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AccessibilityArt in the Parks
Through collaborations with a diverse group of arts organizations and artists, Parks brings to the public both experimental and traditional art in many park locations. Please browse our list of current exhibits and our archives of past exhibits below. You can also see past grant opportunities or read more about the Art in the Parks Program.
Public Art Map and Guide
Find out which current exhibits are on display near you, and browse our permanent monument collection.
Search Current and Past Exhibits
2025
Manhattan
Center for Educational Innovation (CEI), Benchmarks: Empowering Students to Create Inspiring Community Murals on Benches for a Citywide NYC Parks Exhibition
June 7, 2025 to September 14, 2025
Thomas Jefferson Park, Manhattan
CEI BENCHMARKS is a citywide NYC Parks exhibition of 20 inspiring murals on benches created by NYC public school students. These bench murals are part of the CEI Benchmarks program, a comprehensive student arts residency program that empowers NYC public school students to become engaged citizens and create large-scale, collaborative, inspiring community murals on benches for public display in a high-profile citywide exhibition in NYC Parks. The 20 benches, created by over 540 students of grades 3-12, will be on exhibit June 7-September 14 in the Bronx at Rev. T. Wendell Foster Park, in Brooklyn at Prospect Park Parade Ground, in Manhattan at Thomas Jefferson Park, and in Staten Island at Clove Lakes Park.
This exhibition is presented
by The Center for Educational Innovation - website.
Akiko Ichikawa, Limited Limited Editions
March 20, 2025 to September 12, 2025
Inwood Hill Park, Manhattan
Map/Directions (in Google Maps)
This exhibition
consists of four vinyl banners, which document the artist’s participatory
project Limited, Limited Edition. The artist guided participants through
stenciling their chosen translations onto secondhand t-shirts. Limited,
Limited Edition is an ongoing gifting project started in 2005 as a way for
the artist to engage with people to create singular cross-cultural experiences
in an imaginative space transcending any one-dimensional take on Japanese
culture.
This exhibition
is presented by Korea Art Forum.
Thomas Gallagher, Lingo Bingo
March 20, 2025 to September 12, 2025
Inwood Hill Park, Manhattan
Map/Directions (in Google Maps)
Lingo Bingo offers
an opportunity to bridge language and cultural barriers, fostering
understanding in a playful setting. It replaces bingo numbers with words and
phrases in multiple languages, inviting participants to discover shared values.
This installation features 13 languages, including five frequently used in
Inwood: Spanish, Taíno, Lenape, Hebrew, and English.
This exhibition
is presented by Korea Art Forum.
Zeehan Wazed, Ball for Art
September 5, 2024 to September 4, 2025
Sara D. Roosevelt Park, Manhattan
Map/Directions (in Google Maps)
This group of four murals by artist Zeehan Wazed are set behind the basketball hoops on the Grand Street Basketball Courts in Sara D. Roosevelt Park. Together, the murals bring a sense of movement and brightness to the retaining walls surrounding the courts.
Patricia Espinosa, Hourglass
September 28, 2024 to September 3, 2025
Riverside Park, Manhattan
Map/Directions (in Google Maps)
The Hourglass seeks to address the critical issue of water scarcity. The sculpture takes the form of a giant twisted sponge, resembling an hourglass, that symbolizes the diminishing availability of water. It combines both concepts—sponge & hourglass—seeking to visually, and technically, capture the course of water passing through and running out.
Henry Roundtrip Marton Newman, Ectoplasm
September 28, 2024 to September 3, 2025
Riverside Park South, Manhattan
Map/Directions (in Google Maps)
Consisting of clear acrylic panels etched with life-sized silhouetted figures set within an architectural steel frame, Ectoplasm seeks to mediate the divide between public and private grief—offering an opportunity to reflect on our shared melancholia. The structure abstracts the city and renders it transparent. As the sun moves across the sky, shadowy reflections of the figures are cast, reforming and disappearing with the sun. Through the sculpture, the divides between interior and exterior, material and immaterial, gone and present, are blurred.
Malin Abrahamsson, Moon Finder
September 28, 2024 to September 3, 2025
Riverside Park, Manhattan
Map/Directions (in Google Maps)
Moon Finder is a public sculpture and orientation device. Aligned with the ecliptic—the broad, dynamic celestial belt where the Sun, Moon, and planets orbit through space—it reflects Earth’s emerging position and astronomical relationships within the solar system. Combining elements of science and engineering with the moon’s symbolism as an object of longing and desire, Moon Finder acts as both a literal and metaphorical navigation tool, pointing to this location in Riverside Park and your presence in the cosmos.
Jeff Sonhouse, Harlequin
September 4, 2024 to September 3, 2025
St. Nicholas Park, Manhattan
Map/Directions (in Google Maps)
The basketball courts are designed with a diamond-pattern the artist saw while researching artist Pablo Picasso’s paintings of the Harlequin: a comedic, multi-faceted character, usually masked and dressed in diamond-patterned outfits, featured in his works. As a former scholar-athlete, professional basketball player, and currently a fulltime visual artist, Sonhouse chose this pattern to commemorate those individuals, who like the Harlequin were showmen. They inspired him to be more than he imagined was expected of him.
Sydney Shen, SBNO (Standing But Not Operating)
September 28, 2024 to September 3, 2025
Riverside Park South, Manhattan
Map/Directions (in Google Maps)
As an artist, Shen is interested in ambivalent emotional states such as fear, wonder, pleasure and pain. A roller coaster enthusiast, Shen is particularly fascinated by how theme parks sublimate the thrill of near-death into a form of amusement. Taking the form of something unsettlingly between an anatomical model, a carnival ride, and a metronome, which measure time through beats akin to the human heartbeat, SBNO (Standing But Not Operating) speaks to an innate human desire to be moved–physically and metaphorically–beyond our limits.
Edra Soto, Graft
September 5, 2024 to August 24, 2025
Doris Freedman Plaza, Central Park, Manhattan
Map/Directions (in Google Maps)
Made from corten steel and terrazzo, Graft is a monument to working class Puerto Rican communities and Soto’s first sculpture inspired by a specific house façade. Tables and seating invite visitors to enjoy a moment of rest, connection, and reflection. The sculpture creates a threshold, with one side representing a home’s exterior; the other, the more intimate atmosphere of an interior. The work’s title addresses Soto’s complex sentiments around migrating to Chicago while remaining connected to Puerto Rico. For Soto, feelings of dislocation are compounded by the island’s ambiguous status as an unincorporated territory of the United States. Graft opens connections between Puerto Rican communities across the city and reminds us of the centrality of the Caribbean to the history of New York City and the United States.
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