between the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges. Siah Armajani: Bridge Over Tree is curated by The Public Art Fund Director and Chief Curator Nicholas Baume.
The original concept and installation by Armajani was created as an outdoor, site-specific piece for the Walker Art Center’s 9 Artists/9 Spaces exhibition. Coinciding with The Public Art Fund installation, Siah Armajani: Follow This Line is on view at The Met Breuer. Featuring nearly one hundred works made over the past 60 years, Siah Armajani: Follow This Line is the first major U.S. retrospective of the preeminent Iranian-American artist Siah Armajani (b. 1939).
Here, we explore both the indoor and outdoor components, beginning at Met Breuer, and moving to Brooklyn Bridge Park with the MET and the Public Art Fund.
