A 16-foot bronze statue of a Special Forces soldier on horseback will be unveiled at today's Veterans Day parade, but after its trip up 5th Avenue, the 5,000-lb artwork's future is still up in the air. more ›

Ivan Chermayeff's 10-feet-tall number nine sculpture has been a midtown icon for over three decades, appearing in feature films, TV shows, and Sesame Street (watch below). But while the red steel digit may seem like a colorful visual homage to John Lennon's favorite number (or something), this playful piece of sidewalk art is anything but harmless—as one 3-year-old boy allegedly found out the hard way. more ›

Today, the Art Students League of New York and the Parks Department are teaming up to unveil eight giant sculptures in Riverside Park, along 59th to 72nd Sts. The project is called "Model to Monument," and a group of sculptors have been working on an intensive nine-month program to create the figures, which range from abstract figures of New York's past to a life-size bronze girl and her dog looking out on the Hudson. Riverside Park "provides the ideal platform to show these powerful examples of public art," said ASL Executive Director Ira Goldberg in a statement. Here's a look at some of the sculptures, which will be up for a year, and how they came to be. more ›

Yesterday, tipster Christine O'Heron sent us this picture of a strange creature on the corner of John and Adams Streets in DUMBO; it appears to be harmless to humans despite its intimidating stature. The piece is called, fittingly, "Yeti," and was made by artist Edina Tokodi, aka "Mosstika," who has a history of creating tongue-in-cheek living moss installations across various cities. Tokodi told us she made "Yeti" for this past weekend's Figment Fest on Governors Island, explaining, "after [Figment] we just decided to put 'him' out to a public space. There is only one yeti this time and he's going to be there as long as they let him to stay." more ›

Two years ago when sculptor Tom Otterness was installing his latest piece in Brooklyn, his past came back to haunt him. As you might recall, back in his younger days he adopted a shelter dog, chained it to a fence, and shot it... for art. Now that he's been commissioned to sculpt bronze lions at the Battery Park Branch of the New York Public Library (for $750,000!), his dark past is resurfacing again, with PETA protesting and petitions popping up. But the NYPL says they're the wrong target. more ›

Yawn? The Metropolitan Museum of Art will not be bringing an exciting new rooftop installation to the masses this summer, instead we'll get a tame set of sculptures from British artist Anthony Caro, on view through October 30th, according to Arts Beat. In the past, the museum has delivered a bamboo wonderland, colorful installations from both Sol Lewitt and Jeff Koons, and in 2009 a neat silver tree. more ›

How much would you pay for a Jeff Koons original? According to the NY Post, this piece—called "Balloon Flower (Blue)"—could get around $16MM when it hits the auction block next month (the same piece in magenta sold for $26MM in 2008!). There are five versions of this high-chromium steel sculpture—the red one is outside of 7 World Trade Center... and you don't need to pay a cent to see it every day. This one will be installed outside of Christie's in Rockefeller Center from October 26th through November 10th—and there's probably no chance it will be stolen, considering it weighs in at 14,000 pounds. more ›

Louise Bourgeois, the influential sculptor, died at Beth Israel Hospital yesterday at age 98. The managing director of her studio said Bourgeois had suffered a heart attack two days earlier. In its obituary, the NY Times wrote that Bourgeois, "the French-born American artist...gained fame only late in a long career, when her psychologically charged abstract sculptures, drawings and prints had a galvanizing effect on the work of younger artists, particularly women." more ›

NYU art students were wowed last week when they got a surprise visit from the glamorous first lady of France. Her foundation runs an exchange between the school and the Sorbonne in Paris, so Carla Bruni-Sarkozy came to check out the art. She proclaimed some wine glasses tied together with wire, "Beautiful," and was photographed by a student/performance artist wearing pink rain boots and six cameras around her neck. According to the New Yorker, she left students and faculty alike tongue-tied: A student said, “It was like we were trying to talk, but no words were coming out,” while N.Y.U. chair Nancy Barton confessed, "I was a little bit of a deer in the headlights. I kept calling her Carla." more ›

Artist Hulbert Waldroup was arrested Friday for installing a sculpture outside a Harlem gallery, purportedly without permission from the gallery's owner. The Jersey City artist put his work "The Gates" — which consists of two 10-foot tall antique iron gates decorated with hand-painted offensive street signs reading, "No blacks, No Jews, No Gay!" among other messages — in front of the Heath Gallery on Tuesday and was arrested when he tried to retrieve it. more ›

Down at the Winter Garden in the World Financial Center, this year's Canstruction exhibit is underway, with 100,693 cans being used to make ingenious sculptures to benefit City Harvest. All these sculptures were assembled in a single night, and yesterday the winners were announced, with jurors declaring "Feed the Bank (Piggy Bank)," by Arianna Braun Architects, PLLC, best in show. The award for Best Use of Labels went to the Beatles-inspired "We Get By With A Little Help From Our Friends," by Ted Moudis Associates. Best Structural Ingenuity went to "A Fungus to Feed Us" by Platt Byard Dovell White Architects more ›

Uh oh, it's bad luck to walk under a Ponzi schemer! Chinese artist Chen Wenling has created this sculptured masterpiece entitled "What You See Might Not Be Real" (or as we like to call it: MadBull). Yes, that man pinned to the wall is jailed financier Bernard Madoff. The piece is currently on display at a gallery in Beijing, China, but we have high hopes that one day it will take the place of the Wall Street Bull. more ›

Have you seen this Emerald ring sculpture on top of 1 Sutton Place South? Curbed has some spy photos of the penthouse terrace, where it resides. While they were worried it was some marketing gimmickry, we did some internet sleuthing to find the story behind the rock. Designer Lisa Perry and her hedge-fund hubbie Richard live in the luxury apartment, and prior to her 50th birthday she "had only to look out the window for a clue to what [he] had in mind as a gift. [He] gave his wife a ring that is a miniature version of Jeff Koons’s green Diamond, which graces the terrace of their New York penthouse." Show offs. more ›

It's not just the suits looking out for their money in the Financial District these days. The artist behind the Charging Bull sculpture near Wall Street is suing Random House for using an image of his work for the cover art of a book about the fall of Lehman Brothers. 1010Wins reports that Arturo Di Modica was filing the lawsuit in federal court yesterday, and seeking unspecified damages. He is also asking the picture be removed from the book, titled "A Colossal Failure of Common Sense." Indeed, he had the sculpture copyrighted in 1998, 9 years after its creation. Maybe Sad Panda can go on the new cover! more ›

It's that time of year again! The Met is readying their roof garden with a site-specific monumental sculpture. On Tuesday, weather permitting, conceptual artist Roxy Paine's dramatic Maelstrom piece, a 130-foot-long by 45-foot-wide stainless-steel sculpture, will be unveiled, encompassing the nearly 8,000-square-foot outdoor space. more ›

NYU owns the land under the complex and two of the three towers (the third is a moderate-income housing complex for neighborhood residents NYU was required to build). [The University] wished to build a 40-story tower on the soon-to-be-landmarked open space north of the Picasso sculpture, blocking the public view of the art work. GVSHP adamantly opposed the plan, saying it violated the entire notion of landmarking the complex, and urged the LPC to protect the open space as part of its designation. more ›

NYMag has the breaking news that the 15th century terra-cotta relief of Saint Michael the Archangel by Andrea della Robbia has taken a fall off the wall at the Met, from the same spot it has hung on metal mounts for twelve years (though the museum acquired it in 1960). The time of the tumble is uncertain, but occurred sometime overnight, and the curators have been assessing the damage today. While the sculpture is not irreparably harmed, how did the 62 x 32-inch piece fall in the first place? more ›

Mark Gibian's sculpture in Brooklyn (entitled "Crescendo") became the latest part of the Williamsburg waterfront in mid-May; "the four-ton, crescent-shaped stainless steel sculpture was hoisted over the East River and installed on new 400-foot pier that's been constructed at Northside Piers." The sculpture is functional, providing shade and including a bench; the Brooklyn Eagle reports that a shade structure was required under the zoning. While an exact date hasn't been set, the Piers (a direct result of the city's Greenpoint-Williamsburg Rezoning of 2005, which will also include 800 homes) will open up to the public sometime this summer. You may recall when one of the Northside Piers buildings went up in flames last Fall. more ›