What would YOU do with $21,000,000 and the use of Central Park?

Cougar Allen

Cougar Allen

Buccaneer (ret.)
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Some people are saying you have to be there to appreciate the gates. They say it doesn't come across in photographs. I've looked at a lot of photos, though (most of them on photo.net), and the thing that strikes me is the trees look much more interesting than the gates. So do the people, the dogs, the texture of the ground, the sky -- in fact everything in the pictures looks more interesting than the gates.

Okay, maybe it's more interesting in person. It's only going to last 16 days, though, and then there will be nothing left but photographs. I think I could come up with something that would be interesting in person and interesting in photographs too. I have a couple of ideas but I'll post them a little later; I want to see what other people come up with. Here are the rules:

Rules

1) You have $21,000,000 US to spend on your art project. You can spend less if you want but you won't get any extra credit for it.

B) You have the use of Central Park for 16 days. After that you have to clean up and leave the park the way you found it.

III) Your project must attract tourists. (They won't let you use the park for something repulsive so no dead chickens. No food sculpture unless it's something that won't rot and smell up the place before the 16 days are up.)
 
This thing those two braindead hippies built in Central Park certainly does not come across in photos... It's an amazing eyesore in real life.

With 21 Million? I'd put up small concerts and feed people. Hell, I'd buy the Fire Department escape ropes, help the homeless, send nice things to the troops...

Essentially, these two people are old children who wanted attention and were willing to throw away good money to get it.
 
for $21,000,000 I would commission up to 100 craftsman to work in all media to create a memorial sculpture garden and still put money in my pocket and give some back to the city. Freeform style, a broad theme selected by the residents of the city.

And regardless of one's feelings on the different works, at least they would be things of solid artistic expression and relative permanence.


edit: I musta skipped rule B!
 
I'll tell you what; let me have $21,000,000 and use of the Park, and I'll hang my laundry to air and pocket the money. It would be art and prctical at the same time. So what do you say?

n2s
 
I'd buy the Fire Department escape ropes, help the homeless, send nice things to the troops...
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Those are all good goals, but...

Don't forget the ground rules. It has to be art. It only lasts 16 days. And it has to take place in Central Park.


I'll hang my laundry to air and pocket the money.
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Again, read the rules. You don't get to keep any leftovers.



I'm a big fan of transient art. There's something special about something that appears, is there for only a brief time, and then disappears leaving only memories. The Tribute In Light is a great example, one of the greatest pieces of modern art in recent years. It came, but then it only came at night. It went away every morning and the it went away for good. And now it lives on not physically but in our memories.

For $21,000,000 I would install a massive refrigeration system and make a Catherderal of Ice... in July. For 21M$, we could probably keep that going for a week or ten days. Then, we shut off the refrigeration and it just melts away over the coming few days. The melting away would be as much a part of the performance as anything.
 
Christo and his partner have been doing these sorts of large-scale projects for some time. Wrapping plastic around islands, wrapping the Chancellory building in Berlin in more plastic, erecting a huge fence and installing thousands of umbrellas....that sort of thing.

All of these installations have been transient, and for the most part either funded by donation or as in the case with the gates, Christo's own money. (how you get wealthy doing these sorts of things is a good question)

By all accounts, the happiest people in New York are the vendors. One hot-dog cart guy they interviewed on NPR said he'd sold 150 to folks who came to see the project.
 
I went there this weekend. It was really fun. Huge numbers of New Yorkers and tourists were out and about in the park. The roof park of the Met was jammed. Everybody in the city was talking about it, e.g. "It's stoopid" "Naw, joor stoopid." People in Brooklyn were creating their version of the Gates using trash bags.

You guys are over-thinking this. It was just a fun, goofy thing to do. In Seattle they are always redecorating the Space Needle, or dressing up statues at a bus stop in Fremont.

They will make their money back selling the individual gates to people.
 
Central Park has always been good for this sort of thing: concerts in the park, midnight run at New Year's, snow sculptures on a frozen lake, a UFO and astronomy get-together one night with model flying saucers and telescopes to see stars if they hadn't been hidden behind the clouds ... we've got a zoo in the park. Hanging a few rags is no big deal. :D
 
Since I loath cities with every fiber of my body I would use the cash to buy all the surrounding real estate and bull doze it to expand the park.

Yes, I know it's not smart, but it's better than what they have now.
 
I'd throw the biggest and longest keg party NYC has ever seen!!! :D
 
I would use the cash to buy all the surrounding real estate and bull doze it to expand the park.

In that part of town, the $21 million wouldn't buy you enough green acreage to park your car; every lot has either a landmark or a 40 story building sitting on it.

n2s
 
I'd get Bob Loveless and Michael Walker to make me one knife each.
That would use about all of that money. :eek:
 
ohen cepel said:
Since I loath cities with every fiber of my body I would use the cash to buy all the surrounding real estate and bull doze it to expand the park.
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With 21 million dollars, you MIGHT get a fraction of a city block. Remember, this is Manhatan.
 
My first idea was architecture -- build some kind of artsy-fartsy structure for the homeless people of the park to live in. Even if they made me tear it down after 16 days that would make a statement, and maybe I could persuade them to let me leave it up. But then I decided that isn't a fair comparison -- it's a different kind of art. So I came up with another idea that's the same kind of art as the gates: an outrageously expensive temporary work of art that serves no practical purpose whatever, purely frivolous art for art's sake:

Champagne fountains! Shooting hundreds of feet into the air! With lights on them to make rainbows! $21,000,000 can buy some seriously powerful high-pressure pumps; the only limit is the hazard to low-flying planes -- and I'll bribe the FAA to route planes around it -- if the government will let me have Central Park surely they'll let me have some airspace above it -- and $21,000,000 will buy a lot of champagne too -- and paper cups! I'll put a paper cup dispenser on every tree! Champagne for everybody!

I'll make fountains of Kool-Aid for the kids, too! All different colors!
 
K.V. Collucci said:
I'd throw the biggest and longest keg party NYC has ever seen!!! :D
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In NYC, that could lead to some very -- shall we say? -- "interesting" performance art. :D
 
id go there first of all and then id hire the most beautiful women to just walk arround naked, now thats my kind of art. :)
 
I like Gollnick's cathedral of ice idea. Maybe that could be combined with my rainbow fountains of champagne. :cool:
 
Cougar Allen said:
Champagne fountains! Shooting hundreds of feet into the air! With lights on them to make rainbows! $21,000,000 can buy some seriously powerful high-pressure pumps; the only limit is the hazard to low-flying planes -- and I'll bribe the FAA to route planes around it -- if the government will let me have Central Park surely they'll let me have some airspace above it -- and $21,000,000 will buy a lot of champagne too -- and paper cups! I'll put a paper cup dispenser on every tree! Champagne for everybody!
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The Tribute in Champagne! I love it!


... just as long as it's not French Champagne.
 
Cougar Allen said:
I like Gollnick's cathedral of ice idea. Maybe that could be combined with my rainbow fountains of champagne. :cool:
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I don't know if we would work out our artistic differences and reach a unified vision... :D



For $21,000,000 bucks?.. maybe we could.
 
No, it has to be New York champagne! And maybe we'll do it again in San Franciso with California champagne -- but we won't use French champagne unless we do it in France. :cool:
 
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