The Overwhelming Whiteness of Black Art

If you go to Kara Walker’s new exhibit, “A Subtlety,” at the Domino Sugar Factory in Brooklyn, a lot will overwhelm you. You’ll likely wait outside in a line that snakes down Kent Street, across from rowhouses that were once owned by Puerto Rican families and now fetch millions. You’ll sign a waiver absolving the […]

Jeff Koons, Kara Walker, and the Challenge of Public Art

As if his museum-filling Whitney retrospective weren’t enough, Jeff Koons currently has a massive sculpture on view at Rockefeller Center. “Split-Rocker,” presented by Gagosian Gallery and organized by the Public Art Fund and real estate developer Tishman Speyer, is comprised of two halves, one the recreated head of a toy pony rocker that belonged to his son, the […]

New York’s 11 Most Beautiful Public Art Shows for Spring

In spite of countless false starts and snowy regressions, it is technically spring in New York now (really!), and it is therefore open season for public art. The city’s parks are quickly filling with public art as outdoor exhibitions open in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens. From a reclining giant in Queens and a deconstructed duplicate […]

Public Art, Beneath a Bridge

The underside of the Granville Street Bridge in Vancouver will be turned into a surface for artworks in lightboxes as part of the Vancouver House project. The forgotten urban area under the bridge is being reclaimed as part of the development. Westbank Projects is planning to bracket the main section of the bridge with low-rise buildings and […]

Trafalgar Square’s fourth plinth to show giant thumbs up and horse skeleton

David Shrigley admits it’s ridiculous to claim that a 10-metre-high thumbs up in Trafalgar Square will improve society, the economy and the weather – but he has to believe it. “As an artist you have to feel your art makes the world a better place and you have to believe that quite sincerely, otherwise why […]