Archinect - News

New York's Madison Square Park Conservancy names Holly Leicht as new Executive Director

2022-08-10T13:21:00-04:00

The Madison Square Park Conservancy has announced former HUD and Empire State Development Corporation leader Holly Leicht as its next Executive Director.

Leicht comes to the position with over 25 years of experience in urban planning and open space initiatives. She steps into office on September 6th and is replacing current Executive Director Keats Myer, who has served in the role for a decade.

The Conservancy has enjoyed a well-received slate of programming of late, including Maya Lin’s haunting Ghost Forest installation, Hugh Hayden’s send-up of educational hierarchies called Brier Patch, and Cristina Iglesias’ evocative Landscape and Memory, which has been on view since early June.

Previously on Archinect: Cristina Iglesias’ Landscape and Memory taps into the forces lying just beneath our urban grid

Leicht said she is “looking forward to deepening [the Conservancy’s] commitment to sustainability” and felt that the role would be a continuation of her work building resilience in co...

Cristina Iglesias’ Landscape and Memory taps into the forces lying just beneath our urban grid

2022-06-03T16:55:00-04:00

The Madison Square Park Conservancy’s second 2022 commission has opened with a new installation by Spanish artist Cristina Iglesias called Landscape and Memory.

In a harken back to the time when the eastern edge of Manhattan island was dominated by natural features like Collect Pond and other wetlands, Iglesias’ exhibition hinges on the arrangement of five subterranean bronze sculptures connected to a flowing stream whose presence is meant as a reminder of the unchanged ancient systems lying beneath the feet of 8 million New Yorkers.

Cristina Iglesias, Landscape and Memory, 2022. Courtesy of the artist and Madison Square Park Conservancy. Photo: Rashmi Gill.

"Madison Square Park has a rich history, witnessing and participating in several hundred years of New York City’s growth and evolution," the Conservancy’s Executive Director Keats Myer said of the significance of the site, which before the 19th century had been called Cedar Creek. “[Cristina’s] commission digs deep into this his...

Hugh Hayden is announced as the next Madison Square Park Conservancy commission

2021-07-30T20:05:00-04:00

An eerie landscape of empty desks will occupy a 3,600-square-foot swath on the east side of Manhattan in Madison Square Park Conservancy’s latest exhibition set to open this January.

The exhibition was announced Tuesday by the Conservancy, which selected Hugh Hayden as the 42nd artist to receive the commission which dates back to 2004. Maya Lin’s Ghost Forest is currently on view in the park after being installed in late May.

Hayden’s installation called Brier Patch connects 100 wooden elementary school desks via a network of twisting tree branches that layer meaning and complexity onto the tangled sculptural mass meant as a metaphor for several attendant societal ills. It takes cues from children’s folklore and is reminiscent of the Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial. The Conservancy’s Brooke Rapaport called it “visually powerful and loaded with inherent tensions—growth and stagnation, seduction and peril, individual and community—that ask us to consider how these dichotomies coexist i...

Maya Lin’s Ghost Forest brings the climate crisis to Madison Square Park

2021-05-27T19:09:00-04:00

Artist Maya Lin’s long-awaited skeletal forest has finally opened in New York’s famed Madison Square Park.

With the help of 49 dead Atlantic Cedar trees sourced from the New Jersey Pine Barrens, the 61-year-old Lin has transformed the park into an immersive installation — her first in over a decade — meant to transplant the East Side destination’s nearly 60,000 daily visitors into the frontlines of the fight to prevent deforestation.

Maya Lin (American, b. 1959) Ghost Forest, 2021 Courtesy the artist and Madison Square Park Conservancy Photo credit: Andy Romer

Lin, who lives in Colorado, says she was particularly interested in a kind of environmental phenomenon known as “ghost forests” that are a direct product of insect infestations, extreme temperature increases, and sea level changes caused by climate change.

Maya Lin within Ghost Forest, 2021 Courtesy the artist and Madison Square Park Conservancy Photo credit: Andy Romer

The park itself has played host to numerous public exhibit...

Maya Lin's postponed 'Ghost Forest' to open at Madison Square Park on May 10

2021-02-09T14:57:00-05:00

An immersive installation that visualises the bleak effects of climate change by the US artist and environmental activist Maya Lin, which was slated to open in June last year, will open at Madison Square Park in New York this spring.

Originally scheduled to open in 2020 but ultimately postponed due to the escalating pandemic, Maya Lin's site-responsive installation Ghost Forest will now be on view from May 10 through November 14, 2021.

"Ghost Forest will take the form of a towering grove of spectral cedar trees, all sourced from the region and presented in sharp contrast to the Park’s lush tree line," explains a description of the piece published by the Madison Square Park Conservancy. "The installation builds on Lin’s practice of addressing species loss, habitat loss, and climate change within her work and serves as a call to action to the thousands of visitors who pass through the Park daily."

Maya Lin envisions a 'Ghost Forest' at Madison Square Park in NYC

2020-03-12T16:12:00-04:00

A forest of dessicated trees will rise amid the verdant canopy of Madison Square Park in a forthcoming project by the American artist and environmental activist Maya Lin. In the immersive work, Ghost Forest, which will be on view from 8 June to 6 December, 30 to 40 spectral cedar trees will be replanted in the oval lawn of the park, creating a visually striking micro-landscape that decries the impact of climate change on woodlands around the world.

Commissioned by Madison Square Park Conservancy in New York, Maya Lin's site-responsive installation Ghost Forest aims to address the impact of climate change on woodlands around the planet.

"Ghost Forest will take the form of a towering grove of spectral cedar trees, all sourced from the region and presented in sharp contrast to the Park’s lush tree line," explains a statement published by the Conservancy. "The installation builds on Lin’s practice of addressing climate change within her work and serves as a call to action to the 60,000 visitors who pass through the Park daily."

Maya Lin. Photo: Jesse Frohman, courtesy of the artist.

"Ghost Forest derives its name from the eponymous natural phenomenon: vast tracts of forestland that have died off due to climate change, sea-level rise and saltwater infiltration. To create the installation, Lin worked together with the Conservancy to source dead trees from the Pine Barrens in New Jersey, a vulnerable site that has suffered severe dep...