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. 

"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 history, evoking an era that predates even our centuries-old park, to reconnect today’s visitors with the natural wonder of the original site."

Iglesias dug into the park’s Oval Lawn to physically instill in the viewer the same feeling of connection between their lives and the long-lost pastoral scenery as explored in historian Simon Schama’s seminal 1995 title of the same name. It follows an installation by Hugh Hayden in which the artist explored the many modern perils of education through an arboreal metaphor, and Maya Lin’s Ghost Forest, wherein trees were also used as a salient to other existential crises of modern times. 

This installation is the focus of the conservancy’s annual public art symposium being held today at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan. It will remain open to the public until December 4th. Curator Brooke Kamin Rapaport says it “brings a new level of exploration to our commissioning program,” and that visitors will do so as “citizen archaeologists.” 

More information about the Madison Square Park Conservancy’s programs can be found here.