What’s Happening: The Santa Clara Pueblo sculptor brings her sentinel figurines to two parks in Manhattan.

The Download: Madison Square Park is coming under a watchful eye. Yesterday, the Santa Clara Pueblo sculptor Rose B. Simpson unveiled “Seed,” a group of seven 18-foot-tall sentinel figurines standing guard in circular formation around a much smaller bronze bust of a female form bearing the rippling fingerprints of an artist’s touch. “They transform the nature of a hectic and scary city, in a sense, to a place that’s really safe,” Simpson said at the installation’s unveiling, as reported by Hyperallergic. “They become these protectors of what they’re looking out for, so that [the inner sculpture] can close her eyes, so she doesn’t have to be worried or on.” They also spark reflection by invoking the Lenape, an Indigenous people of the Northeastern Woodlands who were the first settlers of Manhattan before European settlers arrived in the 1800s.

It’s not the first time that Simpson, who once performed in Native American punk bands before earning her MFA at the Rhode Island School of Design, has spread awareness about the Lenape. Five of her other sentinels, which she cast in concrete but in colors reminiscent of her work in clay, starred in a 2023 exhibition on the Whitney Museum’s terrace, overlooking the land they once inhabited. At Madison Square, though, she traded concrete for steel. To make each sentinel, she cut elliptical and angular patterns out of large metal sheets inspired by Pueblo visual language. They might seem like a giant undertaking for a sculptor who has long worked from a secluded adobe studio built by her great-uncle, but Flatiron’s towering skyscrapers almost make them feel like endearing miniatures.

“Seed” not only marks Simpson’s largest New York City commission to date, but also arrives at a celebratory time for the Madison Square Park Conservancy, which is celebrating its public art program’s milestone 20th anniversary with a coffee table book and amped-up programming. For the first time, the conservancy is mounting art beyond Madison Square Park, bringing two additional Simpson sentinels to Inwood Hill Park in the borough’s upper reaches. Gazing toward the woods and the Hudson River with hollow eyes, they hold special significance. As the story goes, Dutch colonialist Peter Minuit purchased the entire island of Manhattan from the Lenape there in 1626 for what amounts to around $1,000 today.

In Their Own Words: “Being in public parks in New York City will help inspire people to take a moment and remember where they are, to find an intuitive relationship with the space itself,” Simpson said in an interview. “There is respect in the pause of the moment.”

Surface Says: The conservancy put together a video of every installation to have ever graced the park—watching it felt like a stroll back through our camera roll.

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While Le Procope claims the title of being the City of Light’s oldest café, the legendary brasserie recently unveiled a sumptuous new coffee and ice cream salon designed by Atelier Friedmann and Versace. The creative partners found inspiration in the opulence of Renaissance Italy: in cultivating the space’s balance of light and shadow, they sought to evoke the painterly technique of chiaroscuro, and the warm, earth-toned palette of Caravaggio. The menu brings equal decadence: the house special Procopio coffee-infused ice cream is named for the haunt’s 17th-century founder and is served topped with whipped cream and chocolate beans.

Sara Berks uses design to create a positive impact, from her hand-painted wallpapers infusing rooms with a welcome burst of color to doing the work necessary to ensure her fabrics and accessories brand, Minna, leaves a minimal impact on the planet by becoming a Certified B Corporation. An ethical approach underpins nearly every aspect of her Germantown-based brand, which builds partnerships with Latin American artisans to champion their Indigenous textile techniques, source sustainable materials, and simply have fun pushing for better.

Our weekly roundup of the internet’s most preposterous headlines, from the outrageous to the outright bizarre.

Frustrated Passenger Pees in Cup, Dumps It on Flight Attendant After Not Being Allowed to Disembark After Landing [View From the Wing]

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A German Art Gallery Employee Snuck In His Own Art in Hopes of a Breakthrough. Now the Police Are Involved. [CBS]

They Got an Octopus for Their Son to Raise as a Pet—Then It Had 50 Babies [New York Post]

Earlier this week, YoungArts welcomed nearly 300 of New York’s cultural and community leaders, philanthropists, celebrities, and art aficionados to the YoungArts New York Gala. Held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Temple of Dendur and supported by UBS Financial Services, the event raised nearly $1 million for the arts-focused foundation. Grammy- and Tony-nominated actor and singer Michael McElroy emceed the evening, which also featured performances directed by choreographer Amanda Krische and musician Samora Pinderhughes before guests enjoyed a seated dinner designed by Raùl Àvila, event designer of the Met Gala.

When was it? April 8

Where was it? The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Who was there? Misty Copeland, Derrick Adams, KAWS, José Parlá, Adam Pendleton, Mickalene Thomas, Kennedy Yanko, Connie Butler, Agnes Gund, Anne Pasternak, Jonah Freeman.

When: April 13–Sept. 22

Where: Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh

What: Pennsylvania’s industrial roots are well-documented—to a point. But Watt, an Indigenous artist known for working with textiles, and a citizen of the Seneca Nation, directs visitors’ eyes to the role the legendary Haudenosaunee “skywalkers” and the earth’s resources played in developing the Manhattan skyline. Past, present, and future collide as Watt explores the seemingly infinite recyclability of steel and the ways in which it, like the blankets she usually works with, propels legacy forward.

Marcela Cure is an interior designer and artist from Barranquilla, Colombia. As the daughter of an artist mother, her upbringing was one of creative incitement, further permeated by Barranquilla’s folklore and intensity. Her multidimensional studio includes interior design services as well as shoppable collectible design objects.

Surface Says: An innate fascination with the human form permeates Marcela Cure’s boundary-defying practice: from her sublime, livable interiors to her sculptural objects, vibrancy and life are at the heart of everything she creates.

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