New York governor Andrew M Cuomo has announced a partnership with the non-profit Public Art Fund to bring large-scale art installations to LaGuardia Airport’s the new Terminal B.
As part of the US$8bn transformation of LaGuardia, the existing Terminal B passenger facilities will be replaced with a new arrivals and departures hall, two new concourses, and 35 new gates, 18 gates of which are already open.
The partnership with Public Art Fund will enable airport travelers to enjoy permanent commissions by four of the world’s leading artists – Jeppe Hein, Sabine Hornig, Laura Owens and Sarah Sze. Their installations will be unveiled with the opening of the Terminal B Arrivals and Departures Hall later in 2020.
“New York’s airports are the world’s entry points into the USA, and they need to reflect what this state and country are all about,” Cuomo said. “As we are building a new LaGuardia to meet 21st century travel standards, we are also bringing in the work of renowned artists who capture the unique elements of Queens and New York, giving travelers a true Empire State experience the moment they arrive.”
The Port Authority, Public Art Fund and LaGuardia Gateway Partners, the private partner working with the Port Authority to redevelop Terminal B, invited artists to develop proposals for original permanent commissions expressing aspects of the New York scene or sensibility and conceived specifically for the new LaGuardia Airport. After a thorough evaluation of all proposals, four artists were awarded permanent commissions for the new Terminal B Arrivals and Departures Hall.
The artists
A resident of Berlin, Jeppe Hein creates interactive artworks that lie at the intersection of art, architecture and technical inventions. Hein’s notable previous exhibitions include Please Touch The Art, exhibited at Brooklyn Bridge Park in 2015, as well as permanent installations in numerous locations throughout Europe.
Berlin-based artist Sabine Hornig is known for her sculptures, spatial interventions and transparent photographs that recontextualize familiar places through overlapping perspectives and inversions of scale and dimension.
Laura Owens is based in Los Angeles and has achieved international recognition for her dynamic, experimental paintings. Her work has been featured in museums both in the USA and internationally, including the Art Institute of Chicago, London’s Tate Modern and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.
A resident of New York City and professor of visual arts at Columbia University, Sarah Sze’s immersive, large-scale works navigate the proliferation of images, objects, and information that surround us daily.
Chris Bogia is a recent alumnus of the Queens Museum Studio Program and an instructor of sculpture at New York University. Bogia’s work for Terminal B, entitled Windowsill Watcher (2018), is an abstract sculpture that combines methods drawn from the history of decorative arts, folk craft movements and interior design.
New York-based Swiss artist Olaf Breuning’s work in Terminal B, entitled Clouds (2014) and Thumbs Up (2015), will evoke improvised signage, theatrical flats and children’s sketches inspired by one of the artist’s own photographs.
This new partnership with LaGuardia Gateway Partners and Public Art Fund comes just ahead of the start of the third year of the Queens Council on the Arts’ renowned Artport Residency, a collaboration with the Port Authority that enables local artists to use LaGuardia Airport Terminal A’s rotunda for creating new works and connecting with passengers.
