January 14, 2008
Waterfalls Will Really Tie the East River Together
Danish–Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson will work with the Public Art Fund – a nonprofit that brought Anish Kapoor's "Sky Mirror" and Jeff Koons's "Puppy," to Rockefeller Center – to bring freestanding waterfalls to the East River this spring. The project will be officially announced tomorrow, but a source tells the Sun that the waterfalls will rise 60 to 70 feet above the water, which is more than half as high as the Brooklyn Bridge roadway. The spectacle will be visible from the area around the Seaport and Brooklyn Heights.
The waterfalls are expected to flow in tandem with a major Eliasson retrospective at MoMA and P.S.1 in April. That exhibition is currently at the SFMoMA through February; it includes the much buzzed-about work called “Your mobile expectations: BMW H2R project.” Sealed off in a massive freezer, museum goers are given warm blankets and permitted inside to view a BMW hydrogen-powered race car and with a translucent surface of steel mesh, reflective steel panels, and ice.
The East River waterfalls won’t be Eliasson’s first, but they will be his biggest; in 2005, he created a 20-foot outdoor waterfall in Scotland. The Sun’s source says that the project's estimated to cost between $9 million and $11 million. It'll all be worth it to see submarine artist Duke Riley try to go over the East River Falls in a barrel.
Vision of East River falls by Konrad Fiedler.
|
I really don't care that this is a nonprofit, isn't there a better way to spend $9 million and $11 million in this city than on some Danish–Icelandic artist?
Environmental impact study, anyone?
is this going to be permanent or just temporary?
I'll be live blogging my attempts to ride a Kaws painted, Louis Vuitton sponsored barrel over said waterfalls. Watch for it!
im guessing its going to be temporary, sigur.
$11 million would be better spent on schools, fixing subway stations, etc.
Where's this water going to come from? I doubt it's going to be from the water supply because that'd be one hell of a waste, especially when the reservoirs are low. If it's going to be pumped from the East river, it'll stink something fierce. For $9-11 million, it had better be permanent, although it's still a ridiculous waste of money as everyone else says.
The installation will be temporary. An EIS was completed and a finding of no significant impact was declared. The water will come from the East River and the project has been designed so smell will not be an issue. The project was privately funded; no public funds will be used to pay for construction.