Public art commissions are difficult. Authors should create something that is accessible, permanent, relevant to the site, but also self-sustaining. Still, Jacolby Satterwhite and Nina Chanel Abney, in partnership with the Lincoln Center, the Public Art Fund, and Harlem’s Studio Museum, commemorated the reopening of David Geffen Hall by creating two major is exhibiting a new installation that looks simple.
Brooklyn-based artist Satterwhite, 36, works in the fields of performance, 3D animation, and sculpture, and often incorporates the paintings of her mother, Patricia Satterwhite, into elaborate installations. Best known for his paintings, his 40-year-old Abney also lives in New York and is a veteran of his public art. They were selected from a short list of nominated artists after submitting their proposals. Between them, the artist presents a deeply thoughtful piece that delightfully welcomes the history of Lincoln Center and its performance companies, as well as the history of San Juan Hill, a largely Black and Puerto Rican neighborhood displaced by a performing arts complex. Incorporate into
Both will run for 18 months before giving way to new commissions. (Sadly, Richard Lippold’s 40-foot epic “Orpheus and Apollo” was removed from the hall in 2014 and is now set to reappear at LaGuardia Airport.)
Abney’s contribution, ‘San Juan Heels’, consists of 35 large vinyl squares that adorn most of the north façade of the building. A collage-like shape represents a suitable person, letter, or phrase. “Soul in the Heart”, “San Juan Hill”, Thelonious Monk with the Red Hat. (He lived in the area.) The mixture captures the sometimes-dissonant exuberance of this particular patch of Manhattan. A few big Xs can combine different influences or represent an overlooked history. But the bold colors and legibility, and the way the whole building looks like an educational child’s toy, reach out beyond Broadway and grab it.
Satterwhite’s “An Eclectic Dance to the Music of Time,” a 30-minute video that plays on all 400 square feet of the lobby’s digital wall whenever the concert is not simulcast, brings the timeless Lincoln Center to life. It’s like simulating The news ticker shares factoids about the Metropolitan Opera and the New York Philharmonic, especially black musicians and composers, such as opera singer Marian Anderson and child prodigy Philippa Schuyler.
Choreographed by Satterwhite, dancers and musicians quietly follow their muses beneath billboard-sized photographs of past performers in an ever-changing digital landscape. As the scenery gently rocks in and out, and the muted colors of the video cycle through his four sections, the work achieves an extraordinary balance between stillness and movement, picture and story, contemporary excitement and historical grandeur. To do.