Spanish artist Cristina Iglesias invites the public to consider the forgotten terrains and geographic history of New York City in a new public art installation opening this June, her first major temporary public art project in the United States. Landscape and Memory places five bronze sculptural pools, flowing with water, into Madison Square Park’s Oval Lawn, harkening back to when the Cedar Creek coursed across the land where the park stands today. Building on Iglesias’ practice of unearthing the forgotten and excavating natural history, Landscape and Memory resurfaces in the imaginations of contemporary viewers the now-invisible force of this ancient waterway.
On view from June 1 through December 4, 2022, Landscape and Memory will be complemented by a slate of interdisciplinary public programs, free and open to the public. Presented within and responding to the work, these include a summer music series curated with Carnegie Hall as well as performance programming organized in conjunction with The Kitchen. Cristina Iglesias will also serve as the keynote speaker for the Conservancy’s annual public art symposium, held this year on Friday, June 3, which will investigate the role of public art in shedding new light on buried histories, both metaphorically and physically.