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Podcasting

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Conversations with Artists is a podcast series across 2024, the twentieth anniversary year of our public art program. Beginning on January 24, listen on the third Wednesday of each month to twelve artists who reflect on their work in the park, consider experiences with communities of viewers, recognize democratic ideals as central to civic space, and offer guidance to future artists on the significance of a commission in Madison Square Park. 

To listen to this podcast series, scroll down and select the conversation of your choice, or listen here on Spotify.


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Leo Villareal

November, 2024

Leo Villareal (American b. 1967) was born in Albuquerque and works in New York. He received a BA in sculpture from Yale University (1990), and an MA from NYU Tisch School of the Arts, Interactive Telecommunications Program (1994).

Villareal’s BUCKYBALL, inspired by the work of Buckminster Fuller, applied fundamental concepts of geometry to a thirty-foot-tall illuminated sculpture in Madison Square Park. BUCKYBALL included two nested, geodesic sculptural spheres comprised of 180 LED tubes arranged in a series of pentagons and hexagons, known as a “Fullerene.”

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Shahzia Sikander

October, 2024

Shahzia Sikander (American, b. Pakistan 1969) expands and subverts pre-modern and classical Central and South-Asian painting traditions through a broad range of materials and methods, including miniature painting, works on paper, video, mosaic, and sculpture.

Sikander’s 2023 multimedia exhibition, Havah…to breathe, air, life, was on display in Madison Square Park and the nearby Courthouse of the Appellate Division, First Department of the Supreme Court of the State of New York.

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Alison Saar

September, 2024

Alison Saar (American, b. 1956) was born in Los Angeles where she lives and works. Saar received a BA from Scripps College (1978), and an MFA from Otis-Parsons Institute (1981).

Saar’s Feallan and Fallow, which included six figures in Madison Square Park, considered issues of race, gender, and heritage. Inspired by the cyclical forces of nature and by the ancient Greek myth of Persephone, the project took visitors on a metaphoric journey across the four seasons.

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Josiah McElheny

August, 2024

Josiah McElheny (American, b. 1966) was born in Boston and lives and works in Brooklyn. He received a BFA from Rhode Island School of Design (1989), and apprenticed with master glassblowers Ronald Wilkins, Jan-Erik Ritzman, Sven-Ake Caarlson, and Lino Tagliapietra.

In 2017, McElheny’s Prismatic Park featured minimal painted wood and prismatic glass structures forged new spaces for cultural production: a curvilinear, translucent blue sound wall for experimental music; a circular, reflective green floor for dance; and a luminous red and yellow pavilion for poetry.

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Rafael Lozano-Hemmer

July, 2024

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer (Mexican-Canadian, b. 1967) was born in Mexico City and lives and works in Montréal and Madrid. He earned a BS in physical chemistry from Concordia University (1989).

Hemmer’s 2008 commission in Madison Square Park, Pulse Park, interacted with the biology of visitors, monitoring their heart rates through a sensor that then activated pulses of narrow-beam light that moved sequentially down rows of spotlights placed along the perimeter of the Oval Lawn. The exhibition was on view from October 24 – November 17, 2008.

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Cristina Iglesias

June, 2024

Cristina Iglesias (Spanish, b. 1956) was born in San Sebastián, Northern Spain. She studied Chemical Sciences at the University of the Basque Country (1976–1978), and Ceramics and Sculpture at the Chelsea College of Art in London (1980–1982). Her studio is in Madrid, Spain.

Iglesias’ Landscape and Memory placed five bronze sculptural pools, gently flowing with water arriving in different sequences, into the park’s Oval Lawn, harkening back to when the Cedar Creek—now buried underground—coursed across the land where the park stands today. The installation was on view in Madison Square Park from June 1 through December 4, 2022.

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Hugh Hayden

May, 2024

Hugh Hayden was born in Dallas, Texas in 1983 and lives and works in New York City. He holds an MFA from Columbia University and a Bachelor of Architecture from Cornell University.

Hayden’s Brier Patch, which was on view in Madison Square Park from January – May 2022, featured one-hundred wooden elementary school-style desks erupting with tree branches, cohering into tangled assemblies with complex and layered meanings. Referencing folklore traditions around the world, the work called on the notion of the brier patch as a place protective for some and dangerous for others.

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Antony Gormley

April, 2024

Antony Gormley (British, b. 1950) was born in London, where he continues to live and work. He enrolled at Trinity College (1968), and studied at Central School of Art, Goldsmiths College and Slade School of Fine Art (1979).

Antony Gormley’s Event Horizon, which was on view in and around Madison Square Park from April – May 2010, consisted of thirty-one life-sized body forms of the artist cast in iron and fiberglass are installed on the sidewalks and across the parapets of skyscrapers in and around the park. Gormley discusses how sculpture can free us from daily patterns and automatic responses to the world we inhabit.

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Teresita Fernández

March, 2024

Teresita Fernández (American, b. 1961) was born in Miami and lives and works in Brooklyn. She earned a BFA from Florida International University (1990), and an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University (1992).

Teresita Fernández’ Fata Morgana, which was on view in Madison Square Park from June 2015 – January 2016, consisted of 500 running feet of golden, mirror-polished discs that created canopies above the pathways around the park’s central Oval Lawn. In nature, a fata morgana is a mirage that forms across the horizon line. Alluding to this phenomenon, Fernández’s project introduced a shimmering horizontal element that engaged visitors in a dynamic experience.

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Abigail DeVille

February, 2024

Abigail DeVille (American, b. 1981) was born in New York and works in the Bronx. She received a BFA from the Fashion Institute of Technology (2007), attended Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture (2007), and received an MFA from Yale University (2011).

Abigail DeVille’s, Light of Freedom, which was on view in Madison Square Park in 2020 – 2021, answers the question of how public art can respond in civic space to pandemic, protests, and political turmoil. Her work carries cogent symbols. She fills a torch — referring to the Statue of Liberty’s hand holding a torch which was on view in Madison Square Park from 1876 to 1882 — with a timeworn bell, a herald of freedom, and with the arms of mannequins, reaching to viewers.

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Diana Al-Hadid

January, 2024

Diana Al-Hadid (American, b.1981) was born in Aleppo, Syria and lives and works in Brooklyn. She earned a BFA and BA from Kent State University (2003), and an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University (2005).

In Diana Al-Hadid’s 2018 exhibition, Delirious Matter, six female figures — the freestanding 14-feet high walls titled The Grotto and Gradiva; a conical work, Citadel; and three figures called Synonym — communed as they faced the central Oval Lawn and formed a kinship of women throughout the history of art and on site in the park. Their synergy and the artist’s observation of the unexpected prompt the framework of Delirious Matter. The organic plan of park walkways, distinctly opposed to the geometric grid of Manhattan streets, confirms Al-Hadid’s idea of delirium, or a restless excitement that grips individuals.

Stay tuned for future artist conversations with Brooke Kamin Rapaport,
Artistic Director and Martin Friedman Chief Curator.

Upcoming:

Krzysztof Wodiczko | December

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Abigail Deville: Light of Freedom
Abigail Deville: Light of Freedom, Narrated by Brooke Kamin Rappoport
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