The New York Times has Waterfalls fever also, featuring an image of the public art project that is set to flow starting tomorrow by 9 a.m. First announced in January, the project, conceived by Danish artist Olafur Eliasson, involves four man-made waterfalls along the shores of Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Governors Island: by the Brooklyn anchorage of the Brooklyn Bridge, between Piers 4 and 5 in Brooklyn, in Lower Manhattan at Pier 35, and on......

The East River waterfalls aren't the only thing being erected by the Public Art Fund this summer, yesterday they unveiled "What My Dad Gave Me," a sculpture of sorts by Chris Burden (whose father was an engineer). The piece is a 65-foot-tall replica of the Rockefeller Center tower made entirely out of Erector Set-esque pieces. The AP reported from the scene via video: The Bowery Boys note that "Burden has dabbled in miniature constructions in......

Computer rendering of the waterfalls by the Public Art Fund. Details have emerged on the ambitious, $15 million East River waterfalls project coming to New York in mid-July to cap off the Olafur Eliasson retrospective at MoMa. The project will consist of four man-made waterfalls, ranging 90 to 120-foot tall, installed temporarily at four sites along the shores of Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Governors Island: by the Brooklyn anchorage of the Brooklyn Bridge, between Piers......

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.......

EVENT: Charles Ray, who is thirty years deep in the art world, will be at the New School tonight for a Public Art Fund talk. The leader of the "conceptual realism" movement with a "lively, self-deprecating sense of humor" will discuss his "virtuoso craftsmanship" and his depiction of "familiar elements of everyday life and modern art in disarmingly altered ways." 6:30pm // The New School, John Tishman Auditorium [66 W 12th St] // $5 SCIENCE:......

We were biking down by City Hall park this afternoon and noticed they had finished installing the new Alexander Calder sculptures. They look good! Fun fact: the exhibit is organized by the Public Art Fund, but sponsored by Forest City Ratner, the company building the Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn. [Via NLG. Related: Calder.org has a great set of Alexander Calder images, and a biography of the artist.] UPDATE: here's a picture showing what......

Anne Pasternak,
Executive Director,
Creative Time...

In addition to the two great events we mentioned earlier, there are also a number of other worthwhile art happenings going on this week. Plenty in fact to satisfy even the most dedicated fine art junkie. On both June 23rd and June 27th, the Public Art Fund will be presenting 9 Drawings for Projection, a outdoor performance and film screening of short animated films by renowned South African artist William Kentridge. The films, from Kentridge's......

For all the city's many joys, there is still nothing more disgusting than New York during a heat wave. It's just something about the city's distinctive olfactory blend of rotting garbage, urine, and (if we're in the vicinity) stale booze, that just makes us want to encase ourselves in an hermetically sealed white space until the temperature drops. So, as you can imagine, it takes a quite lot to tear us away from the little......

Tomorrow is the official opening of the Japan Society exhibit, Little Boy: The Arts of Japan’s Exploding Subculture. The show will focus "on the phenomenally influential subcultures of otaku (roughly translated as "pop cult fanaticism") and its relationships to Japan's artistic vanguard." In other words, there are adorable yet disturbing works. Takashi Murakami, international pop artist of the moment, curated the show, and has been the center of last weekend's New York Times magazine feature......

Short of naming saffron the Big Apple's color, Mayor Bloomberg bestowed The Gates masterminds Christo and Jeanne-Claude with the Doris C. Freedman award for enriching the public environment. Interesting facts: Freedman was the founder of the Public Art Fund, and Mayor Ed Koch created the "Percent for Art" law, "which requires the city to spend 1 percent of its budget for eligible city-funded construction projects on art for city facilities." The AP said that Christo......

The new public art installation at Rockefeller Center is up: Walking To The Sky, by Jonathan Borofsky, features a 100 foot metal pole at an angle, with different kinds of people braving the climb. There are also sculptures of onlookers at the base, much like actual pedestrians stopping to inspect the sculpture. The skyscrapers that encircle Rockefeller Center make seeing this sculpture all the more dazzling and whimsical. More information from Rockefeller Center, and......

The Whitney Biennial opened yesterday, and the big news is that it isn't shocking. The Times Michael Kimmelman calls it "the most cogent and layered biennial in years." The Post finds that problematic, since everyone loves to hate the Biennial (James Gardner's description of "amphibious art" is also interesting). Gothamist would have to agree - there's nothing more refreshing that damning "modern" art during a walk down Madison Avenue...and by its nature, provocative work stirs......

The Mayor and the Public Art Fund have brought a little Roy Lichtenstein to city buildings, with Roy Lichtenstein at City Hall. Element #E, which has flourishes of brushstrokes, is the centerpiece, shown for the first time in it's full size, 50 foot glory; it's on display at the Tweed Courthouse, aka City Hall Academy. The other pieces are Brushstroke Group and Endless Drip (in City Hall Park) and a bronze bust, Woman: Sunlight,......

The finalists for the WTC Memorial competition will be announced today at 10:30AM. Families of September 11 victims viewed the finalists privately last night; one said, "I'm emotionally overwhelmed by what I've seen. The ideas are incredible." Some design elements, as reported by the Post and Daily News: * Some designs put big portions of the Ground Zero pit at street level. * Proposals vary for displaying victims' names - grouping them by age, by......

Japanese pop artist Takashi Murakami is speaking tonight at the Public Art Fund. Best known for his subversions of Japanese anime images, and more recently embraced by fashionistas for his redesign of the Louis Vuitton bags (the colored LV logo), Gothamist loves his work and the fact that he splits his time between Tokyo and Brooklyn. He had a huge exhibit in Grand Central a few years ago, which had his sculptures hanging in......