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Inside The New York Botanical Garden

Monumental Sculpture

Morning Eye Candy: Scheme Change

Posted in Around the Garden, Photography on February 12 2013, by Matt Newman

You wouldn’t think bare metal could adapt, but visually this proves true with the art of Manolo Valdés: Monumental Sculpture. Each piece was designed and carefully sited to not only complement its surroundings, but to contrast with them–regardless of season. Now, in winter, each sculpture presents differently.

Stop in to the NYBG any time between now and May 26, and you’ll have the opportunity to see each work in its element, whether that’s winter, spring, or summer.

Manolo in winter

Photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen

Morning Eye Candy: Manolo’s Maquettes

Posted in Around the Garden, Photography on December 3 2012, by Matt Newman

Manolo Valdés may have capped the undertaking of Monumental Sculpture with multi-ton creations ferried by truck, crane, and ship, but that’s not where he began. First, he needed to gel his ideas on a smaller scale. If you happen to stop by the Library Building this winter, you’ll see the artist’s initial inspiration in his maquettes, now on display in the Orchid Rotunda.

Photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen

This Weekend: Ringing in the Holidays

Posted in Around the Garden, Programs and Events on November 16 2012, by Matt Newman

I took an aimless jaunt around the Garden yesterday to see what the birds were singing about. Of course, I rarely have a goal when I set out, and this was no different. I checked to see whether the trees had given up all of their fall color (they haven’t), and if the NYBG‘s wild turkeys were still tottering around without care for man, beast, or passing Garden tram (they are). In the Forest, breezy reds and yellows still clung to many of the trees, and there was that pervasive, comforting sense of autumn isolation to wrap yourself up in. But what’s going on by the Visitor Center can only be called a holiday hubbub.

I saw winter-bare trees wrapped in strings of lights, wreathed benches, and a conifer display primped and preened, anxious for someone to come along and flip the switch on its own light show. And further down the path, just outside the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory, I picked up on the telling twinkle of the season’s defining event: the Holiday Train Show! Horticulturists, model makers, and toy train aficionados have kept their noses to the grindstone for weeks, making sure that each elevated track and glowing window is left perfect for the thousands of New York fans ready to pour through those Conservatory doors. And because there are new models to be seen this year, the challenge was that much greater. But, as always, it’s worth the work they put into it to see so many grins.

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Monumental Sculpture in Motion

Posted in Exhibitions, Video on September 27 2012, by Matt Newman

Nothing drives home the sheer enormity of our latest exhibition, Manolo Valdés: Monumental Sculpture, like seeing it built from the ground up. Over the course of two weeks, dozens of people and at least a few multi-ton machines were on the scene to put the final strokes on a work many, many months in the making. Naturally, we couldn’t pass up capturing some video.

From the first sketch put to paper in Valdés’ Manhattan studio, to the foundry in Madrid, and back across the 4,000 miles separating Spain and New York City, this production has proven nothing short of a massive undertaking. Carrying the collection of sculptures from the docks required a fleet of seven flatbed trucks. Once at the Garden, towering cranes were called in, gingerly rolling onto our lawns to settle each piece into its chosen site. And at 50 feet across and weighing nearly 20 tons, shipping any one of these sculptures as a single piece was out of the question; assembly called for even more precision cranework, with muscle on the ground to ensure everything was arranged to specification.

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