To reinvent Josie Robertson Plaza and transform it into a real park would have been unthinkable until a short while ago, but this institution wanted to create an initiative to restart the arts and the city of New York. The Green is a pop-up installation by set designer Mimi Lien, assigned the task of reimagining a space in which to relax and to enjoy outdoor performances.
“When invited to consider how the physical space of Josie Robertson Plaza could be re-envisioned to be a more inclusive and inviting environment, I immediately thought that by changing the ground surface from hard paving stones with no seating to a material like grass, suddenly anyone would be able to sit anywhere,” Mimi Lien explains.
The Green is the ‘physical’ fulcrum of the new open-air programming of Restart Stages, part of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation-Lincoln Center Agora Initiative, a collaboration that reinvents and reactivates public space for a new: “The arts – says Henry Timms, President and CEO of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts – can be the centerpiece of New York’s economic, social, and spiritual revival—a powerful vehicle to reconnect as we enter the spring season.”
Made with a recyclable, bio-based material similar to grass supplied by SYNLawn New York, with high soy content and fully sourced from American farms, The Green will be a stage for the entire summer of 2021, with music and dance performances: “In the past – Lien continues – Josie Robertson Plaza has been a space that you walk through in order to see a performance, to get to the Library, or even to admire the fountain for a bit, but I dreamt of making it a space of inhabitation, of pleasure, and of rest. I wanted to make a place where you could lie on a grassy slope and read a book all afternoon. Get a coffee and sit in the sun. Bring your babies and frolic in the grass. Have a picnic lunch with co-workers. I hope that this curved grass surface will feel like an embrace and an expanse at the same time and will reimagine the Plaza as a site of social infrastructure, like a town green – a place to gather, a common ground.”
Photo © Sachyn Mital, courtesy of Lincoln Center
The Green
Parco pop-up
Lincoln Center for the Performing Art
10 Columbus Circus – New York
www.lct.org
