A Breath of Fresh Art

The summer months always see a spike in outdoor art events. This year, two museum rooftops and a courtyard offer just a few among many opportunities to get your culture in the sun.


On May 10, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art opened its new sculpture garden, located on top of an adjacent parking garage (which the museum doesn’t own but to which it has roof rights). Designed by Mark Jensen, the 14,400-square-foot garden includes outdoor space and an indoor sculpture pavilion. It is connected to the museum’s fifth-floor galleries by a glass-and-steel bridge. Currently on display are works by Robert Arneson, Louise Bourgeois, Alexander Calder, Mario Merz, Henry Moore, Juan Muñoz, Kiki Smith and Ranjani Shettar, as well as a site-specific installation for the bridge by Rosana Castrillo Díaz.

For its 12th yearly rooftop installation, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has an appropriately arboreal work by Roxy Paine. Resembling a tangle of fallen tree branches, the 130-foot-long stainless-steel Maelstrom, composed of thousands of welded pipes and rods, is the largest work ever installed on the Met’s roof. Maelstrom overlooks the leafy treetops of Central Park, where Paine’s upright steel tree, Bluff, was installed as part of the 2002 Whitney Biennial. Meanwhile, P.S.1 in Long Island City is gearing up for its 10th Annual Warm Up music series, held every Saturday from July 4 to Sept. 5. Warm Up offers DJs, live music, plenty of beer and an architectural structure designed this year by Hilary Sample and Michael Meredith of the Firm Mos. with a budget of $70,000, the duo’s design of hutlike components—which incorporates shade, water, seating and bar areas—features cooling “chimneys” inspired by Bedouin tents.

[Photo left: Roxy Paine’s stainless-steel Maelstrom, on the roof of the Metropolitan Museum, New York. Photo right: Model of the MOS design for the P.S.1 courtyard, Long Island City, Queens.]