We here at Red Tri NY know how much you all like public art, as well as how much you love living in NYC. Which is why we feel we’d be shirking our responsibility if we didn’t sound the alarm and make sure you knew about the giant bagel sculptures currently inhabiting two public squares downtown.
photo: Art Production Fund
Get Yer Bagels Here!
You can find the enormous faux treats, collectively titled “Everything” in two locations: Hudson River Park and at Ruth Wittenberg Plaza in the West Village at 6th Avenue and Christopher Street. The park is home to three different sculptures surrounding one of the park’s fountains: a single bagel (that appears to be sesame); a trio of pumperknickle, everything and plain, and a massive tower of bagels that also serves as a makeshift vase for a single, black tulip. The Plaza at 6th Avenue and Christopher features a similar bagel stack/vase sculpture.
photo: Art Production Fund
What’s the Story
The massive faux dough stacks are the work of Swedish-born artist Hanna Liden, who in partnership with the Art Production Fund and sponsor Kiehl’s, created “Everything” for public consumption. The work is part of plans at Hudson River Park to develop a more comprehensive and sustainable art program.
A longtime New York resident herself, Liden sees the humble bagel as “a great icon of urban living” and “a circle with no beginning and no end…evocative of the eternal cycle of city life.” The black spray paint resembling the burns one sometimes sees on bagels from time to time, is a “romantic tribute to the darkness and grime, which are essential and beautiful characteristics of our city. (You can tell the kids that, or just take a lot of fun pictures with the statues.) While visitors to the bagel installations should not climb the larger stacks, it is fine, if not encouraged, for kids to hop on and in the single sesame.
Hanna Liden’s “Everything” will be on display in Hudson River Park until October 20, 2015, and in Ruth Wittenberg Plaza until August 24, 2015.
Hanna Liden “Everything”
Hudson River Park, through Oct. 20
Ruth Wittenberg Plaza, through Aug. 24
Online: artproductionfund.org
Have you been to the bagels? Tell us about your visit!
—Mimi O’Connor
