Reflections on Jeppe Hein

One of Jeppe Hein's Modified Social Benches, on view in Brooklyn Bridge Park

In an installation whose name would make every kid visitor to a museum jump for joy, Danish-born, Berlin-based Jeppe Hein has transformed Brooklyn Bridge park into a combination playground and treasure hunt for explorers of all ages. Hein’s Please Touch The Art, produced by the Public Art Fund and on view through April 2016, comprises several sculptures scattered throughout the waterside public parkland, all of which combine a connection to their surroundings with a cheeky wit and an unignorable invitation to interact.

The Best Thing I Saw This Week: Kara Walker at the Domino Sugar Factory

If there are two things Brooklyn hipsters love, it’s highly anticipated cultural events and cleverly repurposed old sh*t (why do you think the Brooklyn Flea is so popular?!), so I anticipated quite a long wait for this much buzzed-about art installation in a legendary decrepit building. To my pleasant surprise, however, we were in the doors within 15 minutes of arriving (after signing an amusing waiver acknowledging the possibility for any and all types of bodily harm incurred within the slowly crumbling structure). As I expected, Walker's installation was incredible, and so was the opportunity to wander around the old factory. 

Entrance to the exhibit. The installation's full title, as stenciled on the factory's brick wall, is "A Subtlety or the Marvelous Sugar Baby an Homage to the unpaid and overworked Artisans who have refined our Sweet tastes from the cane fields to the Kitchens of the New World on the Occasion of the demolition of the Domino Sugar Refining Plant"