PUBLIC ART INSTALLATION: HEDGEWORK
May 18 – November 10, 2024
Forecourt at Building 77 (141 Flushing Ave at Vanderbilt Ave)
Accessible 24 hours
Created by Marek Walczak (Civic Space LLC), Mark Shepard (Center for Architecture and Situated Technologies), and Antonina Simeti (Timbre Consultants), with Robbie Lee and Wes Heiss.
Hedgework is an urban landscape intervention at Building 77 that takes the form of a sentient hedgerow. It is a community of native plants and environmental sensors that create a biodiverse habitat that supports nature and human interaction. Visitors can learn about the habitat and the Brooklyn Navy Yard by sitting amongst the hedgerow’s plants and animals, via QR codes to chat with Hedgework using AI, or by listening to the habitat’s soundtrack.
The group behind the installation describe themselves as “public artists, architects, and urban planners committed to fostering a greater understanding and engagement between humans and more-than-human actors in our environment. We create and deploy non-traditional pedagogical platforms in traditional urban spaces to generate new and unexpected responses.”
The installation was made at, and by, the Yard: Delivery pallets were reused for the weight, sand and stone from New York Sand & Stone is spread throughout the installation, and a solar panel system from Voltaic Systems powers the bird feeder and plant bed cameras.
Learn more at hedgework.net.
PUBLIC ART INSTALLATION: TRANSFORMING AMERICA THROUGH ART: A VISION FOR BROOKLYN’S COMMUNITY
May 18 – November 10, 2024
Forecourt at Building 92 (141 Flushing Ave at Carlton Ave)
Accessible 24 hours
Created by Steven Ladd and William Ladd.
Transforming America through Art: A Vision for Brooklyn’s Community features photographic reproductions of collaborative textile artwork in the publicly accessible forecourt of Building 92 and within its dedicated exhibition gallery. The interdisciplinary installation is rooted in the impact of art and representation of Brooklynites who have responded to the universal prompt of using one word to describe their hopes for the future of America.
As an extension of the storytelling amplified in the public art installation, the Ladd brothers will also curate an indoor exhibition on the ground floor gallery of Building 92. The exhibition will help contextualize the public art installation by delving into the background of the Ladd’s “Scrollathon project” and exploring their history of utilizing the arts to foster community engagement.
The Ladds are known for vibrant, highly textural artwork that evokes shared memories, working at the intersection of design, applied, and fine art. Their works represent treasured people, places, and memories, often including materials attuned to adaptive reuse, drawing on their skills with handcrafted techniques such as sewing and beading.
This installation acts as a prototype for a larger commission the Ladds have received to be part of the 250th anniversary celebration of the United States’ founding at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C.
Learn more about the artists and their work at StevenandWilliam.com.
IN MOTION: HANDCRAFTING INDUSTRY EXHIBITION
February 23 – May 12, 2024
Yard Work Gallery at Building 92
Hours: Open Daily, 9 a.m. – 6 p.m.
Featuring more than forty photographs taken by Yard-based photographer JC Cancedda, IN MOTION calls attention to the importance of handcraftsmanship to manufacturing, design, and industrial production. Moving throughout the gallery, visitors are invited to take a moment to appreciate the intentional, focused, and highly skilled work unfolding in the photographs and to consider how ideas flow through the hand in ways that marry artistry and craftsmanship.
Taken between May and December 2023, the photographs provide a small snapshot of the 11,000+ workers that call the Brooklyn Navy Yard home. The photographs represent the diversity of industries at the Yard as well as helping to reveal some of the materials, tools, and machines that drive contemporary industrial innovation.
Interested in attending a program curated for this exhibition? View our upcoming programs here.
Brooklyn Navy Yard: Past, Present & Future
Building 92
Historic Marine Commandant’s Residence
Hours: Thursdays – Sundays, 11 a.m. – 5 p.m.
For tour schedule, click here.
Brooklyn Navy Yard: Past, Present, and Future is a permanent exhibition at Building 92 that tells the story of the Brooklyn Navy Yard from 1801, when it was founded as one of the nation’s first federal shipyards, through to the site’s use today as an active industrial and innovation hub home to nearly 500 businesses. The exhibition is located across three floors inside the former residence of the Marine Commandant, an adaptively reused building that was originally constructed in 1858. Inside the exhibition, visitors will get an extensive history of the site through detailed wall text and a variety of artifacts and objects that span across centuries.
The exhibition is the first exhibition to tell the Yard’s story and was originally installed in 2011 with great community support from both organizations and neighborhood residents alike. Ultimately, the exhibition aims to introduce contemporary audiences to the generations of people who worked, transformed, lived, and shaped the Yard over time, and who continue to build upon the storied history of the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
Atmosphere for Invention: Public Art in Buildings 77 & 92
Inside Buildings 77 and 92.
For location and hours, click here.
The Brooklyn Navy Yard has initiated a public art program for artists seeking to create site-specific installations in public spaces. With the cultural sector among the hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, the initiative serves to economically uplift members of the Yard’s creative community while also providing the Wallabout Bay community with art activations to enjoy around the site.
Each of the works on view use elements of color, texture, and light to establish a dialogue with the history of the site as well as its evolving ecosystem of people, labor, and infrastructure. Together, the works capture the innovative spirit of the Yard and its forward-looking future.
A Moment Materialized (November 12, 2020 - November 12, 2023)
This online exhibition is designed to provide a glimpse into this unique moment, a moment shaped by a global health pandemic, a national call for greater racial and social justice, and a very local and personalized response to living and working in this “COVID era.”
This exhibition is designed to showcase new work created during “this moment” (early 2020 to the present) through the eyes of artists living and working in Brooklyn, New York. Work addresses a variety of themes and narratives, including but not limited to health, isolation, fear, racial justice, economic disparities, hope for the future, adaptive response, and working in a new reality.
Work selected illuminates how creative practices have been affected by COVID-19 as well as capturing through materials what stats and quantitative data alone cannot. In short, the exhibition aims to visually capture a feeling, a sensation, a response to this unprecedented time through the eyes of working artists in Brooklyn, New York.
PAST INSTALLATION: Atmosphere for Invention: Art & Object Walk on Flushing Avenue
Flushing Avenue from Building 77 down to Wegmans
(Vanderbilt Avenue to Elliot Place, opposite Commodore Barry Park)
Home to innovators, entrepreneurs, manufacturers, and artists, the Yard has been an atmosphere of invention since its founding as a shipyard in 1801. Today, the Yard is home to more than 500 businesses in fields as diverse as art and design to technology and biomedical sciences. This nearly half-mile installation celebrates those businesses and the incredible contributions they make to Brooklyn.
The walk is free and accessible along Flushing Avenue via sidewalk and the Brooklyn Greenway bike path. Explore our public art programming here.
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