Arts & Entertainment
Outdoor Art Show Coming To Upper East Side This Weekend
Featuring dozens of local artists, the exhibition was organized by the neighborhood community board and will include some artworks for sale.
UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — Hoping to contribute to the Upper East Side's post-pandemic resurgence, residents have organized an outdoor exhibition that will fill a street with art and music this weekend.
Dubbed as "a show celebrating New York's Reawakening," it will be held from noon to 6 p.m. Saturday and Sunday on James Cagney Place, the pedestrian plaza on East 91st Street between Second and Third Avenues.
It was put together by City Canvas, a new initiative by Community Board 8's arts committee that aims to support local artists, actors and musicians.
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Alida Camp, who co-chairs the committee along with Wilma Johnson, told Patch that the board dreamed up the event as a way to beautify the Upper East Side's scores of vacant storefronts, following a similar, successful effort on the West Side.
After finding that some landlords resisted the idea of hanging art in their properties, they turned instead to Cagney Way: a "beautiful street with trees and benches," Camp said.
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The board spent a few weeks soliciting submissions, also getting some help from the Frick Collection. Organizers managed to attract more than 30 artists who plan to show their wares this weekend — including some who will be selling artworks, Camp said.
Those works range from photographs of city buildings and parks to abstract and realist paintings, ceramics, textiles and even art by children who live in nearby NYCHA developments. There will also be music, including a performance by students from Talent Unlimited High School.
All told, it will provide a new infusion of creativity into the neighborhood after the past year deprived it of many of its most popular institutions.
"People shouldn't have to go to a museum or a gallery to be able to experience the joys of art," Camp said of the project. "It will celebrate the hopeful end of this pandemic and show the reawakening of New York."
Going forward, Camp hopes City Canvas will return to its original goal of beautifying storefronts, and also plans to expand into dance and theater performances.
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