Rockefeller Center hosts Frieze Sculpture public initiative

This year, Frieze New York has extended its reach beyond Randall’s Island and into more familiar—and transit-friendly—territory: Manhattan’s Art Deco mecca, Rockefeller Center. Organising a presentation of specially commissioned sculpture projects on the site “is like being given the keys to a Rolls-Royce and [being told], ‘Go drive this for a while,’” says the sector’s curator Brett Littman, the director of the Noguchi Museum in Queens.

The public initiative, long a part of Frieze’s programme in London, opened at the end of April and is due to remain on view through June. Pieces by 14 international Modern and contemporary artists, including Kiki Smith, Joan Miró, Nick Cave and Sarah Sze— whose galleries are showing in the fair—are scattered across the site’s indoor and outdoor spaces.

News, Isamu Noguchi’s massive 1940 stainless steel bas-relief of five journalists placed above the entrance of what was then the Associated Press Building at 50 Rockefeller Plaza, inspired the project, and many of the pieces respond to permanent works of art on site.