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AccessibilityArt in the Parks
Through collaborations with a diverse group of arts organizations and artists, Parks brings to the public both experimental and traditional art in many park locations. Please browse our list of current exhibits and our archives of past exhibits below. You can also see past grant opportunities or read more about the Art in the Parks Program.
Public Art Map and Guide
Find out which current exhibits are on display near you, and browse our permanent monument collection.
Search Current and Past Exhibits
2025
Manhattan
Sydney Shen, SBNO (Standing But Not Operating)
September 28, 2024 to September 3, 2025
Riverside Park South, Manhattan
Map/Directions (in Google Maps)
As an artist, Shen is interested in ambivalent emotional states such as fear, wonder, pleasure and pain. A roller coaster enthusiast, Shen is particularly fascinated by how theme parks sublimate the thrill of near-death into a form of amusement. Taking the form of something unsettlingly between an anatomical model, a carnival ride, and a metronome, which measure time through beats akin to the human heartbeat, SBNO (Standing But Not Operating) speaks to an innate human desire to be moved–physically and metaphorically–beyond our limits.
Henry Roundtrip Marton Newman, Ectoplasm
September 28, 2024 to September 3, 2025
Riverside Park South, Manhattan
Map/Directions (in Google Maps)
Consisting of clear acrylic panels etched with life-sized silhouetted figures set within an architectural steel frame, Ectoplasm seeks to mediate the divide between public and private grief—offering an opportunity to reflect on our shared melancholia. The structure abstracts the city and renders it transparent. As the sun moves across the sky, shadowy reflections of the figures are cast, reforming and disappearing with the sun. Through the sculpture, the divides between interior and exterior, material and immaterial, gone and present, are blurred.
Jeff Sonhouse, Harlequin
September 4, 2024 to September 3, 2025
St. Nicholas Park, Manhattan
Map/Directions (in Google Maps)
The basketball courts are designed with a diamond-pattern the artist saw while researching artist Pablo Picasso’s paintings of the Harlequin: a comedic, multi-faceted character, usually masked and dressed in diamond-patterned outfits, featured in his works. As a former scholar-athlete, professional basketball player, and currently a fulltime visual artist, Sonhouse chose this pattern to commemorate those individuals, who like the Harlequin were showmen. They inspired him to be more than he imagined was expected of him.
Edra Soto, Graft
September 5, 2024 to August 24, 2025
Doris Freedman Plaza, Central Park, Manhattan
Map/Directions (in Google Maps)
Made from corten steel and terrazzo, Graft is a monument to working class Puerto Rican communities and Soto’s first sculpture inspired by a specific house façade. Tables and seating invite visitors to enjoy a moment of rest, connection, and reflection. The sculpture creates a threshold, with one side representing a home’s exterior; the other, the more intimate atmosphere of an interior. The work’s title addresses Soto’s complex sentiments around migrating to Chicago while remaining connected to Puerto Rico. For Soto, feelings of dislocation are compounded by the island’s ambiguous status as an unincorporated territory of the United States. Graft opens connections between Puerto Rican communities across the city and reminds us of the centrality of the Caribbean to the history of New York City and the United States.
Mark Cobrin (a.k.a. doop), Transference
April 27, 2025 to August 23, 2025
Happy Warrior Playground, Manhattan
Map/Directions (in Google Maps)
Cobrin has decades of experience working with various
forms of analog audio recording technology. The digital tools used to create
these images are housed in the same computer as the digital audio recording
programs used by the artist. For him, sound has a visual component that is
expressed in these pieces and may in fact be a part of the way in which digital
technology’s user interface is designed and received. Cobrin has taken that
effect to another level by making photographs that reconstruct these objects to
reveal their forms, and his use of color creates an impactful statement about
their obsolescence and decay.
This exhibition is presented by El Taller
Latino Americano.
Beatrice Coron, Bloomingdale Medallions
August 16, 2024 to August 15, 2025
Various Locations, Manhattan
Map/Directions (in Google Maps)
This series of seven stainless steel medallions honors Bloomingdale neighborhood residents who have shaped our world, including The Malagon Sisters, musical group; Ben E. King, musician; Duke Ellington, musician; Bernardo Palombo, musician; Ismael Rivera, musician; Alvin Ailey, dancer and chorographer; and Angelo Romano, artist. Over the course of a year, the exhibition will rotate between three neighborhood parks: Booker T. Washington Playground (August 16, 2024 to December 12, 2024), Happy Warrior Playground (December 13, 2024 to April 10, 2025), and Frederick Douglass Playground (April 11, 2025 to August 15, 2025).
Arthur Simms, A Totem for the High Line
August 31, 2024 to August 3, 2025
The High Line, Manhattan
Map/Directions (in Google Maps)
For the High Line, Simms creates a new site-specific sculpture, A Totem for the High Line. In addition to materials that have become core to his body of work—wood, rope, and personal objects—A Totem for the High Line. also speaks directly to its site, both on the High Line and in New York City. The work incorporates a decommissioned utility pole found on Randall's Island, assorted cables, and discarded license plates from various states—perhaps a reference to the many visitors that flock to New York and the High Line. By integrating these elements, Simms continues his practice of entangling and reusing objects to emphasize the various histories and meanings they carry. The work stands as an homage to transformation and the perpetual unfolding of our past, present, and future.
Marya Triandafellos, Happy to See You
May 4, 2025 to July 26, 2025
Washington Market Park, Manhattan
Map/Directions (in Google Maps)
Happy to See
You, a vibrant public art installation by local artist Marya Triandafellos,
is designed to inspire joy and positivity. The installation features colorful, minimalist
images displayed on a wrought iron fence on the Greenwich Street side of
Washington Market Park. Happy to See You offers a playful visual
engagement to brighten the area. With saturated colors and abstracted shapes
like clouds, fish, and flowers, the installation evokes universal themes of
connection, positivity, and community.
This exhibition
is presented by the Friends of
Washington Market Park.
Matthew Leifheit, The Gay Chorus: No Time At All
June 1, 2025 to June 30, 2025
NYC AIDS Memorial at St. Vincent’s Triangle, Manhattan
NYC AIDS Memorial Park at St. Vincent’s Triangle, Manhattan
Map/Directions (in Google Maps)
Please note: This is a past exhibit that is no longer installed in the park.
The sound installation, conceived by Matthew Leifheit for
the New York City AIDS Memorial, liberates long-unheard voices from archives in
cities across the United States, uniting them in an hour-long recital that will
loop daily throughout June 2025. The songs presented in this sound
installation-as-recital are sourced from an archive of gay men’s chorus
performance and rehearsal video recordings from the decade preceding the advent
of effective HIV treatments in the United States (1985–1995). At the time of
this installation, the artist has preserved 46 hours and 22 minutes of
performance footage, drawn from archives spanning New York, San Francisco, Los
Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, Dallas, Denver, and Washington, DC.
The Black Fives Foundation, New York Rens Commemorative Court
June 26, 2024 to June 25, 2025
Howard Bennett Park, Manhattan
Map/Directions (in Google Maps)
Please note: This is a past exhibit that is no longer installed in the park.
The mural honors the legendary New York Rens, formed in Harlem in 1923 as the first Black-owned, all-Black, fully professional basketball team in history. From their debut on November 3, 1923 through 1949 when they dissolved, the Rens annually scheduled 130 games on average, winning 85%, the equivalent of an NBA team winning 70 games a season for 25 years in a row. Yet, there was no site in Harlem that commemorated and celebrated this Hall of Fame team, until now.
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