Come summer, art goes outdoors — to city parks, museum courtyards and the occasional rooftop. Which makes sense for sculpture, since it’s made to be seen from all sides. If you can picnic or practice yoga beside it, so much the better! Here’s where to find the best art experiences al fresco — some of them free and with live music, too.
Noguchi ReINstalled, Noguchi Museum
Twenty-five years ago, Isamu Noguchi realized his dream of opening a museum devoted to his own work. Its gem? The outdoor sculpture garden, the focal point of this summer’s anniversary celebrations.
A once-empty lot in Queens is now a gravel garden, graced with Noguchi’s large stone sculptures and fountains amid bamboo trees and benches. It’s here, says director Jenny Dixon, that you can hear “the sounds of the wind through the bamboo and the birds.”
Art’s just part of it. On the second Sunday of each month, the “Music in the Garden” series features the excellently named music group Bang on a Can. And every first Friday, the Noguchi rolls out a wine and beer bar.
Through Oct. 24; music and First Fridays through September. $10 for adults, $5 for children. 32-37 Vernon Blvd., Queens; 718-721-2308, noguchi.org.
Statuesque, City Hall Park
If the Tin Man had a heart, it would skip a beat at the sight of
“Sylwia.” Polish artist Pawel Althamer’s aluminum nude — which has a screw for a nipple — is one of 10 works the Public Art Fund’s brought to quaint, picturesque City Hall Park.
Here, where the fountain is fringed by gaslit lamps, are newfangled variations on an old theme: the human form. Check out British artist Thomas Houseago’s “Red Man,” a primitive nude who seems to moon City Hall — where, on any given day, there’s a lively protest going on.
Some of the signage is confusing. The other day, the marker for “The Orientalist” seemed to refer to the man sleeping on a park bench, rather than Huma Bhabha’s bronze. And you’ll have to go just outside the park to find Rebecca Warren’s “Large Concretised Monument to the Twentieth Century,” which looks a lot like Olive Oyl.
“It’s like she’s striding up from Park Place, desperate to get into the park,” says Public Fund curator Nicholas Baume. And who can blame her? It’s a pretty, photogenic and free oasis.
Through Dec. 3, free. City Hall Park is between Broadway, Chambers Street, Centre Street and Park Row; publicartfund.org.
Cityscape, Socrates Sculpture Park
They’re letting the grass grow around Zena Verda Pesta’s “In the Middle, Smack Dab in the Middle” — a huddled mass of faux blue flowers potted in fluorescent pink gravel, sitting atop a grassy hill. And that, says Alyson Baker, the director of Socrates Sculpture Park, is the essence of its summer show, “Cityscape: Surveying the Urban Biotope.”
“It’s as if the piece is disappearing into the natural grasses,” says Baker. The show’s a visual melding of the real and the fake, the intrusion of the urban on nature and vice versa. Works from 10 other artists round out the exhibit, including Mark Lawrence Stafford’s “Transmission,” an upturned tree stump sprouting PVC pipe roots.
Since this is a public park, you’ll find dog-walkers and sunbathers amid the sculptures. There are also free yoga classes Saturday mornings at 9:30 and 11 a.m. and Tai Chi on Sundays at 11 a.m. Or learn from the artists themselves at Saturday Sculpture workshops at various times.
Through Aug. 1, free. 32-01 Vernon Blvd., Long Island City; 718-956-1819, socratessculpturepark.org.
Big Bambu, the Met
For a full-on sensory experience, nothing beats “Doug + Mike Starn on the Roof,” alias the “Big Bambu.” High atop Central Park, you can climb the Starn brothers’ network of interlocking bamboo poles — 50 miles’ worth, lashed together with brightly colored cords. As you cling to the smooth rails, you’ll hear the whispery rustle of bamboo leaves, the muted roar of a passing plane . . . and a radio, since “Bambu” is a work in progress, and the folks building it like to work to music. The views are lovely: On a clear day, you can see the G.W. Bridge (but, happily, not the traffic).
Curator Anne Strauss says “Bambu” can be experienced two ways: either from the ground, where its roller-coaster turns suggest a cresting wave or Coney Island’s Cylcone — or by climbing inside it. If it’s the climb you want, line up inside the 81st Street entrance, sign a waiver and leave your camera and cellphone in the Met’s free lockers, so you don’t brain anyone down below. This summer, there’s no better way to get high.
Through Oct. 31, free with museum admission ($20 suggested donation), Fifth Avenue at 81st Street, metmuseum.org.