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About this series

This occasional series of blog posts highlights the most important of the outdoor sculptures in New York City and provides some historical and art-historical context. This is the final post in the series; to read others, click on the New York City Sculpture tag. For photos of all outdoor sculptures in New York City in chronological order, see my Instagram page.

This post is available as a video at https://youtu.be/qPWwy3k8AhE.

Posts 1-7 looked at the subjects of outdoor sculptures, in the order in which they appeared. In the first, we saw sculptures of animals and politicians. In the second, we saw our first military and literary heroes. The third post included a list of memorials to the Civil War, and the fourth post, figures active before 1800, including Founding Fathers. The fifth was on businessmen. The sixth was on figures in the arts. The seventh included allegorical figures through 1918.

The next four posts in the series looked at sculptors who were famous in New York City and throughout America: John Quincy Adams Ward, Augustus Saint Gaudens, Frederick MacMonnies, and Daniel Chester French.

In the twelfth and thirteenth posts, we looked at an assortment of sculptures that showed the same subjects as in the first through seventh, but after World War I. In this post, we’ll wrap up the series by looking at a few abstract works, and then at some of my favorite outdoor sculptures in New York City.

Statistics

I’ve been compiling a database of outdoor sculptures in New York City since 2001. It includes works that are on public property as well as works that stand on private property but are visible to the public. Here are the current numbers:

• From 1850 to 1900, ninety-eight sculptures were erected outdoors in New York City.
• From 1901 to 1950, 233 sculptures were erected. This includes stand-alone monuments such as Saint Gaudens’s Sherman, a plethora of sculptures associated with City Beautiful architecture, and 79 busts in the Hall of Fame of Great Americans in the Bronx.
• From 1951 to 2021, 101 representational sculptures were erected. Among them are twenty-one busts in the Hall of Fame, the last of which was added in 1973.

Conclusion: representational sculpture is no longer the preferred means of honoring remarkable people, or of architectural decoration.

Abstract works

The American public was introduced to modern art just before the outbreak of World War I, by the Armory Show of 1913. (See here, here, and here.) In the 1920s, avant-garde American artists such as Isamu Noguchi began to create abstract works. To their distress, they found that wealthy people who grew up surrounded by the works of John Quincy Adams Ward, Daniel Chester French, and Augustus Saint Gaudens would not pay well (or at all) for non-representational works. The Museum of Modern Art, established in 1929, eventually changed that: abstract works came to have not only critical acclaim, but public attention and wide acceptance.

The earliest abstract works standing outdoors in New York date to the 1960s. Many were decorative elements – punctuation at street level – for the boxy glass-and-chrome skyscrapers of the International Style. For example: in 1961, Isamu Noguchi was commissioned to create a sunken garden for Chase Manhattan’s headquarters in the Financial District (28 Liberty Street). He used seven large, basalt rocks from Japan resting on a couple thousand white marble blocks, to which he added three fountains. Abstract works also began to appear on the grounds of institutions such as the United Nations, Lincoln Center, Columbia University, and New York University. Here’s a selection of works from the 1960s.

The earliest non-representational work created with public funds seems to be Alan Sonfist’s Time Landscape of New York, proposed in 1965 and unveiled in 1978. This “environmental public sculpture” (a.k.a. “living sculpture” or “social sculpture”) is a 25 x 40-foot plot intended to show three stages of forest growth (grasses to saplings to grown trees), using plants native to New York City in colonial times. According to Wikipedia, New York’s post-colonial plants rudely insist on intruding on the site. Sonfist has stated that he doesn’t mind, but the NYC Parks Department periodically pulls the intruders out and incinerates them.

I am not a fan of abstract art (see my post on The Gates by Christo), so if you’re hoping for more photos of abstract works in New York City, you’re on the wrong website. Given that, I haven’t focused on tracking abstract works in my sculpture database. But by my count, more than 70 of them stand in publicly accessible places in Manhattan. In the outer boroughs there are probably somewhat fewer, since there are fewer skyscrapers to be punctuated.

Favorites

Rather than concluding with abstract works, I’ll leave you with a group of my favorite sculptures since the mid-19th century – to remind you of how beautiful and evocative representational sculpture can be. NOTE: Unless you’re a clone of me and have been secretly living the same life as I have, these won’t be the same as your favorites. To make your own list, go to my Instagram page and flip through the chronological sequence.

Washington at Union Square: because it reminds me of the values and principles for which Americans fought the Revolutionary War. Lafayette at Union Square: an elegant rendition of the wealthy Marquis who made a major difference in the Revolution. Farragut in Madison Square: four-square and ship-shape as he leads his men into a naval battle; the pedestal is a brilliant innovation.

Hale in City Hall Park: for the defiance. Hamilton near Hamilton Grange: the most elegant and energetic of the four outdoor sculptures of Alexander Hamilton in New York City. Beethoven, Prospect Park: for the slight smile on the face of a musical genius.

Ericsson: a New Yorker going about his business, which happens to be designing an innovative warship. Sherman: the billowing cape makes him almost a superhero! The Continents at Bowling Green: the most complex and thought-provoking allegorical sculptures in NYC.

Untermyer Fountain: one of the most light-hearted sculptures in all of New York City. The Maine Monument: a reminder of the time when the United States still had moral certitude of its own value. Glory of Commerce at Grand Central Terminal: a reminder that business requires both mental and physical effort.

Straus Memorial, Broadway at 106th St.: because the memory of those we’ve lost should (eventually) not be painful. Christopher Columbus at D’Auria Murphy Square in the Bronx: my favorite NYC sculpture of the courageous explorer, because of its thoughtful expression. Chanin Building at Lexington Avenue / 42nd St.: I love the virtues-for-success lobby reliefs.

Frances Hodgson Burnett Memorial, Central Park: because it captures the concentration of a pair of children. Charging Bull: NYC never stays down for long.

And finally: Socrates and Frederick Douglass, reminders that imaginative, highly trained sculptors are still at work!

More

• My Instagram account shows every outdoor sculpture in New York City, since in chronological order, with a short blurb on the subject and/or artist of each.
• In Getting More Enjoyment from Sculpture You Love, I demonstrate a method for looking at sculptures in detail, in depth, and on your own. Learn to enjoy your favorite sculptures more, and find new favorites. Available on Amazon in print and Kindle formats. More here.
• Want wonderful art delivered weekly to your inbox? Check out my free Sunday Recommendations list and my Patreon page (free or by subscription): details here.