Fernando Botero's "Reclining Nude" On View Outside Christie's New York

Fernando Botero's "Reclining Nude" is covered with raindrops as it sits on display outside Christie's at 20 Rockefeller Plaza in midtown Manhattan. The Colombian artist's bronze with dark brown patina sculpture is signed, numbered and stamped with foundry mark "Botero, 3/3' on the base. Its dimensions are 55 x 137 5/8 x 56 5/8 inches. It is part of the Latin American Sale, Evening Session to be held this evening at 6:30 P.M. The images were taken yesterday.

Japan Block Fair on Park Avenue

The annual Japan Block Fair took over part of Park Avenue (between 39th and 40th Streets) in midtown Manhattan yesterday. The street was filled with vendors selling Japanese cuisine and Japanese crafts. The Home Island Project performed the Awa Odori in traditional costume. The main attraction of yesterday's event was the New York Street Ramen Contest to find a style of ramen that is distinctly "New York". There was a long line of visitors who had the opportunity to sample the ramen creations of New Yorkers and vote for which style they liked the best.

"The Fallen Angels" by Salvatore Albano

On view at the Martha and Robert S. Rubin Pavilion on the first floor of the Brooklyn Museum is a sculpture called "The Fallen Angels" of "The Rebel Angels." This is the work of Italian sculptor, Salvatore Albano (1841-1893).

Dance Parade New York 2012

Dance Parade is an annual dance festival and parade to promote dance as an expressing and unifying art form by showcasing all forms of dance. Earlier this afternoon, dancing on the streets of Manhattan began at 21st Street and headed down Broadway and University Place to 8th Street, then turned toward Tompkins Square Park for the dance fest from 3 to 7 p.m. The parade showcased more than 50 unique styles of dancing from 144 dance groups. Even Occupy Wall Street protesters joined the parade. The event was organized by Dance Parade, Inc., a 501(c)3 non-profit organization.

Tomás Saraceno on the Roof: "Cloud City" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

A new site-specific rooftop installation was unveiled recently at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Argentina-born artist Tomás Saraceno (born in  1973) has created "Cloud City," a constellation of large, interconnected modules constructed with transparent and reflective materials for the Met's Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden. Visitors may enter and climb through these habitat-like, modular structures grouped in a nonlinear configuration. Free timed-entry tickets are required to climb through the structure, but no tickets are required to view the structure from the outside. The tickets are available at the fourth floor. Over the years, Saraceno has mastered construction of complicated networks based upon geometry and interconnectivity that merge art, architecture, and science.

“The work of art seems to hover over Central Park, Fifth Avenue, embedded into a weightless cloudscape—overlapped, multiplicity, mixed ascendance, and/or divergent-but-coexistent patterns of relationships, happening simultaneously…There are connections and relations and you do not appear to be where you are,” Saraceno writes in his statement to accompany the installation. (Information and video obtained from the Met website). 

Broken Glass Art Installation by HU BING at the Flatiron Prow Art Space

Hu Bing’s new art installation called "Shattered Debris, Sheer Transformation" is currently on display in the Flatiron Prow Artspace, the triangular tip of the  the Flatiron Building towards 23rd Street between Broadway and Fifth Avenue. The installation is comprised of broken sake bottles hung from the ceiling, shards of automotive glass, iron, resin, cheesecloth draped chaise lounges and smashed windshields. Hu Bing's piece represents some of the anger and alienation that she experienced during the Cultural Revolution in Shanghai. She magically transforms something dangerous into something positive and beautiful. The broken glass also evokes the shock Hu felt on seeing car crashes outside her window in Williamsburg, where she first lived in New York. The display continues through June 2, 2012. The artist is on site on Tuesdays from 11 AM - 3 PM, according to the exhibit caption.