Spanning 32 feet along the mezzanine walls at the 42nd Street - Port Authority Bus terminal subway station is Lisa Dinhofer’s “Losing My Marbles,” a glass mosaic work depicting toy marbles, challenging the viewer’s imagination by playing with illusions that alter physical perceptions of space and movement. Dinhofer describes herself as an ‘illusionist’ artist rather than a ‘realist,’ as the spaces she creates in her artwork are believable, but not actually real. Rather, she designs and invents her own space in her work. Installed in 2003, the work is one of many in the MTA’s “Art for Transit” initiative, which encourages the use of public transit by presenting visual and performing arts projects in subway and commuter rail stations, while simultaneously increasing access to public art. The permanent art program is one of the largest and most diverse collections of site-specific public art in the world, with over 300 works by world famous, mid-career, and emerging artists alike.
“NYC LOVE” by Nina Chanel Abney
Newly adorning the High Line on the West Side of Manhattan is a mural by artist Nina Chanel Abney, entitled NYC LOVE. The piece is an homage to and celebration of New York City via its iconography. Abney first moved to New York as a self-described Midwestern suburbanite in 2005, and found great comfort and joy in some of the city’s more tourist-oriented icons that many longtime New Yorkers take for granted. NYC LOVE brings these icons to the forefront, recreating the joys of first experiencing those stimulating sights and sounds in Abney’s signature bright colors and geometric forms. The work graces the High Line, an icon in and of itself, welcoming millions of New Yorkers and visitors alike to enjoy all that the city has to offer. Like Abney, we have only love and gratitude for this city we call home.
“Your Voices” by Es Devlin
With more than 700 languages spoken in a mere 300 square miles of land, New York City is the most linguistically diverse place in the world, and a new moving sculpture in Lincoln Center’s Josie Robertson Plaza pays homage to that diversity in a unique visual and auditory way. “Your Voices” by artist Es Devlin features 700 glowing cords to represent each of those 700 languages, positioned between glowing arcs which rotate while a multinational soundscape plays, adding to the Holiday landscape currently adorning Lincoln Center. Made in association with the Endangered Language Alliance, which has created an interactive map showing the locations across the city where each of the 700 languages are spoken, the piece intends to “evoke the way our perspectives are enriched and shaped by experiencing the linguistic structures and identities of others” while a soundscape composed by contemporary composers Polyphonia plays text from EM Forster’s 1910 novel Howards End in multiple overlaid languages, stating: “Only connect, and live in fragments no longer.”
New York Palace Christmas Tree
After a hiatus last winter, the New York Palace Christmas tree is back and shining as bright as ever. A highly sought-out focal point of the holiday season in New York City, the tree usually stands at 35-feet-tall. However, due to ongoing major renovations which resulted in the hotel’s lack of tree last year, this year it is much smaller in size, but just as large in Christmas spirit. Donned in red and gold bow and ornaments with a halo-like light above for full dazzling effect, the tree is the centerpiece of a festive and well-decorated iconic courtyard which is open to the public. The hotel, a Madison Avenue jewel, is both a landmark and luxury retreat dating as far back as 1882, beloved by New Yorkers and visitors alike. The New York Palace Hotel is the city’s largest luxury hotel and is consistently highly rated – even the tree is, too!
“Peace Gorilla” by Noa Bornstein
Noa Bornstein’s “Peace Gorilla,” a bronze gorilla sculpture, greets and high-fives park goers along the esplanade of Newtown Barge Park in Greenpoint. Peace’s arm extends toward the United Nations building across the East River, while she stands on a concrete base inscribed with the word for ‘friend’ in 90 languages—beginning with the six official languages of the UN. Bornstein’s work promotes peace between humans, with visitors welcomed and encouraged to touch, high-five, and engage with the sculpture. “Peace Gorilla” is an edition of seven, with the artist imagining one on each continent. Interestingly, Peace is not the only bronze gorilla sculpture to ever grace New York City–in 2020, “King Nyani” was on view in Hudson Yards, a sculpture which was an homage to critically endangered mountain gorillas in the wild and the largest bronze gorilla statue in the world. Surely Peace and King Nyani would make great friends. Ms. Bornstein says that Peace Gorilla “continues to invite us to make friends and peace with each other, and with hers and other species.”
"Mind Forged Manacles/Manacle Forged Minds" by Fred Wilson
Standing ten feet tall in Brooklyn’s Columbus Park, Fred Wilson’s large-scale public sculpture “Mind Forged Manacles/Manacle Forged Minds” demands the viewership and consideration of all who pass by. Not simply because of its size, but rather because of its meaning and placement: Columbus Park is lined with historical monuments and memorials, many of which are highly contested. Controversial due to their roles in slavery, anti-abolitionist work, and violent legacies of racism, historical figures like Christopher Columbus and Henry Ward Beecher stand erect in the park, with “Mind Forged Manacles/Manacle Forged Minds” existing in opposition to them as a site-responsive intervention. Five dark figures stand locked inside two boxes, a signifier evoking themes of detainment, incarceration, and structural racism. This sculpture is an essential contributor to dialogues surrounding both monuments and the politics of erasure and exclusion in public spaces, as well as mass incarceration of Black bodies in the United States, the work having been developed in collaboration with youth at the Center for Court Innovation, an alternative-to-incarceration program. Wilson’s work prompts us to question ideas of historical memory, ideas of significance, ideas of freedom, and of how we determine who is deserving of such statuses.
“Windy” by Meriem Bennani
Along the High Line at 24th Street sits—or rather, spins—a new sculpture by New York-based artist Meriem Bennani. “Windy”, a spinning sculpture in the shape of a tornado and made of black foam, plays with traditions of public sculpture, as well as with what visuals and motions constitute the increasingly fast pace of life in New York City. The 9-foot-tall sculpture, on display until next May, is in non-stop motion powered by electrical bike motors, built to both withstand and interact with all four seasons of New York weather. The piece, which marks Benanni’s first public sculpture and her most abstract work to date, exists as an homage to the dynamism and constant movement of the city and the High Line specifically, capturing in art the urban energy of the place we call home. The frantic and perpetual motion of the sculpture “captures the experience of walking through New York City’s crowded streets and the frequency of movement on the High Line, one of the city’s most visited public parks. “Windy” is a poignant visual of New York City’s frenzied and intoxicating energy”.