Socrates Sculpture Garden Archives

NYC Parks & Socrates Sculpture Park to Break Ground on $5.7 Million New Facility ~ ‘The Cubes’

Long Island City, NYC Parks Department, Socrates Sculpture Garden

Renderings of The Cubes at Socrates Sculpture Park, courtesy LOT-EK

Socrates Sculpture Park is excited to break ground for “The Cubes,” a new 2,640 square-foot, two-story building that will become a permanent home for Socrates Sculpture Park, designed by the innovative architecture studio LOT-EK. Multi-functional by design, the space will provide new facilities for the park’s administrative offices, arts education and community work, creating opportunities for year-round public programming. Constructed from up cycled shipping containers, the building’s origin, materials, and design invokes Socrates Sculpture Park’s founding principles of creative reclamation, adaptable re-use, and honoring the neighborhood’s industrial roots.

NYC Parks Commissioner Sue Donoghue will join Socrates Sculpture Park Executive Director Tamsin Dillon, Queens Borough President Donovan Richards, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs Commissioner Laurie Cumbo, Socrates Sculpture Park Board Member Stuart Match Suna, City Council Member Julie Won, Assemblymember Catherine Nolan, Community Board 1 Chair Marie Torniali, and members of the community to officially break ground on “The Cubes.”

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Thirteen Artists Offer Their Interpretations of Sanctuary in the 2021 Socrates Annual, Opening October 2nd

Long Island City, Socrates Sculpture Garden

Rachel Frank, Sentinel Offering Kernos: Woodcock, Oysters, Lichen. Stoneware ceramic, glazes, steel, spooky, and spray paint

During the past year and a half, places of sanctuary have been more important than ever. A new exhibition opening at Socrates Sculpture Park addresses several interpretations of sanctuary – as spaces of rest and protection; as sacred sites; and as supportive environments. Thirteen artists selected through an open call have created eleven new projects on this theme. Projects were created onsite at the Park’s outdoor studios with financial support and technical assistance as part of the Socrates Annual Fellowship.

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Socrates Sculpture Garden presents Monuments Now for Summer 2020

Socrates Sculpture Garden

Pictured: Digital rendering of the Park floating above New York City by 2016 Artist Fellow collaborators Dachal Choi & Mathew Suen for their project ‘AQ625: Site on the Move.’

Socrates Sculpture Garden opens its gates to the very controversial topic surrounding monuments. The new installation, Monuments Now, addresses the role of monuments in society and commemorates underrepresented narratives with a focus on diasporas, indigenous, and queer histories. The Garden and its new installations offer New Yorkers a very welcomed safe way to venture out. Monuments Now will roll out in three parts, with the first part on view now.

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Chronos Cosmos: Deep Time, Open Space at Socrates Sculpture Garden

by AFineLyne, Long Island City, Socrates Sculpture Garden

Miya Ando ~ Ginga (Silver River), 2019. Steel and silk gauze. 15 x 3.5 x 91 feet. Images courtesy the artist and Socrates Sculpture Park. The title is the Japanese word for galaxy and draws on Japanese understanding of time as informed by and experienced through the natural world. The installation is suspended along the Park’s East River shoreline.

Chronos Cosmos: Deep Time, Open Space transforms Socrates Sculpture Park into a gateway to the universe, presenting artworks that consider space, time, and matter in relationship to celestial entities and earth-bound processes. In the open-air environment of the Long Island City waterfront park, the exhibition uses scale to put the universe in context, creating connection points to space and time.

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Don’t Miss The Socrates Annual!

Art Installation, Long Island City, Socrates Sculpture Garden

Artist Anyone Konst. “Free Peddler”. Image via socratessculpturepark.org

The Socrates Annual is on view at Socrates Sculpture Park. For the 2018 exhibition, projects range from a decolonial greenhouse to audio-sculptural portraits of Queens hip-hop legends. Approaches vary among community-centered pedagogy and production, material experimentation, and redeployment of historical forms of construction, among others. This year contemporary and historical land-use is examined by several artists in projects including a labyrinth of fences and gates, and a steel and textile installation that traces the East River ecology of waste flows through land, water, and biological life. Additionally, several artists employ representations of the human figure, perhaps suggesting a time for reflection upon the Humanist philosophies that seem precarious with looming climate change and ongoing political conflict.

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