Labor Day weekend is your last excuse to squeeze every drop out of summer. Take your art fix to the beach, wander through a sculpture-filled park, hop a ferry to Governor’s Island, or duck into a museum if the skies turn moody. From ping-pong tables that double as art to giant urns and harbor views, NYC has plenty of ways to make your long weekend a little more cultured, playful, and outdoor optimizing.
Forget just sunbathing: Rockaway Beach is serving up ping-pong with a side of contemporary art. Between Tides brings together six artists who have transformed ordinary ping-pong tables into playable sculptures, inviting beachgoers to rally, experiment, and maybe rethink the rules while they’re at it. Inspired by Rockaway’s cultural and ecological landscape, the installations turn a simple game into a playful space for connection, creativity, and a little friendly competition. Paddles and balls are available to borrow on select days, or bring your own and play anytime. Game on.
Artists: Moko Fukuyama, Ilana Harris-Babou, Las Hermanas Iglesias, Carlos H. Matos, Amalia Pica, SUPERFLEX
Capicú de Cariño (I Heard It Both Ways) | Madison Square Park Conservancy
Roberto Lugo brings a burst of Puerto Rican culture, hip-hop, and ceramic history to Madison Square Park with Alfarero del Barrio (Village Potter). The larger-than-life installation features a 20-foot urn you can actually walk through, a towering fire hydrant, painted tire planters filled with native Puerto Rican plants, and domino tables made for play celebrating Lugo’s Puerto Rican heritage, including paintings of the artist’s parents, Gilberto and Maribel, and, among others, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Roberto Clemente, and more. It’s public art with plenty of personality, turning the park into a vibrant celebration of family, community, and cultural pride.
Manolo Paz, "Red NASA" (The Fund for Park Avenue | https://fundforparkavenue.org/pages/sculpture)
Along the Park Avenue Malls, the Fund for Park Avenue presents ten of Manolo Paz's most iconic sculptures in "The Distance That Unites," something of a love letter to the city where he once lived and worked. Paz pairs monumental stone and metal sculptures with the skyscrapers, streets, and geometry that surround them. Keep an eye out for Cathedrals, a towering quartzite work that gives a playful nod to New York’s own sky-high “cathedrals,” plus colorful geometric sculptures that let the city peek, play, and shine through.
Rachel Whiteread's "Cabin" (Trust for Governors Island | https://www.govisland.com/things-to-do/public-art)
Shantell Martin's "Church" (Trust for Governors Island | https://www.govisland.com/things-to-do/public-art)
Rachel Whiteread gives the idea of a weekend getaway a very concrete twist with Cabin, a haunting cast of the interior of a simple retreat perched on a hillside overlooking New York Harbor. The sculpture offers a quiet counterpoint to the Manhattan skyline across the water, while bronze casts of discarded bottles, cans, and other bits of refuse scattered around the site add a little urban archaeology to the scene. Consider it a meditation on solitude, memory, and what we leave behind.
At the former Our Lady Star of the Sea chapel, Shantell Martin gives a long-closed building a bold new life. Her signature black-and-white drawings transform the exterior into a giant visual story, inviting visitors to circle the building and discover its architecture, history, and surroundings from every angle. Once a bustling military chapel and shuttered for decades, the building is finally having its moment in the sun, with a little help from some very big drawings.
IF IT’S A RAINY DAY...
In a first-of-its kind collab with the Metropolitan Opera, which presented El Último Sueño de Frida y Diego earlier this year, this MoMA exhibit celebrates Mexico’s iconic artistic couple. Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera’s work meets theatrical design, with their complicated love story adding plenty of drama.
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Contributing Writer
Michelle Sinclair Colman
Michelle writes children's books and also writes articles about architecture, design and real estate. Those two passions came together in Michelle's first children's book, "Urban Babies Wear Black." Michelle has a Master's degree in Sociology from the University of Minnesota and a Master's degree in the Cities Program from the London School of Economics.
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