Activities for Kids

8 Awesome Outdoor Artworks to See On the High Line

Dotted along the High Line, right above all those art galleries, you’ll find a ton of public outdoor art that’s fun, free and forward-looking like the clever Sheep Station, a gas station turned faux sheep grazing pasture.

By Alice Perry September 24, 2013

Since having kids, your days of strolling through Chelsea art galleries may be temporarily on hold. But that doesn’t mean you can’t still experience cutting-edge and contemporary art with your kids. Dotted along the High Line, right above all those art galleries, you’ll find a ton of public outdoor art that’s fun, free and forward-looking like the clever Sheep Station, a gas station turned faux sheep grazing pasture. And because this outdoor kid-friendly Chelsea art tour is like an open-air gallery, you and the kids will be outside and you won’t have to shush them once.

Sheep Station

The Art: Sheep Station is so much fun that even hardcore gallery-goers can’t help but smile when they pass this farm-in-a-gas-station installation. Taking up a complete street corner where a Getty Gas Station once stood, François-Xavier Lalanne’s Sheep Station plays with a ton of contradictory images. Fake sheep wander over real grass on gently sloping hillocks. An iconic white fence contains the farm – which is not a farm at all but a gas station with long abandoned gas pumps (the glory days when gas cost $2.48 a gallon). But at this gas station, there is no way to get in or out.

Fun for Kids: Kids will love the juxtaposition of an innocent farm scene next to the honking taxis and rattling delivery trucks on 10^th Avenue. Your children may want to climb over the fence, but try to corral your little lambs. Although the sheep look sturdy, they can be easily knocked over.

See It: 239 10^th Avenue between West 24th and West 25th Streets. It can also be viewed from the High Line at West 24^th Street. Now through October 20.

All images courtesy of Alice Perry

-Alice Perry