STUDY FOR FLOATING ISLAND TO TRAVEL AROUND MANHATTAN ISLAND, 1970. pencil on paper. 19″ x 24″
Collection of Joseph E, Seagram & Sons, Inc.
Thirty-five years after it was first conceptualized, artist Robert Smithson’s “Floating Island To Travel Around Manhattan Island” is being brought to life in conjunction with the Whitney’s Smithson Retrospective. Never realized during the artist’s lifetime, Floating Island is a 30-x-90-foot barge landscaped with earth, rocks, and native trees and shrubs, towed by a tugboat around the island of Manhattan. “It’s a very charismatic project because everyone can relate to an island, we live and work on one,” said Diane Shamash, executive director of Minetta Brook, the arts organization that launched the “Floating Island” with the Whitney Museum, which is holding a Smithson retrospective through Oct. 25. “Floating Island” will do just that, from Saturday, September 17, 2005 til Sunday, September 25, 2005 from 8 am to 8 pm. What this all had to do with Walker education and community programs…I’m not sure. Anyway, if you’re in New York and you catch a glimpse of something weird being towed about in the Hudson or the East River…Remember Duder, its ART.
Linkage:
The Whitney’s site about the project
New York Times op/ed piece from September 17
Sculpture From the Earth, but Never Limited by It – Michael Kimmelman review in the NYT