You don’t need to visit a gallery to see some extraordinary murals in NYC. Beautiful works can be found inside restaurants and buildings of every description—there’s even a book about it. But you really don’t even need to step inside. Dozens of murals and wall mounted installations can be found right in the city’s streets, just waiting for you to find them.
The Bowery mural is a constant surprise. Found on the corner of Bowery and Houston Street, it’s not one specific painting but rather a space in which new works of art appear every few months. From Barry McGee’s celebration of tagging to Retna‘s calligraphy/stick figures to Swoon‘s tribute to Hurricane Sandy victims, there’s always something new to see.
Keith Haring’s famous double-sided mural Crack is Wack is painted on the handball court walls in the playground named after it. Found at the junction of East 127th Street, 2nd Avenue and Harlem River Drive, the mural’s probably the most colorful and energetic anti-drug message you’ll ever see. (Not a mural, but also check out The Life of Christ, the altarpiece at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine: Haring’s only religious work, completed shortly before his death.)
The Wall, also known as Gateway to SoHo, is Forrest Myers‘ minimalist icon—an eight-storey blue wall studded with 42 green steel braces. The installation, found at 599 Broadway, has been the subject of controversy due to its massive non-money-generating size in an advertising-prime location, and is currently located several feet higher than its original 1973 position.
John Ahearn and Rigoberto Torres’ collaborative works in the South Bronx are also well worth hunting down: four installations (Homage to the People of Bronx, Life on Dawson Street, We Are a Family and Back to School) that cross the divide between mural and sculpture with life-size fiberglass figures embedded high in the walls of buildings. The figures are casts taken of neighborhood children, preserving a snapshot of everyday life for all to see.
The NYC subway system is itself a sprawling, city-wide art gallery, featuring murals by a wide range of artists. There’s Memories of 23rd Street in the Broadway Line station you’d expect it to be, Keith Godard’s series of mosaics illustrating the hats of notable turn-of-the-century figures; Oculus, Jones/Ginzel’s collection of 300 eyes in the World Trade Center/Park Place/Chamber Street stations; and dozens more. MTA’s Arts for Transit has a smartphone app that provides a complete tour of underground art.
And then there’s the mostly-but-not-quite-gone alfrescos. Venus is/was a 12-story modernist mural by Knox Martin on the south wall of Bayview Correctional on 11th Avenue, a testament to the femininity of its inmates. Following the construction of a luxury apartment building next door, however, the mural is almost completely obscured—little more is visible from the street than the artist’s signature peeking out from behind the more commercially modernist architecture in front of it. 5 Pointz: The Institute of Higher Burnin’ on 45-46 Davis Street was until recently a graffiti mecca, an abandoned factory building covered in work by street artists from all over the world. In mind-November 2013 most of the art was obscured with white paint following a resolution by the NYC Planning Commission to demolish 5 Pointz and build an apartment complex in its place. The complex is planned to include walls dedicated to curated graffiti, but at the time of this writing, 5 Pointz still stands, and a petition is circulating for its protection by the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission.
Photo Credit: Original Anthem
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