The Gates' & Other Public Art Favorites

A 16 foot sculpture of a pigeon named dinosaur at the Highline in New York City on November 4, 2024.

Listeners share their memories of Christo & Jeanne-Claude’s “The Gates” which transformed part of Central Park with orange banners twenty years ago this month, plus other art projects that changed their view of public spaces.

More on Central Park's celebration of the 20th anniversary of The Gates.

Title: The Gates' & Other Public Art Favorites

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. To wrap up today, we're going to have a call-in about your favorite pieces of public art, and especially those immersive projects that change how you see the city. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. I'm going to bring up a specific one, which is why we bring it up today, but we're casting the net wide. What is a favorite piece of public art that you have liked to see at any time or that you like to visit and revisit that you might like to share with our other listeners? A favorite piece of public art anywhere in our area or anywhere for that matter. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, call or text.

Why? Did you know it's been 20 years since Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s "The Gates" graced Central Park? For those of you who weren't around for this or didn't see it, they were giant orange, I think they called them saffron-colored, banners that stretched across an expanse of Central Park, some 7,500 of them. It was years in the planning, and it ran for only 16 days, but it drew millions of people to the park. Were you one of them? I happen to have been. It was a fun experience.

Did seeing The Gates have an effect on you and how you experienced Central Park? Did it make you see the park in a different way, which I think was part of the point besides just the fun colors and shapes and sizes and stuff? Call or text us at 212-433-WNYC about The Gates or any favorite piece of immersive public art from any time or any favorite piece of existing public art of any kind. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692.

For a few more weeks around the 20th anniversary of The Gates, you can reportedly get a sense of The Gates now and see what it looked like, at least on your phone screen, as you walk along a path by Cherry Hill in Central Park in what's called augmented reality. You have to download an app and scan some columns, but that's the real news hook for this call-in is that that thing is out there, that app is out there that's allowing people to virtually revisit The Gates experience as you walk through Central Park. Have you done that on your phone? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, or any of your favorite pieces of immersive or any public art or your memories of The Gates, 212-433-9692. We'll take your calls after this.

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Brian: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now to your favorite pieces of immersive or any public art in our area or anywhere else or your memories of The Gates in Central Park, 20 years old now and with an app that helps you re-experience it as you walk through the park. Doug in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hi, Doug.

Doug: Hi, Brian. Love you and love your show. I was in the park for The Gates and it was in the area by the Bridle Path, the old Bridle Path. I'm not sure that's still there. Anyway, I was walking along, and all of a sudden, there emerged from one of the gates from underneath the banner a mounted New York policeman on his horse. It was just one of those New York moments where out of this, it was a sunny, bright day, and out of the banner, came this mounted police on a horse. It was very dramatic. [laughs]

Brian: Doug, thank you for the visual. Steve in Hell's Kitchen, you're on WNYC. Hi, Steve.

Steve: Hi, Brian. Thanks very much. I love The Gates as well. I also saw Jeanne-Claude and The Pont Neuf in France. What I loved was Bellerophon Taming Pegasus by Jacques Lipchitz. That was his worst, worst, his last work of art, which is right in front of the Columbia Law School. Now, I did my graduate work across the street at Schermerhorn Building in biology, but this is something that has to be seen. Bellerophon never really tamed Pegasus, he bridled Pegasus, but still, it's an amazing work of art and I highly recommend it. Out there on Amsterdam Avenue, and it's for all to see.

Brian: Thank you very much. All right. Amsterdam around 116th Street. Kevin on Roosevelt Island, you're on WNYC. Hi, Kevin.

Kevin: Hi. Thank you for having me. I know this is admittedly very touristy, but one of my favorite art pieces now is the Dinosaur. It's called Dinosaur on the High Line. It's the gigantic pigeon. I'm sure everyone's seen it by now. I couldn't think of a better animal to symbolize New York City, the grit and determination. I go there quite often. I'm born and raised in New York City, but I still appreciate the island and appreciate that giant pigeon.

Brian: The High Line just gets better and better. What street? Do you know? As you're going up or down the High Line-ish?

Kevin: No, I don't exactly know. I know it's right underneath that edge or the verge thing, but no, I don't know what street it is, but that giant pigeon.

Brian: Giant pigeon called the Dinosaur, a pigeon named Dinosaur on the High Line. Peter in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hi, Peter.

Peter: Hi. Thanks for taking my call. There's a piece that I love that's outside MoMA that is unlabeled and all the history I know has been passed down from people in the area, but there's a bike rack that looks like a big red squiggle on 54th Street that David Byrne installed when he used to go regularly because there were no bike racks. It's in terrible condition. It's been hit by trucks. It's covered in graffiti. Half of it is separated from the sidewalk, but I just love that it's there and unlisted and half art, half necessity.

Brian: Half art, half necessity. David Byrne's bike rack outside MoMA on 54th Street. Here's a text that says, "I loved walking through The Gates, loved it at the time, and helped me feel connected to a new city I just moved to a few years earlier, but the real connection is what I feel now, having been a part of it all that time ago." Another listener writes, "I still recall the thrill of The Gates installation, the splashes of vibrant color against the gray and white of a snowy February. It was sublime. I came into the city several times just to walk through it, and I recall a child asking his mother, Mom, is this art?" Carrie in Lower Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hi, Carrie.

Carrie: Hi. Thank you. I just wanted to say that I really adored The Gates. I felt it opened up new vistas in the park because I would always walk from west to east on the 79th Street bit. I loved the walk, but suddenly seeing all of these new routes and opportunities, it just felt very, very positive, especially I felt like it was the first time since September 11th that New York felt energized and positive.

Brian: I forgot about that aspect, but it was considering what had gone on just a few years earlier. It was a kind of reopening, wasn't it?

Carrie: Yes, an awakening.

Brian: Carrie, thank you. Thank you very much. Here is Rupa in New Providence, New Jersey. You're on WNYC. Hi, Rupa.

Rupa: Hi. Thank you so much for taking my call. I'm a big fan. My favorite installation was the CowParade. I want to say from 22, 23 years ago, I used to work on 37th and Broadway, and there was a cow in front of my building. Every day in the summer, a bunch of us from the office would go sit outside, eat lunch, and I would braid-- It had hair, and I would braid, and then a couple of days later, somebody else would braid it differently or do a different hairstyle, and this went on all summer.

Eventually, I left a note in there saying who I was, and I left an email and a number, and a person contacted me, and it turned out to be another woman that worked in the area, and we ended up becoming friends. It was just the funnest, cutest thing that went on all summer. I loved this cow. I loved all the cows that were around the city during that time. It was my favorite installation.

Brian: I really like that one, too. It's funny. That one sticks with me more than The Gates for some reason, maybe because you had to so purposefully go into Central Park to see this big exhibit that big famous artists did, and the cows, you would just run into them here and there, and you were in Manhattan or wherever you were, and suddenly there were cows, right?

Rupa: Yes.

Brian: Thank you very much. Another one like that that I liked, I wonder if they do that anymore, is pianos. You know how they sometimes have put pianos in random places, and then basically anybody, unless there's a line, can sit down and play the piano for a few minutes? Let's see. We just heard about the cows. Listener texts, the giant pigeon, a favorite piece of public art, is at the intersection of 10th and 30th. The giant pigeon, but does it lay eggs? Donna in Hoboken, you're on WNYC. Hi, Donna.

Donna: Hi. Thanks for taking my call. I have always liked Kathleen McCarthy's "Five Points of Observation." She has five subway station gratings on the J elevated line, so not only when you're on the J train in Queens can you pull into a station and see these wonderful faces. I particularly like the Woodhaven Boulevard face, and it's mesh, and it's three-dimensional.

Not only does it indent when you're in the J train passing it or getting off there, but also when you're coming up from Rockaway on Woodhaven Boulevard, you see it in front of you for blocks and blocks, and you wonder, "What is that? It's a face, and isn't that remarkable?" To realize that that's art, it's just good for all of us native Queens people and anyone else who uses the Woodhaven Boulevard throughway from Rockaway up to Northern Queens. It's wonderful. Kathleen McCarthy, 1998 and 1993.

Brian: Great one, Woodhaven Station. Here's another Queens one in a text, listener writes, "Adrian in Queens here, love the show. Shout out to the Unisphere and Corona Park, relic of the 1964 World's Fair, and one of my fave monuments in the city." Lauren in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Lauren.

Lauren: Oh, hi Brian.

Brian: Hi, Lauren. Yes, interrupt that other conversation for just a few seconds. Go ahead.

Lauren: [chuckles] I just wanted to call in about Sam Moyer's "Doors for Doris", which was done at Central Park at the plaza right on the corner of 57th. It was a beautiful installation just coming out of COVID, where you could walk through these marble arches that she created. It was named after Doris who funded the Public Art Fund, and that was just a really special experience for me to walk through that when we were just emerging out of COVID and starting to interact again.

Brian: There were gates in Central Park 20 years ago and there were doors, Doors for Doris in 2020. Thank you, Lauren. A good one to end on. That was fun. So many of you have your favorite public art installations from past or present. We could have kept going with this. Thanks for your great calls. That's the Brian Lehrer show for today, produced by MaryEileen Croke, Lisa Allison, Amina Srna, Carl Boisrond, and Esperanza Rosenbaum. Zach Gottehrer-Cohen produces our daily politics podcast. We have Juliana Fonda and Shayna Sengstock at the audio controls. It's Alison time.

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