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planting seeds: the oasis that is madison square park

Madison Square Park is one of New York City’s most beautiful green spaces. A former potter’s field dating back to 1794, it opened as a park in 1847 and was home to P. T. Barnum’s Madison Square Garden from 1879 to 1890, followed by a second Garden from 1890 to 1925. The park hosts live music, food festivals, storytelling, bee colonies, and much more.

A walk around the park brings you to Jemmy’s Dog Run; the 125-foot-tall Eternal Light Flagstaff; Police Officer Moira Ann Smith Playground, named in honor of the only NYPD policewoman to lose her life on 9/11; the Little Library; the Star of Hope, commemorating the first public Christmas tree lighting in 1912; the Oval Lawn, a mix of Kentucky bluegrass and fescue; the granite Reflecting Pool; the red oak James Madison Tree on Sol LeWitt Lawn; and four statues: the Admiral David Glasgow Farragut Monument by architect Stanford White and sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, the Roscoe Conkling Statue by John Quincy Adams Ward, the Chester Alan Arthur Monument by George Edwin Bissel, and the William Henry Seward Monument by Randolph Rogers. In addition, just outside the park is Worth Square, a mausoleum for General William Jenkins Worth.

Rose B. Simpson’s Seed is on view through September 22 in Madison Square Park (photo by twi-ny/mdr)


The nonprofit Madison Square Park Conservancy took over operations in 2002, and it has transformed the 6.2-acre oasis, anchored by an ambitious program commissioning site-specific art installations, now celebrating its twentieth anniversary; favorites over the years have included Teresita Fernández’s Fata Morgana, Jaume Plensa’s Echo, Jim Campbell’s Scattered Light, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s Pulse Park, and Roxy Paine’s Conjoined, Defunct, and Erratic.

Through September 22, you can check out Rose B. Simpson’s Seed, a ritualistic circle of seven eighteen-foot-high sentinels, with a female figure rising from the center. Born and raised in Santa Clara Pueblo in New Mexico, Simpson said of the project, which has a second part in Inwood Hill Park, “Maybe my work is about the displaced Indigenous residents who had thousands of years communing with that ground—a heuristic relationship that shaped their culture. Maybe it’s about the act of being in that space, gendered. Maybe it’s about the feeling of communing in a public space, about safety, about the feeling of anonymity that comes from an immense crowd, the clench of protective identity and the need to exhale.”

Madison Square Park offers all that and more, 365 days a year.

Below are some upcoming events being held in this spectacular sanctuary.

Thursday, August 15, 22

Botanical Library, Children’s Storytime, Sparrow Lawn, 11:00 am - 4:00 pm

Wednesday, August 21
Seed Lunchtime Tour, noon

Tuesday, August 27

The Eras Tour: History of Madison Square Park, advance registration suggested, 5:00

Wednesday, September 4
Movie Under the Stars: The Great Gatsby (Baz Luhrmann, 2013), dusk

Tuesday, September 10
Garden Walk, Reflecting Pool, 5:30

Monday, September 16
The Eras Tour: History of Madison Square Park, advance registration suggested, 5:30

Thursday, September 19
Wildlife Outing, with the NYC Bird Alliance, advance registration suggested, Reflecting Pool, noon

Friday, September 20
María Magdalena Campos-Pons: “Procession of Angels for Radical Love and Unity,” group walk from Central Park South to Madison Square Park, advance registration suggested, walk begins at 9:00 am, Concert and Celebration at noon on the Oval Lawn

Tuesday, October 8

Taste of Asia, culinary benefit with food from more than twenty restaurants, $1,000 - $2,000 and more

[You can follow Mark Rifkin and This Week in New York every day here.]

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