The best outdoor art in NYC this summer

Anyone can walk through this towering new sculpture in Brooklyn Bridge Park that shouts in all caps: “LAND.” But anyone cannot walk through certain lands, especially at border crossings. That juxtaposition comes into stark relief at this recently installed 30-foot sculpture that simultaneously evokes Pop Art and questions the legacy of colonization. 

Nicholas Galanin's "In every language there is Land / En cada lengua hay una Tierra" is now on view at the Empire Fulton Ferry Lawn in Brooklyn Bridge Park through fall 2023.

A vibrant new sculpture called “Old Tree” is now on view at the Highline. 

Find it over the intersection of 10th Avenue and 30th Street, claiming residency through Fall 2024. Created by Zurich-based artist Pamela Rosenkranz, the vivid sculpture is the third High Line Plinth commission, which changes every 18 months.

The pink and red “Old Tree” sculpture stretches 25 feet into the sky. It's shaped like a realistic tree but constructed completely from man-made materials. 

A new colorful floral installation has bloomed in Brooklyn Heights, and the pop-up is thankfully pollen free! 

The Montague Street Business Improvement District (Montague BID) debuted “Montague Street Blooms,” a 6-foot tall pop-up flower park installation.

Created by local artist Piera Bonerba, owner of Le Meraviglie Art Studio at 108 Montague Street, and artist Emanuele Simonelli, the pop-up park will return to Montague Street between Henry and Hicks Streets every Saturday in May, June and July (except June 10), from noon-6pm. 

“Sky’s the Limit in the County of Kings” is a new 9-foot-tall sculpture of Christopher “The Notorious B.I.G.” Wallace in Dumbo at the entrance to the Brooklyn Bridge. Specifically, you’ll find the new work at the northeast corner of Prospect Street and Washington Street.

The stainless steel and bronze creation is the work of artist Sherwin Banfield, who sought to both honor Biggie and challenge "the traditions of western public sculpture by representing his African American artistry, lineage and evolution."

A hefty, both in form and in function, new piece of art has taken up residence on Governors Island.

"Moving Chains," by Charles Gaines, is a giant, 110-foot-tall kinetic sculpture featuring sturdy chains that rotate overhead. The monument "addresses the reality of systemic racism in the United States of America through embodied and visual experience and provides critical historical context on our extraordinary political division today."

The new project is the island's largest public art commission to date and you can see it through June 2023. It's presented in partnership with Times Square Arts.

When you appreciate the greenspaces around NYC, do you ever stop to think about the people who make those spaces so enjoyable? Artist Fanny Allié hopes you do, and her new sculpture exhibition called Shadows brings those park workers to the forefront.

The mixed-media artist created 10 colorful sculptures inspired by the workers who maintain Bella Abzug Park (542 W 36th St.). To create the sculptures, Allié spent time with each person and asked them to pose in a manner that reflected themselves. She captured their poses on film, drew their outlines and translated them into steel silhouettes. Each worker chose their sculpture’s color.

The exhibit invites people to experience the park in a new way as a place for compelling, free art. In addition to the sculptures, visitors can scan a QR code to hear the subjects sing songs, whistle, hum, laugh and share stories about their work.

The Hudson Yards Hell’s Kitchen Alliance commissioned Allié to create the new public art, which will be on view until September 2023.

Stand next to a new 18-foot-tall patinated bronze sculpture called Ancestor at the southeast entrance to Central Park. The colossal artwork depicts a universal mother figure linking our cultural and personal pasts and futures. Adorned with the heads of her 23 children that extend from her body, she embodies multiculturalism, pluralism and interconnectedness. They manifest a sense of belonging and celebrate the mother as a keeper of wisdom and the eternal source of creation and refuge.

"Ancestor" is by New Delhi and London-based artist Bharti Kher, and the exhibition is presented by the Public Art Fund. 

See Ancestor for free at Doris C. Freedman Plaza through August 27, 2023. 

A new 25-foot-tall statue celebrating the life of abolitionist hero Harriet Tubman now sits in the recently renamed park Harriet Tubman Square by Broad Street in Newark, New Jersey. It's located just 20 minutes from NYC.

“Shadow of a Face,” designed by architect and New Jersey native Nina Cooke John, replaced the monument of Christopher Columbus that stood in its place until its removal in 2020, following George Floyd's murder in Minneapolis.

Every day, thousands of people walk through Times Square, rushing to catch the subway, heading to work, meandering through shops—many of them unaware that they're stepping over a revolutionary art project that's been a part of the city for decades. 

Purposely unmarked, it's easy to miss this piece of auditory art because truly experiencing it requires tuning into a specific frequency in the most cacophonous place in America. The late artist Max Neuhaus's installation called "Times Square" sounds like the echo of a bell ringing. It's hard to place this droning tone among all the other noises there, especially because the sound emanates from a typical grate right beneath your feet. 

The work is on view 24/7, but we recommend visiting in the early morning when it's quieter. Head to the Broadway Pedestrian Plaza between 45th and 46th Streets (between Broadway and Seventh Avenue), remove your headphones and listen. 

Next time you're near the Times Square subway station, check out the entrance found within the pedestrian plaza near the corner of 43rd Street. It has a massive new mosaic by artist Nick Cave that commuters can admire. Commissioned by the MTA's public arts program, the work is called "Every One, Each One, Equal All," and it is made up of three separate art pieces.

"Times Square is one of the busiest, most diverse and fabulously kinetic places on the planet," Cave said in an official statement. "For this project I took the above ground color, movement and cross-pollination of humanity, bundled it into a powerful and compact energy mass that is taken underground."

A cool art installation that uses augmented reality is transforming Battery Park City into a bird watcher's paradise. Those who walk along Battery Park City's riverfront, from South Cove north along Rockefeller Park, will be able to access an invisible world of birds.

Named "Bird’s-Eye View," this new artwork by New York City-based artist Shuli Sadé showcases 30 species of birds that seek temporary or permanent refuge near Manhattan’s waterways via photographs and original watercolors by Sadé through the Adobe Aero app and a smartphone camera. All you need to do is scan one of 70 QR codes on any of the 14 signs along the water to view local birds and explore their habitats and migratory patterns.

The massive ghostly figure of a shed now rises out of the Hudson River near Pier 52.

The permanent exhibitition, named "Day's End" by its creator David Hammond, is made of slender steel pipes that reach 52 feet at its peak and together measure 325 feet long and 65 feet wide. It pays tribute to an artist, Gordon Matta-Clark, who transformed an abandoned shed that once sat on Pier 52 as well as to the history of the city's waterfront. In 1975, he carved massive openings into the shed, which he described as a "temple to sun and water," according to the Whitney, which proposed the public art installation.

Weighing in at 1,000 pounds, Isa Genzken's "Rose III" was unveiled on the seventh anniversary of Occupy Wall Street’s takeover of Zuccotti Park.

Genzken works in a wide range of mediums, and giant flowers have been a recurring theme for her: A similar rose sculpture was installed on the New Museum’s facade from 2010 to 2013, while a pair of gargantuan white orchids (rising to 28 and 34 feet respectively) stood at Doris C. Freedman Plaza in front of Central Park during the spring and summer of 2016. As for "Rose III," it remains on long term view at Zuccotti Park.