From Harlem to Brooklyn: public art to see for free in New York this spring

Anish Kapoor’s mirrored cloud sculpture (2023) at 56 Leonard Street in Tribeca is a 40-ton piece similar to the artist’s Cloud Gate (2006) in Chicago, but downsized and designed to look as though squashed by a skyscraper
Photo: © Richard Levine/Alamy Stock Photo
On the High Line at 30th Street until 31 August, Freedom’s Stand (2022) by Faheem Majeed pays homage to the Black newspapers in the US that offered a counternarrative to pro-slavery and anti-Black media
Photo: © Lawrence Sumulong
Fred Wilson’s Mind Forged Manacles/Manacle Forged Minds (2022), at Columbus Park until 27 June, layers ironwork, fencing and African figures
Photo: © Kris Graves
At the south-east entrance to Central Park until 27 August, Bharti Kher’s monumental bronze Ancestor (2022) is the culmination of a series of smaller sculptures the artist created by piecing together broken clay figurines found in India
Photo: © Nicholas Knight, courtesy of Public Art Fund, New York
In Harlem Art Park until 31 October, Kevin Quiles Bonilla and Zaq Landsberg’s For Centuries, and Still… (anticipated completion) (2022) recreates a guard tower from a colonial fortress in Old San Juan in Puerto Rico
Photo: © Art Lives Here NYC
Shahzia Sikander’s Witness (2023), in Madison Square Park until 4 June, is part of her larger Havah… to breathe, air, life show in the park and on a nearby roof
Photo: © Yasunori Matsui
Anish Kapoor’s mirrored cloud sculpture (2023) at 56 Leonard Street in Tribeca is a 40-ton piece similar to the artist’s Cloud Gate (2006) in Chicago, but downsized and designed to look as though squashed by a skyscraper
Photo: © Richard Levine/Alamy Stock Photo
With spring finally blossoming in New York, the city’s public art offerings—several of which are staged in prominent parks—are all the more alluring.
In Harlem Art Park, Kevin Quiles Bonilla and Zaq Landsberg have devised an installation that renders part of a 16th-century fortress in Puerto Rico out of the ubiquitous green fencing used around New York construction sites.
At the south-east corner of Central Park, in Doris C. Freedman Plaza, the artist Bharti Kher has erected an 18ft-tall female figure, Ancestor (2022), which represents both a universal matriarch and a miniature figurine Kher found at a secondhand market in India.
Another monumental female figure presides over Madison Square Park, where Shahzia Sikander’s exhibition spans the park, the rooftop of an adjacent courthouse and an augmented reality app.
In Brooklyn’s Columbus Park, Fred Wilson has turned ornamental gates and fences into a rumination on detainment, incarceration and policing.
For lighter fare, visit the corner of Church and Leonard streets in Tribeca, where Anish Kapoor’s long-awaited “bean” sculpture beckons.

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