Street Art Classy-Style Comes Downtown

Notice those black and steel interwoven figures dominating the median of New York Avenue between 12th and 13th Streets? They’re the second installation of the New York Avenue Sculpture Project www.downtowndc.org/go/new-york-avenue-sculpture-project by international sculptor, Chakaia Booker, who unveiled them last month on International Women’s Day, more than two years after the National Museum of Women in the Arts www.downtowndc.org/go/national-museum-of-women-in-the-arts (1250 New York Avenue) teamed with the D.C. Office of Planning and other agencies to begin work on featuring changing installations of works by contemporary, world-class women artists.

New York-based Booker works almost exclusively with recycled tires that are cut, shaped and folded, then woven into large-scale expressive works fusing ecological concerns with explorations of racial and economic differences, globalization and gender. The art project has changed the look of New York Avenue, one of Downtown’s major boulevards.