2024-05-06T20:26:10-04:00 https://archinect.com/news/article/150276091/hugh-hayden-is-announced-as-the-next-madison-square-park-conservancy-commission Josh Niland 2021-07-30T20:05:00-04:00 >2024-03-15T01:45:58-04:00 <img src="https://archinect.gumlet.io/uploads/bd/bd3fa3d786f5a620d0ed114771b04b45.jpg?fit=crop&auto=compress%2Cformat&enlarge=true&w=1200" border="0" /><p>An eerie landscape of empty desks will occupy a 3,600-square-foot swath on the east side of Manhattan in <a href="https://archinect.com/news/tag/1534365/madison-square-park" target="_blank">Madison Square Park</a> Conservancy&rsquo;s latest exhibition set to open this January.</p> <p>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&rsquo;s <em>Ghost Forest</em> is currently on view in the park after being <a href="https://archinect.com/news/article/150264314/maya-lin-s-ghost-forest-brings-the-climate-crisis-to-madison-square-park" target="_blank">installed in late May</a>.</p> <p>Hayden&rsquo;s installation called <em>Brier Patch</em> 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&rsquo;s folklore and is reminiscent of the <a href="https://www.enidnews.com/okc-bombing-field-of-chairs/image_6b2bde0c-e521-11e4-8ea1-638dc4216075.html" target="_blank">Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial</a>. The Conservancy&rsquo;s Brooke Rapaport called it &ldquo;visually powerful and loaded with inherent tensions&mdash;growth and stagnation, seduction and peril, individual and community&mdash;that ask us to consider how these dichotomies coexist i...</p>