The Greatest City on Earth has come to the greatest neighborhood on earth!
The new public art installation, The Greatest City on Earth, was unveiled this weekend on Nassau Street between John and Fulton streets by artist Linda Zacks. It’s part of Re:Construction, a public art program produced by the Downtown Alliance through a grant supplied by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation.
“As Lower Manhattan continues to grow, construction can be tough on small businesses and confusing for pedestrians. While we look forward to all the great improvements happening downtown, this latest Re:Construction installation is a creative and resourceful way to support small businesses, direct visitors, residents and local workers, and beautify Lower Manhattan all at the same time,” said Elizabeth H. Berger, President of the Alliance for Downtown New York.
So ignore this dreary, winter weather and step outside to see the newest, vibrant installation. You can learn more about the Re:Con program – and all of the other existing installations in Lower Manhattan – by clicking here.
Art lovers can now “walk” to “work” in Lower Manhattan. Only a few blocks from the international installation Walking Men 99™ is the newest outdoor public art installation, Men At Work, wrapping the base of Silverstein Properties’ fast-rising 4 World Trade Center.
This week, Men At Work–depicting nearly 150 iconic figures from street signs across the globe–was installed along 1,000 feet of construction parapets on the south and north sides of Liberty Street, between Greenwich and Church streets, stretching along the southern edge of the World Trade Center construction site.
Men At Work is the 28th art installation unveiled in the wildly popular Re:Construction program, which adorns construction sites in Lower Manhattan with whimsical, thoughtful and engaging pieces of art. Launched in 2007, Re:Construction is produced by the Downtown Alliance and funded by a $1.5 million grant from the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation.
“Re:Construction is an ongoing opportunity for government, artists, curators, property owners and business people to work together to make something beautiful,” said Elizabeth H. Berger, President of the Downtown Alliance. “And what’s a better example than Men At Work. I encourage anyone who lives in, works in or visits Lower Manhattan to stop for just a moment and explore these wonderful pieces of art.”
Created by Maya Barkai, Men At Work features figures from 148 cities, and is the second project in New York City from the Walking Men Worldwide Initiative™. The installation offers a new look into the cultural presence of “working men.” The signs typically prevent passersby from entering active construction sites and thus become symbols of an environment being transformed.
“Maya’s work captures the spirit of Lower Manhattan and New Yorkers’ enthusiasm for rebuilding the World Trade Center,” said Larry A. Silverstein, President & CEO of Silverstein Properties, Inc. “It also pays tribute to the thousands of men and women involved in this historic effort.”
The installation is several blocks from the most celebrated piece in the Re:Construction collection, Barkai’s Walking Men 99™. Debuted in 2010, it is a site-specific installation that joins together 99 iconic pedestrian traffic-light figures from cities around the world, a photographic collage stretching along 500 feet of plywood walls that form three street façades facing Church and Barclay streets and Park Place.
The project was conceived as a collaborative effort of international photographers, each contributing a piece to the collage using an interactive platform created by Barkai. Learn more at www.walking-men.com.
Men At Work and Walking Men 99™ were curated by Ayelet Danielle Aldouby and Elinor Milchan from Artea Projects. You can learn more about Artea Projects at www.arteaprojects.com
When we launched the pilot program in the Summer of 2007, everyone was seeing orange, and lots of it. Traffic cones, plastic safety barrels, fences covered in mesh, bright directional signs, construction staging areas draped in plastic netting—all of it signaled that change was afoot. The ubiquitous orange was meant to trigger—in the name of safety—an elevated level of public alertness.
As it turned out, this heightened sensitivity to all things orange also happened to enhance the impact of our first Re:Con projects. Our prototype sidewalk shed by GRO Architects, titled Best Pedestrian Route, was both functional and aesthetic, and fully exploited the use of orange and white throughout its design. The backlit swirling arrows made playful reference to the often chaotic street-level result of redirecting pedestrians, while its oversized diagonal striping helped to lighten the mood created by construction fatigue.
Around the corner, orange and white striping had been applied with a similarly mischievous twist. Seventeen normally stodgy concrete barriers had been transformed into lighthearted ambassadors of traffic safety, proudly sporting a zebra print interpretation of the Department of Transportation’s regulation striping. Concrete Jungleremains visible to the keen observer walking along Broadway, thanks to the careful planning of artist Tattfoo Tan.
Up the block, three artists—Carolina Cisneros, Mateo Pinto, and Carlos Gomez de Llarena, worked their magic on the wire fencing surrounding the street reconstruction project on Fulton Street. Mesh overlays of varying colors, and of course with an abundance of eye-popping oranges, were carefully mapped out, and Fulton Fencecovered nearly a full block of fencing.
These first three projects put Re:Con on the map, capitalizing on what was fast becoming the norm—orange everywhere, with strong incentive to pay closer attention to your surroundings. The resulting scrutiny served as its own sort of happy distraction—the projects were a big hit, and the impact of each one managed to drown out a bit of the grumbling about construction-related inconvenience. After all, it’s the construction itself that inspired these scenic oases of artwork amidst the muddle. What better reason to cross the street than to get a better view?
This is the first of many Re:Construction-related posts to come, so I’ll begin with a brief description: Re:Construction is a program that recasts construction sites as canvases for temporary public art and architecture.
In other words, the program aims to address the aesthetically unpleasing construction conditions in Lower Manhattan using artistic interventions, and thanks to the Community Enhancement Grant we received from the LMDC, we are all over it! Working closely with public and private developers, we identify construction sites which could use a surface-level makeover. And then as Tim Gunn on Project Runway would say, we “make it work!”
The multitude of very important cogs in this amazing engine that is Re:Con includes our four fantastic arts consultants (Abby Messitte, Colab Projects Group, BravinLee programs, and ARTEA Projects), innumerable artists of considerable talent, regulating City agencies, diligent permitting agencies, attentive insurance companies, industrious general contractors, curious construction crews, conscientious installation crews, effusive passers-by, and a partridge in a pear tree.
Over the past two and a half years, you may have encountered a Re:Con project — a fancy-looking construction fence along Fulton Street, perhaps? Or you may have done a double-take on Broadway: Were those zebra stripes on that concrete barrier? How about those colorful pixilated digital code designs embedded into those fences on Houston Street? Flying cows on Rector Street? How can this be?!
The answer to that question and many, many more, will unfold over the course of these missives on Re:Con. I have had the great privilege of carrying the program forth from its start as a humble pilot program all the way to this moment, where I’m pleased to say that we are on the verge of having fifteen (15!) projects under our belt, and counting.
Along the way, we’ve definitely learned a lot. We’ve laughed, we’ve cried, we’ve climbed tall ladders, gotten our pants dirty (and then donned protective yet fashionable coveralls), and we still have two years to go! With each new project, new sets of considerations arise, so the name of the game is flexibility. No two projects are alike, and no two installation processes are ever the same. And with that vision of artistic- and construction-related infinitude dancing in your head, I will say: Stay tuned!
