Central Park's Arsenal Gallery Reopens With New Art Show

CENTRAL PARK, NY — For the first time in a year and a half, Central Park's Arsenal Gallery has reopened to visitors — and has a new art exhibition to draw them in.

The gallery is located within the 1840s-era Arsenal, the imposing brick building just in from Fifth Avenue near East 64th Street, next door to the Central Park Zoo. It had been closed since March 2020, as COVID-19 hit New York.

On Monday, the gallery reopened with "Confinement Gardens," a series of paintings by the artist Paul Hunter.

The works were inspired by Hunter's walks through New York City's parks and gardens during lockdown, where he "experienced the restorative power of flowers in bloom, which gave him hope despite the surrounding pandemic and political turmoil," the Parks Department wrote.

Hunter gave the paintings a "luminous power" by applying several coats of translucent acrylic paints over an under-layer of aluminum leaf, refracting and reflecting light through the semi-transparent paint.

The show will be on view through Nov. 18. Proof of vaccination and mask-wearing are required to enter the gallery, which is open Monday-Friday from 9 a.m.-5 p.m. on the Arsenal's third floor.

"I am fully aware of the deteriorating natural environment, and the artifice of cultivated gardens, an ‘unnatural’ space where plants are protected," Hunter said in a statement. "However, during this time, I was nonetheless seeking a vision of hope, and celebrated nature’s ongoing luxuriant beauty in these lush green paintings punctuated with colorful notes of imagined flowers."

Parks Commissioner Gabrielle Fialkoff called the works "a timely reflection on the inspiration New Yorkers have found in greenspaces" during the pandemic.

"For decades, the Arsenal Gallery has showcased artworks that explore nature, urban landscapes, and park history, and we are happy to reopen the space to visitors for the first time since the start of the pandemic," she said.

To attend in a group of more than five people, visitors must call call 212-360-8114 or email artandantiquities@parks.nyc.gov to pre-register.