By Marisa Lerer
New York offers a vast array of public art experiences-from single object sculpture in municipal parks to fluctuating installation works. The public art offerings on view in New York City this winter are expansive.
February is an excellent time to experience the High Line without the crowds. The Rail Yards, the third section of the elevated park, opened in the fall and the green space now runs from Gansevoort Street in the Meatpacking District to 34th Street between 10th and 12th Avenues. The High Line art map indicates the sites of the temporary, commissioned public art projects along the path.
The Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) is a trove of public art. The recently installed Sky Reflector-Net, a site-specific collaboration by Arup, Grimshaw and James Carpenter Design Associates, is an oculus at the Fulton Center transit hub, which pulls natural light into the space and reveals the changing sky to commuters. As you travel on the subway, you can access the free MTA Art & Design app, which provides information about other works in the MTA’s vast collection.
Public Art Fund has two projects on view this winter:
Sui Jianguo’s monumental Blind Portraits at the Doris C. Freedman Plaza, Central Park (60th Street and 5th Avenue) and Sam Falls: Light over Time at the Metro Tech Commons in Brooklyn.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Thomas Hart Benton’s America’s Today Mural Rediscovered exhibition explores 10 panels, which Benton originally painted for the New School for Social Research in 1931.
After the MET consider visiting other institutions along Fifth Avenue’s Museum Mile including the Guggenheim’s On Kawara Silence exhibition. Near by is The Fund for Park Avenue’s permanent work Louise Nevelson’s Night Presence V (1972), which is located at Park Avenue and 92nd Street.
If you arrive early for the conference you’ll have the opportunity to see the Madison Square Park Conservancy’s exhibition of Tony Cragg’s Walk of Life on view until February 8.
For a thorough listing of gallery exhibitions by neighborhood, you can subscribe to Andrew Ginzel’s Selected Shows to See email.
In addition, New York City’s Percent for Art has created a Google Map of its projects throughout the five boroughs that includes detailed information about each work.
