Art in the Parks

Returning for its 14th consecutive year, the annual Photoville Festival features open-air photography exhibitions throughout all five boroughs of New York City. Collaborating with hundreds of artists and programming partners to curate and present over 80 outdoor exhibitions, Photoville Festival addresses a wide range of issues giving visitors a unique experience of thought-provoking and exceptional photography from across the globe.

Locations: Exhibitions in parks can be found in Barretto Point Park and Orchard Beach in the Bronx; Anchorage Plaza in Brooklyn; Bella Abzug Park, Corporal John A. Seravalli Playground, Jackie Robinson Park, and Chelsea Park in Manhattan; Travers Park in Queens; and Alice Austen House and South Beach Promenade in Staten Island.

This exhibition is presented by Photoville.

Artist Jaime Miranda-Bambarén exhumes the truncated roots of plundered trees in the Peruvian highlands. They are centennial arbors, planted in viceregal times, razed by our degrading "modernity." By transforming such remains into “seeds,” Miranda affirms an ecological claim and a resurrectional act: to transfigure those fields of sown death into almost breathing images of life.

Inspired by a community that cares for all its residents, this mural is dedicated to the people of Echo Park.

This exhibition is presented by Friends of Echo Park, with support from the City Parks Foundation and Partnerships for Parks.

This mural was created by Geobany Rodriguez and features the blue-winged warbler and purple coneflower. As part of the Audubon Mural Project, a public-art initiative drawing attention to birds that are vulnerable to extinction from climate change, NYC Parks GreenThumb partnered with National Audubon Society,  Gitler &_____ Gallery, and local artists to design murals on sheds at GreenThumb community gardens across New York City. Through a collaborative process between the partners, artist, and community garden group, each mural was designed to feature climate-threatened birds that rely on green spaces like these urban gardens and native plants that birds depend on for food and shelter.

A work from the artist’s Monuments to Motherhood series, the fifteen-foot-tall bronze sculpture honors caregiving in all its forms, recognizing those who nurture, sustain, and support their communities—often in ways that go unseen. Across the country, public statuary rarely reflects these essential contributions, and the role of care remains largely overlooked in civic spaces. This sculpture offers a powerful acknowledgment of those whose labor holds society together and stands as a testament to the generations that came before us.

This exhibition is presented by the Prospect Park Alliance.

This piece depicts the legend of the alligator in the NYC sewers. It deals with two interesting aspects of our world; our need for gods, myths, and legends much like any other civilization prior to ours, and our habit of creating invasive species by moving animals from their natural habitats to human environments.

This exhibition is presented by Mollbrinks Gallery.

The banners are displayed on the fence surrounding The Old Stone House & Washington Park and J.J. Byrne Playground in Park Slope.

This exhibition is presented by Arts Gowanus, Brooklyn Pride and The Old Stone House.

This exhibition features nine monumental, resin sculptures by French sculptor Michel Bassompierre, depicting peaceful animals who seem to be caught in the intimacy of their lives. Favouring animals with round shapes, Asian elephants, gorillas, bears or even horses, Bassompierre achieves a form that is both soft and precise, where light never clashes with shadow.

This exhibition is presented by Galeries Bartoux, Patrons of Park Avenue, and the Murray Hill Neighborhood Association.

This mural was created by Pelumi Adegawa and features the gray catbird and native sunflower, milkweed, lobelia, and wild strawberry. As part of the Audubon Mural Project, a public-art initiative drawing attention to birds that are vulnerable to extinction from climate change, NYC Parks GreenThumb partnered with National Audubon Society,  Gitler &_____ Gallery, and local artists to design murals on sheds at GreenThumb community gardens across New York City. Through a collaborative process between the partners, artist, and community garden group, each mural was designed to feature climate-threatened birds that rely on green spaces like these urban gardens and native plants that birds depend on for food and shelter.

Portals of Remembrance features three new monuments in augmented reality (AR) created by renowned contemporary artists. This exhibition honors and illuminates the stories of underrepresented figures within the HIV/AIDS movement through three virtual monuments created by celebrated artists, Derek Fordjour, Jacolby Satterwhite, Tourmaline, and Egyptt LaBeija, reimagining the New York City AIDS Memorial as a dynamic site of memory and empowerment.

Derek Fordjour’s Cellular Chaser draws inspiration from his acclaimed Black jockey series, using the imagery of the jockey and horse to explore themes of hypervisibility, death, disappearance, and stalled progress. Expanding on the themes from Tourmaline’s short film Atlantic is a Sea of Bones and Egyptt LaBeija’s enduring legacy, their work creates an experience that is both a tribute and a testament to personal and collective histories of Black queer and trans resilience. Jacolby Satterwhite’s You Make Me Feel Mighty Real is a tribute to Sylvester, the trailblazer who revolutionized mainstream music with unapologetic, Black, queer humanity and jubilance.

This exhibition is presented by the NYC AIDS Memorial and Kinfolk.

Originally created for an exhibition at Museum Tinguely in Basel, Switzerland, the ten-foot-tall sculpture takes the shape of a giant pink foot and lower leg topped with a working sprinkler. The creature-like work is playfully dotted with tongues sticking out from small lipsticked mouths, and each toenail is painted haphazardly with bright red nail polish. Foot Fountain (pink) is activated by pedals installed nearby. It irreverently reimagines traditional fountains, which are often placed in the center of squares or gardens with water that is self-contained. Instead, Foot Fountain (pink) interacts more intimately with its surroundings, using water to nourish both the place and the people around it.

This exhibition is presented by The High Line.

This exhibition is presented by HESSE FLATOW and the Broadway Mall Association.

This exhibition is presented by West Harlem Art Fund and New York Artists Equity Association.

The exhibition features eight bronzes recently cast from wood sculptures Mosley made between 1996 and 2021. The bronze sculptures range from human scale to the monumental Gate III, while varied patinas and textures preserve the original surfaces as well as the tactile presence of his hand and chisel. Mosley draws on influences as varied as modernist sculpture, his collection of Western African masks, and the genre of jazz, to realize a deeply humanist body of sculptures through distillation, invention, and improvisation.

This exhibition is presented by Public Art Fund.

Acacia Bipod stands as a monument honoring the Indigenous peoples of South Africa. The double helix, ladder, and Acacia tree motifs merge here to reflect growth, ancestry, and interconnectedness.

This exhibition is a Lawrence Knight Project presented by New York Artists Equity Association with support from the New York State Council on the Arts, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, and the West Harlem Art Fund.

This public exhibition is Allen’s largest outdoor installation to date and the newest in a series of large-scale outdoor installations staged by Allen in the United States, Mexico and Belgium. Unique bronze and onyx sculptures, including examples reaching over 10 feet tall and realized especially for the exhibition, will be on view at eight sites that span nearly 20 blocks. Park Avenue provides a unique opportunity for New Yorkers to engage with the artist’s material explorations of consciousness, free will, and the nature of time, unexpectedly tranquil amongst the energetic velocity of the city. Juxtaposing the artist’s primordial formations against the urban landscape, the exhibition encourages new perspectives on the elemental nature of Allen’s fluid, biomorphic sculptural language.

This exhibition is presented by Kasmin and the Fund for Park Avenue.

This exhibition consists of four vinyl banners, which document the artist’s participatory project Limited, Limited Edition. The artist guided participants through stenciling their chosen translations onto secondhand t-shirts. Limited, Limited Edition is an ongoing gifting project started in 2005 as a way for the artist to engage with people to create singular cross-cultural experiences in an imaginative space transcending any one-dimensional take on Japanese culture.

This exhibition is presented by Korea Art Forum.

Lingo Bingo offers an opportunity to bridge language and cultural barriers, fostering understanding in a playful setting. It replaces bingo numbers with words and phrases in multiple languages, inviting participants to discover shared values. This installation features 13 languages, including five frequently used in Inwood: Spanish, Taíno, Lenape, Hebrew, and English.

This exhibition is presented by Korea Art Forum.

Cobrin has decades of experience working with various forms of analog audio recording technology. The digital tools used to create these images are housed in the same computer as the digital audio recording programs used by the artist. For him, sound has a visual component that is expressed in these pieces and may in fact be a part of the way in which digital technology’s user interface is designed and received. Cobrin has taken that effect to another level by making photographs that reconstruct these objects to reveal their forms, and his use of color creates an impactful statement about their obsolescence and decay.

This exhibition is presented by El Taller Latino Americano.

Happy to See You, a vibrant public art installation by local artist Marya Triandafellos, is designed to inspire joy and positivity. The installation features colorful, minimalist images displayed on a wrought iron fence on the Greenwich Street side of Washington Market Park. Happy to See You offers a playful visual engagement to brighten the area. With saturated colors and abstracted shapes like clouds, fish, and flowers, the installation evokes universal themes of connection, positivity, and community.

This exhibition is presented by the Friends of Washington Market Park.

 This 6 foot tall sculpture symbolizes the diversity of people from different nationalities and cultures who have chosen to live together in Queens and share their ideas, dreams, history, food and customs. The font is the same one used for the I Love New York campaign, American Typewriter, and the colors are based on the Queens flag.