3 Pioneering Artists Return to Battery Park City, Where Their Works Endure

From left, "Rector Gate," "Upper Room," and South Cove, whose artists R.M. Fischer, Ned Smyth and Mary Miss appeared together recently to talk about their work. Photos: Carl Glassman/Tribeca Trib

It was a rare gathering. Three of the pioneering artists whose public works have stood for decades in Battery Park City came together to talk about their groundbreaking projects, part of a collection that makes the neighborhood one of the city’s major center’s of public art.

The program, moderated earlier this month by Abby Ehrlich, the Battery Park City Authority’s director of community partnerships and public art, featured R.M. Fischer (“Rector Gate”), Mary Miss (South Cove) and Ned Smyth (“Upper Room”). The discussion was accompanied by the screening of “Public Art on Video,” the authority’s series of short documentaries about eight of the neighborhood’s public art pieces, most narrated by the artists. 

The history of public art in Battery Park City goes back to the days when the area’s undeveloped landfill, from 1977 to 1985, provided a wide, sandy expanse for site-specific installations and performances. “It was incredible to see it out in the real world, and it felt a little bit like a great secret,” Ehrlich said. Later, a fine arts committee, convened by the Battery Park City Authority, formalized the process for selecting public art in the neighborhood. “They were the people who directly contacted the artists speaking tonight,” Ehrlich noted.

“And these are the people,” she added, “who somehow chose the right artists whose art some 40 years later still looks fresh and new when we walk by it.”

Below are excerpts from the artists’ comments, edited for brevity and clarity.

SOUTH COVE

Mary Miss

“I was really drawn to open space”

I moved in 1969 to what is now called Tribeca. I’d walk around here and see the open kind of field that was the only open space in New York City. I came from the West and I was really drawn to that open space. But as I was working on sites over the years, I became as interested in the people who were interacting with the works as with the places themselves, a reflection of the slow development of what was happening in the late 60s and early 70s—thinking about the public realm and how artists could function outside of the context of museums and galleries.

“You were building something with nothing around it”

It was strange because you were building something and there was nothing around it. There were no buildings or trees. And we were only being told what to expect would come later. I wanted it to be very lush, for there to be a transition between the water, the walkway, the rocks, the planting. I could talk about what I wanted it to feel like, but I certainly didn’t know about plant material and I would never have known about using the honey locust trees that Susan Childs, the landscape architect, suggested. 

“Such constant care and attention”

This work has all been maintained in the most amazing way and that’s something that any of us who work in the public realm know is not necessarily always the case. And I just am so grateful to the people who maintain the gardens of the South Cove, the engineers who went in and figured out how to take care of the worms that were eating the support structure underneath. There’s just been such constant care and attention, cleaning up after Sandy, rebuilding the broken railings after 9/11. I think people often don’t get it that art—just like a boat or car or home—has to be maintained and it’s just been remarkable.

RECTOR GATE

R.M. Fischer

“A big, freeing feeling”

Anita Contini [the first executive director of Creative Time] was on a lot of committees that were starting to think about public art as a reality. And she told me, I think you have a future in public art. I had done a series of bird baths. So that made me think that maybe my work could actually exist outside the gallery system, which was a big freeing up feeling. It did not feel so locked in to one way to show your art, that there are other avenues. That opened up a whole new adventure. 

“It would have to stand up to the architecture”

I wanted Rector Gate to be scaled according to the buildings that were adjacent to it. So that was how I determined the height. I counted windows, and decided how high it would have to be to stand up to the architecture, which for me is always the issue. Because the artist is always the last to be invited, the last to be considered. And the architects usually have the power. So one of the challenges of public art is to get your ideas into the architects’ scheme. 

“I used architectural cues from the site”

 I’m not really an environmental artist like my colleagues here. I consider myself an object maker. And how do you design an object for public space? I think it’s all about signs and symbols, that the object has to speak in a specific way to the site, and to the meaning of the site, and help create a sense of place. So I usually use architectural cues from the site to respond to, either scale-wise or content-wise, that are around the work so it feels appropriate. So it speaks in the same language as the architecture and stands up to the scale of the architecture. Otherwise it gets crushed.

UPPER ROOM

Ned Smyth

“Art for people, not commodity making”

After I was invited to be part of the first exhibition at PS1, I went out and looked at it. I hated school. I was dyslexic. And I walked in and there were blackboards and I just said, I can’t work here. But then I went to the attic, and there was this peaked roof with three arched windows, no electricity. And so this is where I cast this enormous concrete table. It traveled around Europe the next summer and Europeans, of course, relate to that. In Europe art is out in the streets—sculptures and fountains and temples, or if you go to a church there are paintings, sculptures, stained glass, fabric. It is part of life. I had left galleries I think in 1986 to just do public art because I thought, this is art for people. It’s not about a commodity, making something to sell.

A business meeting and Hells Angels at his table

After it was built, a writer for The New York Times called me and said, can I meet you down there? So I met him at that long table and there were guys in suits on both sides having a meeting. And he was just blown away by this. And I was, too. That they’re having their business meeting at my table. So that was one use that just kind of totally got me. Another time I was sitting in the middle of the space, maybe six months after it was built, and a woman came up to me and said, I hate this piece. And I said, why? She didn’t know I made it. And she said, the Hell’s Angels come here every weekend and hang out. And I didn’t say this, but I thought, oh, that is so cool.