Certainly one of the most prominent landmarks in Manhattan, the 15-foot cube at Astor Place has been a fixture since 1967, designed by Tony Rosenthal from Cor-Ten steel and officially named “Alamo”. It goes by many popular names and most commonly is just known as “the cube.”

The all-black sculpture sits at a crossroads between the East and West Village at a major intersection: 4th Avenue, St Marks Place, 8th Street, and Lafayette Street, around which we find Cooper Union (background in the photo), theaters, the new Gwathmey building, and the Astor Place subway station. Its most distinguishing feature is its ability to be rotated, a source of endless fascination for passersby.

The Cube’s prominent location and unique appearance has made it a planned and unplanned meeting place since it was installed. It became a major hangout for punks, students, skateboarders, etc. Its removal for repairs in March of 2005 was subject to many rumors and concerns. However, all were relieved when, in November 2005, the Cube was finally returned (NYC Parks press release here). Here is a final article with many details on this enduring and fascinating NYC icon.

The Metropolitan Museum rooftop gallery is showcasing the work of one artist, Cai Quo Qiang, whom we have posted about before (Move Along, Nothing to See Here), but he has more than one work exhibited. This piece, Transparent Monument, is a giant sheet of glass, at the base of which lie a number of exact replicas of dead birds. The implication is that they didn’t see the glass, were stopped dead, and slid down to the base. They appear to be either starlings or small crows. The birds seem like unfortunate victims of circumstance, killed while going about their business, by the intervention of some inexplicably placed man-made material, as so often happens in “real life”. [Another piece of his occurs every day at noon, when one of the guards fires a special gun which shoots a cloud of black smoke into the sky that slowly dissipates at a rate determined by the atmospheric conditions. It gives a very ephemeral feeling to the whole concept of watching whatever happens before you in life.]

Even in this current heat wave alternating with thunderstorms we have had lately, the rooftop garden gallery at the Met is a good place to go to step out of the busy, crowded, humid atmosphere in the streets and have your thoughts played with by this artist…

On the roof garden of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, we have a continuation of the previous post on the theme of cruelty to reptiles in NYC. This sculpture, Move Along, Nothing to See Here by Cai Guo-Qiang, is one of two life-size crocodiles suspended on bamboo poles overlooking Central Park, with the exclusive residential buildings of Central Park West as a backdrop. They are stuck with sharp objects actually confiscated by airport security. Closeup photo here.

There are many different ways to view this piece, so we will leave its interpretation to you. This roof garden is open late Fridays and Saturdays, and is something of a singles scene. Drinks are served…

In some places in New York, such as the subway, graffiti is cleaned off and trains are guarded as much as possible against its recurrence of graffiti. In other places, such as the Lower East Side, as seen, for example, on this corner of 2nd Avenue and 1st Street, it has flourished in its present incarnation. The community seems to embrace it as a signal and an identifier of the neighborhood’s outlaw past. In the eighties, there were many small galleries in the East Village and they often showed graffiti artists, popularizing the aesthetic to where it has now become accepted by many as a classic form of art.