New York City's High Line project debuts "Hight Line Art"

photo from HIGH LINE

This week marks the launch of High Line Art, a new Friends of the High Line program. Through High Line Art, Friends of the High Line will commission works from contemporary artists, and partnership with other arts organizations to create works on, around, and inspired by the High Line.

Specials is a collaboration between artists Lisa Sigal and Paul Ramírez Jonas, launched in June 2009. For this ongoing, roving art project, the artists have constructed a mobile unit composed of vendor carts and a 10 x 4 foot wall. On one side of the wall, they hang artwork by a wide range of artists; on the flip side, they serve homemade tacos, free of charge. Each time Specials is presented, the artwork and the type of taco change, in the manner of restaurants’ daily menu specials or art galleries’ changing exhibition schedules. This project deliberately blurs the boundaries between visual art, performance, social gathering space, and festive event. As the artists have stated, "Specials will continue to evolve following a desire to go beyond tired dichotomies of inside/outside, art audience/non art audience, viewer versus participant. It is not This or That; it is This and That."

Specials will be presented on the High Line in the 14th Street Passage (between 13th and 14th Streets). The planned schedule is as follows (subject to change):

• Thursday September 17, 4:00 - 8:00 PM
Featuring works by Fiona Tan and Regina Silveira, and a potato and corn croquette with red cabbage and avocado taco.

• Thursday October 1, 4:00 - 8:00 PM
Featuring artists who participated in the 1993 Whitney Biennial, including Janine Antoni, Byron Kim, Simon Leung, Glenn Ligon, Suzanne McClelland, Kiki Smith and Fred Wilson, and a squash, mushroom, and homemade hot sauce taco.

For more information about Specials, see the artists' blog.
Specials was recently written up in Art in America.

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