Ghost Forest by Maya Lin

As climate change causes rising sea levels, warmer winters, and unpredictable weather, our forests are paying the price. Once-vibrant stretches of woodland are becoming what is known as “ghost forests,” as the trees die, rotted by salt water or infested with insects, but remain standing. When this happens, the delicate ecosystems that depend on the trees are destroyed, leaving these areas devoid of the normal life that should fill them. Maya Lin, an artist and architect with an interest in environmental issues, has brought a haunting ghost forest to the urban landscape of Manhattan. At the center of Madison Square Park is a stand of 50 dead white cedar trees installed by the artist and her team. The trees are from New Jersey’s Pine Barrens and were killed by an inundation of salt water from a nearby river. As Lin puts it, “each tree is a monument to climate change.” The installation brings the devastating effects of the current crisis to the heart of a city that can seem removed from nature, creating a dramatic and haunting experience for visitors to the park.

A note: the artist will offset the carbon used in installing the work by planting 1000 trees around the city. Over ten years, the carbon emissions will be offset by a factor of ten.

Holiday Tree at Washington Square Park

While the holiday tree at Rockefeller Center seems to get all the attention, the tree at Washington Square Park has some serious holiday spirit as well. The forty-five foot Vermont tree stands south of the arch and is lit up beautifully between the hours of 4pm and 1am. The Washington Square Association, founded in 1906, is one of the city’s oldest community organizations, and invites those with sufficient holiday cheer to sing yuletide carols this Christmas Eve at 5pm. For ninety-three years, this association has sponsored carol singing under the arch, and carolers this year will be joined by the Rob Susman Brass Quartet. The association will helpfully distribute a songbook to the singers but, as they point out, "many will know them by heart."

Good Fences Make Good Neighbors

Good Fences Make Good Neighbors in Washington Square Park.

Famed artist and activist Ai Weiwei has a new multi-site exhibit in New York City. Good Fences Make Good Neighbors is a multi-media exhibition for public spaces, monuments, buildings, and transportation sites and is a "passionate response to the global migration crisis and a reflection on the profound social and political impulse to divide people from each other."

The exhibit is spread out over the five boroughs. In Washington Square Park (pictured above), where Ai Weiwei often visited in the 1980s when he lived nearby, his thirty-seven-foot-tall steel cage titled "Arch" seems at first only an impenetrable barrier, but the opening, cut in the silhouette of two united figures, allows passage. In Central Park, "Gilded Cage" evokes the "luxury of Fifth Avenue and the privations of confinement." At Flushing Meadows in Queens, his 1,000-foot-long "Circle Fence" uses metal frames with netting to surround the Unisphere, making a "global border that can be seen as both playful and sobering." Ai Wewei has also created 200 banners to appear on lampposts across all five boroughs that feature images from his new documentary Human Flow, which was made after he traveled to twenty-three countries and more than forty refugee camps in 2016.

The exhibit title references a folksy proverb cited in poet Robert Frost’s Mending Wall, and Ai Weiwei chose this title with "an ironic smile and a keen sense of how populist notions often stir up fear and prejudice." Visitors to the exhibition will find that "good fences" do not just keep people out but, more importantly, let people in. Ai Weiwei says: “Think about 65 million refugees who stay in the cold and the rain and the horror with no hope...Fortunately, and also fortunately, we’re spoiled by contemporary life; we forget other people still in suffering and in pain and who need help. We have to protect the people just like we have to protect ourselves. Otherwise, anyone can be refugees.”