On Saturday, a twenty-foot tall sculpture will be installed in Dante Park at 64th Street across from Lincoln Center.
Dubbed “48,” this will be the seventh and final piece of “Sean Scully: Broadway Shuffle,” an outdoor exhibition consisting of sculptures installed along the Broadway Malls between 64th and 167th streets. The Broadway Mall Association kicked off the exhibit on July 12 and it will run through March of next year.
Between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. on Saturday, September 21, riggers will construct the multicolored aluminum sculpture–the tallest one in the series–from sections placed by crane.
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The sculptures – “each one a unique vertical stack composed from various configurations of metal, stone and wood,” according to an earlier press release from the Broadway Mall Association – will range from about 7 to 20 feet tall.
Other UWS installations can be found on Broadway at 72nd Street, 79th Street and 103rd Street.
“Sleeper Stack 2” at Broadway and 72nd Street
“Silver Brown Tower” at Broadway and 79th Street
“Composite Grey Silver” at Broadway and 103rd Street
Born in Dublin and raised in south London, Sean Scully moved to the states in 1972 and settled in NYC in ’75. His work, which includes painting, printmaking, sculpting and photography, can be found in museum collections worldwide.
“Broadway is legendary, and it has been mythologized in art and song,” said Scully in a statement. “I called my project ‘Shuffle’ after a dance, in the same way that Mondrian, another geometric immigrant, called his painting ‘Boogie Woogie.’ I love the idea of my blocks and stacks punctuating the endless rhythm of Broadway.”
To learn more about the exhibit, click here. Here are some more things to do this weekend.
Lincoln logs were cooler
The “sculpture” at 72nd Street is an eyesore. When I first saw it, I thought it might be a heap of junk waiting to get taken away, but, when it remained there for weeks on end, I realized, somebody put that ugliness here deliberately.
The Broadway malls over time have been beautified with plantings. And I wish people who create and approve of public art would think more in terms of inspiration and uplift, or at least, communicating something meaningful.
The artist tries to liken his work to that of Mondrian, but when in his whole career did Mondrian ever produce anything as dispiritingly ugly as that pile of junk called “Sleeper Stack 2”?
Five days, and/or ten years, or one hundred years from now, will anybody look at images of these sculptures and associate them with the inspiring aspects of Broadway? Perhaps in a different environment, (for example, at Storm King Art Center), I might be more inclined to give “Sleeper Stack 2” a fairer viewing. But, in my present view, that triangle by the subway entrance simply looks better when “Sleeper Stack 2” isn’t there.
Ok but what are we going to do about that green shed outside 72nd subway station? It always smells like ?
I came back to say that I saw “48,” the colorful new Scully sculpture at Dante Park, and I like it much better than “Sleeper Stack 2.”
While beauty is in the eye of the beholder-these are simply awful in this context. Why does Park Avenue seem to get such stunning and interesting pieces of art? Given the cultural gravitas of the UWS, delighting and engaging pieces would seem to be a no brainer.