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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
Henry Roundtrip Marton Newman, Ectoplasm
September 28, 2024 to September 3, 2025
Riverside Park South, Manhattan
Map/Directions (in Google Maps)
Please note: This is a past exhibit that is no longer installed in the park.
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.
Sydney Shen, SBNO (Standing But Not Operating)
September 28, 2024 to September 3, 2025
Riverside Park South, Manhattan
Map/Directions (in Google Maps)
Please note: This is a past exhibit that is no longer installed in the park.
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.
Malin Abrahamsson, Moon Finder
September 28, 2024 to September 3, 2025
Riverside Park, Manhattan
Map/Directions (in Google Maps)
Please note: This is a past exhibit that is no longer installed in the park.
Moon Finder is a public sculpture and orientation device. Aligned with the ecliptic—the broad, dynamic celestial belt where the Sun, Moon, and planets orbit through space—it reflects Earth’s emerging position and astronomical relationships within the solar system. Combining elements of science and engineering with the moon’s symbolism as an object of longing and desire, Moon Finder acts as both a literal and metaphorical navigation tool, pointing to this location in Riverside Park and your presence in the cosmos.
Patricia Espinosa, Hourglass
September 28, 2024 to September 3, 2025
Riverside Park, Manhattan
Map/Directions (in Google Maps)
Please note: This is a past exhibit that is no longer installed in the park.
The Hourglass seeks to address the critical issue of water scarcity. The sculpture takes the form of a giant twisted sponge, resembling an hourglass, that symbolizes the diminishing availability of water. It combines both concepts—sponge & hourglass—seeking to visually, and technically, capture the course of water passing through and running out.
Edra Soto, Graft
September 5, 2024 to August 24, 2025
Doris Freedman Plaza, Central Park, Manhattan
Map/Directions (in Google Maps)
Please note: This is a past exhibit that is no longer installed in the park.
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)
Please note: This is a past exhibit that is no longer installed in the park.
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.
Akiko Ichikawa, Limited Limited Editions
March 20, 2025 to August 18, 2025
Inwood Hill Park, Manhattan
Map/Directions (in Google Maps)
Please note: This is a past exhibit that is no longer installed in the park.
This exhibition
consists of four vinyl banners, which document the artist’s participatory
project Limited, Limited Edition. The artist guided participants through
stenciling their chosen translations onto secondhand t-shirts. Limited,
Limited Edition is an ongoing gifting project started in 2005 as a way for
the artist to engage with people to create singular cross-cultural experiences
in an imaginative space transcending any one-dimensional take on Japanese
culture.
This exhibition
is presented by Korea Art Forum.
Beatrice Coron, Bloomingdale Medallions
August 16, 2024 to August 15, 2025
Various Locations, Manhattan
Map/Directions (in Google Maps)
Please note: This is a past exhibit that is no longer installed in the park.
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)
Please note: This is a past exhibit that is no longer installed in the park.
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.
Monira Al Qadiri, First Sun
September 2, 2025 to August 2, 2025
Central Park, Manhattan
Map/Directions (in Google Maps)
Please note: This is a past exhibit that is no longer installed in the park.
First Sun is a majestic painted aluminum
sculpture of a hybrid human-scarab figure. Monira Al reimagined the
ancient Egyptian deity Khepri—god of the rising sun—as a contemporary
monument. For the artist, the artwork underscores the modern divide
between humans and the natural world and reminds us of ancient cultures in
which animals were revered.
This exhibition is presented by Public
Art Fund.
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