Times Square Arts presents the New Year Season Arts Program. As part of the Alliance’s commitment to showcasing the best of contemporary art, this season’s lineup includes works from Reddymade, Vergine Keaton, Virginia Lee Montgomery, Nick Cave, Caroline Shaw & Roomful of Teeth, and The Lot Radio, as well as partnerships with Socrates Sculpture Park, AIA New York, French Institute Alliance Française / Animation First, Jack Shainman Gallery, PROTOTYPE, and TSX Broadway.
All events are free to the public.
December 1–31, 2018, 10am–10pm
Times Square Transmissions
Artist: The Lot Radio
Presented with TSX Broadway
7th Ave between 46th St and 47th St
Greenpoint’s beloved internet radio station transforms a repurposed storefront into a street-level DJ booth. Roll through from 10am–10pm, or tune into the live video stream to catch a glimpse of the DJs and Times Square’s incomparable street life at thelotradio.com.
January 7, 2019, 4pm & 7pm
Partita for 8 Voices
Artist: Caroline Shaw & Roomful of Teeth
Presented with PROTOTYPE: Opera | Theatre | Now
Broadway Plaza between 43rd and 44th Sts
Ten years after imagining the work on 3am walks through the neighborhood, Caroline Shaw and the astonishing vocal ensemble Roomful of Teeth perform an environmental staging of the Pulitzer Prize-winning composition in Times Square.
February 1–28, 2019
X
Artist: Reddymade
Presented with AIA New York
Duffy Square
The eleventh annual Times Square Valentine Heart explores how love emerges within communities where difference meets equality. X’s light glows brighter as people gather underneath its intersection.
MIDNIGHT MOMENT
December 1–30, 11:57pm–midnight
Drive-by Remix
Artist: Nick Cave
Presented with Jack Shainman Gallery
Times Square's Electronic Billboards
Drive-by Remix features Cave’s renowned Soundsuits in motion — falling from the sky, bouncing on pogo sticks, somersaulting, rolling, and dancing across an endless white field. The Soundsuits function as surreal and colorful protective layers that conceal race, gender, and class, inviting observation without preconceived ideas or judgments.
January 1–31, 11:57pm–midnight
I was crying out at life
Artist: Vergine Keaton
Presented with French Institute Alliance Française / Animation First
Times Square's Electronic Billboards
I was crying out at life brings new possibilities for the New Year; the classical motif of hounds and stags inverts, seismic forces are unleashed, and natural enemies unite.
February 1–28, 11:57pm–midnight
HONEY MOON
Artist: Virginia L. Montgomery
Presented with Socrates Sculpture Park
Times Square's Electronic Billboards
HONEY MOON is a coyly literal work and a slow, surreal sweet for Times Square valentines. Amidst a dark void, honey pours over the surface of an incandescent moon, streaming into the darkness below.
About Midnight Moment
Midnight Moment is the world’s largest, longest-running digital art exhibition, synchronized on electronic billboards throughout Times Square nightly from 11:57pm to Midnight. Presented by the Times Square Advertising Coalition and curated by Times Square Arts since 2012, it has an estimated annual viewership of 2.5 million. For more information, visit http://www.timessquarenyc.org/midnightmoment
Times Square Arts, the public art program of the Times Square Alliance, collaborates with contemporary artists and cultural institutions to experiment and engage with one of the world's most iconic urban places. Through the Square's electronic billboards, public plazas, vacant areas and popular venues, and the Alliance's own online landscape, Times Square Arts invites leading contemporary creators to help the public see Times Square in new ways. Times Square has always been a place of risk, innovation and creativity, and the Arts Program ensures these qualities remain central to the district's unique identity. Generous support of Times Square Arts is provided by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council; the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature; and the National Endowment for the Arts. Visit TSq.org/Arts for more information. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram at @TSqArts.
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Artists
Nick Cave (b. 1959, Fulton, Missouri, lives and works in Chicago, Illinois) is an artist, educator, and foremost a messenger, working between the visual and performing arts through a wide range of mediums including sculpture, installation, video, sound, and performance. Cave’s work is part of many public collections, including the Brooklyn Museum; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art; the Detroit Institute of Arts; the High Museum of Art; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Orlando Museum of Art; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and the Baltimore Museum of Art, among others. Cave has received several prestigious awards including: The Art in Embassies International Medal of Arts Honoree (2017), the Americans for the Arts Public Art Network Year in Review Award (2014), the Joan Mitchell Foundation Award (2008), Artadia Award (2006), the Joyce Award (2006), Creative Capital Grants (2002, 2004 and 2005), and the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award (2001). Cave, who received his MFA at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, is Professor and Chairman of the Fashion Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. nickcaveart.com
Vergine Keaton (b. 1981, Paris, France, lives and works in Paris, France). After studying graphic design and cinema, Keaton’s first animated short film, I was crying out at life. or for it (2009), screened at nearly 100 festivals including the ACID selection at Cannes Film Festival. Her following film, Marzevan (2015), experiments with 3D mapping and was selected for Belo Horizonte International Short Film Festival in Brazil, Riverside Short Film & Video Festival in New Haven, MO, and was a short-list nominee in the category Best Short Animated Film at the 2017 César Awards in France. Her third film, The Tasmanian Tiger (2018), was selected for the official competition for the 2018 Berlinale and screened at a number of international festivals that year. vimeo.com/verginekeaton
The Lot Radio (founded in 2015) is an award-winning, non-profit, independent online radio station live-streaming 24/7 from a reclaimed shipping container on an empty lot in Greenpoint, Brooklyn and featuring live DJ sets by New York City’s best selectors and international guests. DJ stars like Nina Kraviz and Hunee as well as living legends Cerrone, George Clinton, Four Tet, Talib Kweli, Louie Vega, Kenny Dope, Ellen Allien, Laraaji, Francois K, Dj Spinna, and Gilles Peterson have graced the decks. thelotradio.com
Virginia Lee Montgomery (b. 1986, Houston, Texas, lives and works in Texas and New York City) received her MFA from Yale University in 2016 and her BFA from The University of Texas at Austin in 2008. She is a 2018 Socrates Fellow at Socrates Sculpture Park. Past exhibitions include AN UNBOUND KNOT IN THE WIND, Bard Hessel Museum of Art, NY (2018); CRASH TEST: The Molecular Turn, La Panacée, Montpellier, France (2018); MATERIAL DEVIANCE, SculptureCenter, NY (2017); Things you can’t unthink, Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff, Canada (2016); and Particle Accelerator Memorial Project, Wright Laboratory, Yale University, CT (2015). She has been awarded other residencies at The Carving Studio & Sculpture Center, Wright Laboratory, Coast Time, The Shandaken Project at Storm King, and The Vermont Studio Center. Montgomery was the recipient of Yale University’s Susan H. Wedon Award and the Toby Devan Lewis Fellowship Nominee in Sculpture (2016). virginialeemontgomery.com
Reddymade (founded in 2002 by architect Suchi Reddy) is a diverse architecture & design firm whose practice takes a human-centric approach to design, one that assesses the economic, social, environmental, and cultural impacts of its work on both people and planet. Working from her home country of India to her home base in New York City, with projects in Miami and Los Angeles, Reddy charts a course for all things Reddymade with a culturally specific, globally curious eye. Current notable projects and areas of research include a kinetic rainscreen façade for a multi-use building completed in 2016 in Chennai, India; a sensory healing room designed to measure the effects of space and sensory input on patients recovering from comas for the Arts + Minds Lab at the Brain Sciences Institute of Johns Hopkins; and a residential project designed with artist and social activist Ai Weiwei in upstate New York. Reddymade’s projects have garnered the studio numerous awards, including a 2018 AIA Excelsior award, a 2018 AIA BQDA award, a 2018 NYCxDesign award, and a 2018 Architizer A+ award. Recent press coverage includes articles in national and international publications such as the New York Times, Forbes.com, The Architectural Record, Architects Newspaper, Dwell, AD.com, the Wall Street Journal, Interior Design, New York Magazine and AD India. Reddymade’s work has been included in publications such as Drawing from Practice: Architects and the Meaning of Freehand by J. Michael Welton, 2015, Routledge Press, and 1000 X Architecture of the Americas, 2008, Braun Publishing. rmdny.com
Roomful of Teeth (founded in 2009) is a GRAMMY-winning vocal project dedicated to reimagining the expressive potential of the human voice. Through study with masters of vocal traditions from the world over, the eight-voice ensemble continually expands its vocabulary of singing techniques and, through an ongoing commissioning process, forges a new repertoire without borders. Founded in 2009 by Brad Wells, Roomful of Teeth gathers annually at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) in North Adams, Massachusetts, where they’ve studied with some of the world’s top performers and teachers in Tuvan throat singing, yodeling, Broadway belting, Inuit throat singing, Korean P’ansori, Georgian singing, Sardinian cantu a tenore, Hindustani music, Persian classical singing and Death Metal singing. Commissioned Composers include Rinde Eckert, Fred Hersch, Merrill Garbus (of tUnE-yArDs), William Brittelle, Toby Twining, Missy Mazzoli, Julia Wolfe, Ted Hearne and Ambrose Akinmusire, among many others. Projects in 2016-2017 include The Colorado, a music-driven documentary film that explores water, land and survival in the Colorado River Basin (featuring former Kronos Quartet cellist Jeffrey Zeigler and Wilco’s Glenn Kotche); collaborations with A Far Cry and Nick Zammuto of The Books; appearances at new music festivals in the US, Canada and Sweden; and partnerships with nearly two dozen higher education institutions across the country. roomfulofteeth.org
Caroline Shaw (b. 1982, Greenville, North Carolina, lives and works in New York City) is a musician —vocalist, violinist, composer, and producer — who performs in solo and collaborative projects. She was the youngest recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2013 for Partita for 8 Voices, written for the Grammy-winning Roomful of Teeth, of which she is a member. Recent commissions include new works for Renée Fleming with Inon Barnatan, Dawn Upshaw with Sō Percussion and Gil Kalish, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s with John Lithgow, the Dover Quartet, TENET, The Crossing, the Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia, the Calidore Quartet, Brooklyn Rider, the Baltimore Symphony, and Roomful of Teeth with A Far Cry. The 2018-19 season will see premieres by pianist Jonathan Biss with the Seattle Symphony, Anne Sofie von Otter with Philharmonia Baroque, the LA Philharmonic, and Juilliard 415. Caroline’s film scores include Erica Fae’s To Keep the Light and Josephine Decker’s Madeline’s Madeline as well as the upcoming short 8th Year of the Emergency by Maureen Towey. She has produced for Kanye West (The Life of Pablo; Ye) and Nas (NASIR), and has contributed to records by The National, and by Arcade Fire’s Richard Reed Parry. Once she got to sing in three-part harmony with Sara Bareilles and Ben Folds at the Kennedy Center, and that was pretty much the bees’ knees and elbows. Caroline has studied at Rice, Yale, and Princeton, currently teaches at NYU, and is a Creative Associate at the Juilliard School. She has held residencies at Dumbarton Oaks, the Banff Centre, Music on Main, and the Vail Dance Festival. Caroline loves the color yellow, otters, Beethoven opus 74, Mozart opera, Kinhaven, the smell of rosemary, and the sound of a janky mandolin. carolineshaw.com
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Partners
Founded in 1857, AIA New York is the oldest and largest chapter of the American Institute of Architects. The Chapter’s members include over 5,000 practicing architects, allied professionals, students, and public members interested in architecture and design. AIA New York is dedicated to three goals: design excellence, public outreach, and professional development. aiany.org
The leading French language and cultural center in the US, the French Institute Alliance Française (FIAF) is dedicated to innovative and unique programming in education and the arts, all exploring the diversity and richness of French cultures. fiaf.org
Celebrating France’s rich tradition as a pioneer of animation, the French Institute Alliance Française (FIAF) launched Animation First, the first-ever French animation festival in the United States, in 2018. Back for its second edition in January 2019, Animation First will feature a lineup of award-winning films, shorts, discussions, and more! fiaf.org/animation
Jack Shainman Gallery was founded in 1984 in Washington, DC, by Jack Shainman and Claude Simard. Soon after opening, the gallery relocated to New York City occupying a space in the East Village before moving to 560 Broadway in Soho and then to its current location at 513 West 20th Street in Chelsea in 1997. In 2013 the gallery added two additional exhibition spaces, one in Chelsea at 524 West 24th Street, the other a 30,000 square foot schoolhouse in Kinderhook, New York. The focus of the gallery since its inception has been to exhibit, represent and champion artists from around the world, in particular artists from Africa, East Asia, and North America, by mounting major exhibitions of their work in the gallery, presenting artworks at important fairs, securing museum exhibitions and publishing major catalogues and scholarly essays. The gallery is a member of the Art Dealers Association of America and presents approximately twelve exhibitions a year, as well as participating in major art fairs including Art Basel Miami Beach, The Armory Show, Frieze New York, Art Basel, and Frieze London. jackshainman.com
Since 1986 Socrates Sculpture Park has been a model of public art production, community activism, and socially inspired place-making. Known for fostering experimental and visionary artworks, the Park has exhibited more than 1,000 artists on its five waterfront acres, providing them financial and material resources and outdoor studio facilities to create large-scale 3 artworks on site. Socrates is free and open to the public 365 days a year from 9am to sunset and is located at the intersection of Broadway and Vernon Boulevard in Long Island City, New York. socratessculpturepark.org
PROTOTYPE: Opera | Theatre| Now, now celebrating its seventh year, is an annual festival of visionary opera-theatre and music-theatre works by pioneering contemporary artists from New York City and around the world. A pioneer in the field, PROTOTYPE is the first of its kind in the United States — creating a model now emulated by companies across the country for presenting fully produced premieres, national and international presentations, and work-in-progress showings of original genre-bending works by both emerging and career artists from the contemporary classical opera-theatre and music-theatre idiom. Focusing on innovative, mostly chamber-scale works, PROTOTYPE shows opera like it’s never been seen before: high-tech, edgy, and up-close. Following the smashing success of its first six seasons, PROTOTYPE’s visionary line-up has quickly become a can’t-miss annual tradition. prototypefestival.org
Times Square Advertising Coalition (TSAC) is a trade association comprised of major advertisers, retailers, real estate firms, media companies and other businesses involved in the outdoor sign industry in Times Square, along with organizations representing Broadway and the community. Members of TSAC include: ABC Regional Sports & Entertainment Sales, Clear Channel Spectacolor, Daktronics, D3 LED, Digital Domination, Hines Management, Jamestown One Times Square, Lamar Advertising Company, Landmark Sign & Electric, Metro Media Technologies, Newmark Knight Frank, North Shore Neon, P.R.omotion!, Sherwood Outdoor, SL Green, Times Square Alliance, The WOW Factor and Thomson Reuters. www.timessquareadcoalition.org. Follow TSAC on twitter at @TSACNYC.
Located in Times Square — the most valuable advertising intersection in the world — TSX Broadway is the ideal vehicle for a brand’s imagination to run wild. The only full-building promotional platform with tower signage, an experiential retail space, and a one-of-a-kind outdoor stage, TSX Broadway is a spectacular display of innovation and brand power on the most heavily trafficked corner in the Western Hemisphere. An integrated platform of engagement, entertainment, and experience, TSX Broadway is a 3D advertising canvas for ambitious, future-focused brands to engage millions of consumers and capture the world’s attention every single day. tsxbroadway.com