The David Byrne and Creative Time installation, Playing the Building, opened earlier this month and will stay open through August 10th. If you're still unsure about what this endeavor involves, Byrne himself explained it all over at Boing Boing. Some fun facts are learned (the organ centerpiece only costs around $200, and isn't usually in tune with any other instrument) -- but the highlight is getting to see the nooks and crannies of the Battery......

Last weekend the Swoon and Tennessee Jane collaborative exhibit, Portrait of Silvia Elena, opened at Honey Space (Suckapants has some nice photos). The installation is a memorial to Silvia Elena, a 17-year old girl who was murdered in Juarez, Mexico, in 1995 -- one of the many brutally killed there since the early 90s. Housed underground, one must descend through a hole in the floor to get to the exhibit. There's a ladder to aid......

Over the weekend David Byrne's Playing the Building installation opened, ostensibly making the Battery Maritime Building the city's largest instrument. The weekend boasted some long lines for those who wanted to get their fingers on the ivories -- unless of course you were Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson, who strolled to the front Saturday to take their turn. The retrofitted organ and all of its pneumatic tubes will be there every weekend through August 10th,......

The Gowanus Canal, ripe with gonohorrea, served as a very unlikely muse for artist David Eustace. He worked on his Gowanus-drenched art project for two years, so technically he started before the canal's STD was diagnosed (but really, who didn't think it a possibility at that point). So, in the market for some art? These pieces were, in fact, dipped in the canal -- and will be again!The exhibition revolves around four large works......

David Byrne and Creative Time have hooked up to bring the Battery Maritime Building alive this summer (while it's rehabilitation process is ongoing), with an event titled "Playing the Building." When we talked to Byrne in March, he hinted at the project, saying he was working on an "audio installation at the Marine Ferry Terminal – you know, that beautiful empty building at the foot of Manhattan. Creative Time is helping." At the end......

Melissa Gould It was 96 years ago today, in 1912, that the unsinkable Titanic sank in the Atlantic near Newfoundland. The Bowery Boys recap New Yorkers who were lost with ship, well -- the rich ones.John Jacob Astor IV had run to Europe with his mistress Madeleine Talmage Force to avert attention from the fact that Ms. Force, a native Brooklynite, was 18 years old. Mining million Benjamin Guggenheim approached his impending death like......

Photo by Jake Dobkin While a Tom Otterness sculpture can really brighten up the dark underground of New York, for his latest installation he's shedding some sunlight on his work. The above was just installed in DUMBO near the pedestrian exit to the Brooklyn Bridge. This won't be the first time Otterness has been above ground, of course. Remember his temporary 2004 installation that spanned Broadway from 60th to 168th Streets? And in 2005......

Photos via the Guggenheim Museum. Everyone's bursting with anticipation for the opening of Cai Guo-Qiang's new exhibit at the Guggenheim; the site-specific installation serves as a mid-career retrospective and is now just four short days away from being unveiled. The NY Times has a lengthy profile of the artist (who has lived in New York since 1995) which begins with this insight: "his favorite artistic moment is the pregnant pause between the lighting of......