OCT. 9, 2009-MARCH 7, 2010

Exhibition to Feature Wall-Sized Photographic Prints, Providing Visitors With Immersive Experience of Parks Throughout Five Boroughs

Joel Meyerowitz's expansive study of New York City's parks—throughout all five boroughs—will be on view at the Museum of the City of New York in an installation to include unusually large photographic prints, some as large as the gallery walls themselves; the images document the untamed and wild nature of the city's cherished and hard-won open spaces, as well as bucolic and pastoral landscapes. Legacy: The Preservation of Wilderness in New York City Parks, which will be on view October 9, 2009 through March 7, 2010, is the result of a unique commission Meyerowitz received from the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation in 2006, and it constitutes the first photographic survey of the parks since the 1930s. The exhibition is organized in conjunction with a book, Legacy: The Preservation of Wilderness in New York City Parks, Photographs by Joel Meyerowitz, published by the Aperture Foundation. (It will cost $65.00 and will be available in the Museum Shop and online at www.mcny.org

Susan Henshaw Jones, the Ronay Menschel Director of the Museum, commented: "We take such pride in presenting this landmark celebration of New York City's parks, and it is especially fitting that we do. This past year, the Museum presented an exhibition elucidating Mayor Bloomberg's PlaNYC , which brought environmental concerns to life on an individual, human scale. Parks and open spaces are important not only because of the respite they offer, but because they are contributors to clean and cool city air. Joel Meyerowitz's photographs underscore their vital importance."

The 90 photographs in Legacy: The Preservation of Wilderness in New York City Parks were taken between 2006 and 2009. They document the city's parks throughout the five boroughs, from the southernmost (Conference House Park in Staten Island) to the northernmost (Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx), easternmost (Alley Pond Park in Queens) to westernmost (Fort Washington Park, also in the Bronx), largest (Pelham Bay Park in the Bronx) to smallest (North Brother Island), to the most exotic: the private Hallett Nature Sanctuary at the south end of Central Park.

"This one-of-a-kind photographic survey undertaken by Joel Meyerowitz is a voyage of visual discovery, over many seasons, into the wilderness that exists in the many corners of the city," said Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe. "The book and accompanying exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York are a remarkable documentation of our city's often magnificent and always surprising natural areas from woodlands, meadows, and wetlands to rocky shorelines and crashing waves."

Produced entirely on HP technology, the exhibition includes immersive large-scale graphics and fine art photographs that demonstrate the power and breadth of HP's digital printing portfolio.

The HP Photographic Archive of New York City Parks, a digital archive of nearly 3,000 photographs, will be made available for public use by the New York City Parks Department. To support this project, funding was provided by HP and serves as a visual testimony of the present and future history of the city's most cherished parks.

"The collaboration with Joel Meyerowitz is a natural fit," said Francis McMahon, Marketing Director in the Graphics Solutions Business at HP. "At HP, we continually strive to innovate printing and photographic technologies that help professional photographers envision their work in new ways."

The city's parks can be easily taken for granted, yet the history of rare open space within one of the world's most densely built environments is fascinating, especially in light of contemporary efforts to make the city sustainable.

The first official New York City park was Bowling Green, a mere half-acre leased to a group of citizens by a Common Council at an annual rent of one peppercorn. The 1811 Manhattan grid plan designated a few more areas, such as Union Square, Tompkins Square, and Madison Square, as open spaces for downtown recreation, and the 1830s and ‘40s saw the creation of a handful of parks in Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island. The mid-19th century saw a major period of park expansion in the city, with the creation of Central Park, Prospect Park, Van Cortlandt Park, and others. The New York Park Association, the city's first open-space advocacy organization, spearheaded by John Mullaly in 1881, developed a system comprising six large parks and three parkways in the Bronx; one of these, Pelham Bay Park, is the largest in the city at 2,765.5 acres. When the New York Park Association vested these parks to the City of New York in 1888, the City's green space quintupled. Beginning in the 1930s, Robert Moses focused on the recreational use of parkland with the addition of hundreds of playgrounds, baseball fields, tennis courts, skating rinks, and swimming pools, more than doubling the amount of park acreage in the five boroughs of New York City.

Today, there are approximately 29,000 acres of land under the jurisdiction of the Parks Department, of which 12,000 acres are wilderness areas consisting of woodlands, wetlands, and meadows. Hundreds of rare plant species and native creatures—for example, foxes, coyotes, deer, and even turkeys—have been sighted in city parks. In recent years, the Parks Department has created nature preserves out of vacant tracts, initiated reforestation programs, and played a proactive role in conservation and sustainability.

Legacy: The Preservation of Wilderness in New York City Parks was conceived when Benepe and Meyerowitz made a trip to North Brother Island, haunting studies of which will be on view in the exhibition and are included in the book.

Exhibition Credits

Joel Meyerowitz (b. 1938), born and raised in the Bronx, has described himself as an "urban Huckleberry Finn." His childhood memories include "green space—open and wild, alive with rabbits, migratory birds, snakes, frogs, and the occasional skunk." He is an award-winning photographer whose work has appeared in more than 350 international exhibitions. He is a two-time Guggenheim fellow, a recipient of both NEA and NEH awards, and the Deutscher Fotobuchpreis. He has published over 15 books, including Cape Light (1978) and Aftermath: The World Trade Center Archive (2006). He lives and works in New York City.

The curator of the exhibition is Sean Corcoran, curator of prints and photographs at the Museum of the City of New York.

The Museum of the City of New York celebrates and interprets the city, educating the public about its distinctive character, especially its heritage of diversity, opportunity, and perpetual transformation. Founded in 1923 as a private, non-profit corporation, the Museum connects the past, present, and future of New York City. It serves the people of New York and visitors from around the world through exhibitions, school and public programs, publications, and collections. Exhibitions of photographs at the Museum, including The Mythic City: Photographs of New York by Samuel H. Gottscho, 1925-1940, have received acclaim from the press and the public alike.