# Robert Smithson's Floating Island



## Concrete Meadow (Sep 17, 2005)

Robert Smithson is one of my favourite conceptual artists. *Floating Island* is a piece Smithson created solely for New York City although he died before the project could be realized. This week, 35 years later, with the help of his wodow and fellow artist Nancy Holt along with earth art afficionados, *Floating Island* is making its debut down the Hudson River. Bravo Smithson 







"Floating Island" on a test run this week on the Hudson at Battery Park City. 
Photo: Robert Caplin/The New York Times

*It's Not Easy Making Art That Floats* 

By RANDY KENNEDY - Published: September 16, 2005 (nytimes.com)

The island of Manhattan was formed over the course of more than 500 million years, shaped by metamorphic pressure, erosion, continental drift, glacial deposits and rampant real estate development.

The island of Robert Smithson was formed over about a week, in a ragged-looking barge yard on Staten Island, shaped by a public art group, a landscape architect, a contractor, an engineer, a project manager and various other dedicated conceptual art workers using a 30-by-90-foot flat-decked barge, 10 trees, 3 huge rocks, a bunch of shrubs, rolls of sod, a whole lot of dirt and even more ingenuity.

The result, which will begin daily travels tomorrow along Manhattan's shores, is much more than just a week's work. It is the culmination of more than 30 years of sporadic efforts to build the ambitious floating artwork that Mr. Smithson sketched out in a rough drawing three years before he died in a plane crash in 1973, an image that showed a tiny, forested, man-made island being towed by tugboat with the city's skyline in the distance.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/16/arts/design/16floa.html
[registration is required for the New York Times' site.]


*Where and when to view Floating Island*

--- Daily appearances from 18 September through 25 September, 2005 ---

*New Jersey*

J. Owen Grundy Park - Jersey City, 9 am

Pier A, Hoboken, NJ - 8:30 am

*Manhattan* 

Hudson River Park - Pier 46 at Charles Street 
9 am and 4:30 to 7:45 pm
On Sundays: 9am and 4:30 pm

Hudson River Park - Pier 34 at Spring Street
9:15 am and 4 pm

Wagner Park, Battery Park City
9:30 am and 3:30 pm

Battery Park at the Hudson River
10 am and 3:15 pm

Pier 16 at South Street Seaport
10:30 am and 3 pm

East River Park, Houston Street and the East River
11:15 am and 2:15 pm

*Brooklyn*

Brooklyn Heights Promenade
10:45 am and 2:45 pm

Brooklyn Bridge Park
11 am and 2:30 pm

Grand Ferry Park, Williamsburg
11:30 am and 2 pm

*Roosevelt Island*

Southpoint Park, Roosevelt Island
11:45 am and 1:30 pm on all days except Sept 24 and 25;
the barge will remain for a longer period of time on the Queens
side of the East River, in the area between Southpoint Park
and Grabnd Ferry Park in Williamsburg.

-- Limited appearances ---

*Quuens*

Socrates Scupture Park, Long Island City
Noon and 1 pm (Sept 24 and 25 only)

*Wards Island*

Wards Island Park 
12:15 pm and 12:45 pm (Sept 24 and 25 only)

*Mid- and upper Manhattan*

Carl Schurz Park, at 86 Street and the East River
Noon and 1:15 pm (Sept 24v and 25 only)

107 Street Pier, at the East River
12:30 pm (Sept 24 and 25 only)

Hudson River Park, Clinton Gove, Pier 95 at 55 Street
5:45 pm (Sundays only)

Riverside Park, at 96 Street
6:45 pm (Sundays only)

Riverbank State Park, at 145 Street
7:45 pm (Sundays only)


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## dingleweed (Oct 3, 2005)

i think i saw that the other day when i was there from battery park it was pretty sweet


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## editor (Jan 9, 2008)

What ever happened to it?! Is it still floating about the seas?


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## D (Jan 9, 2008)

That was quite a bump!


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## editor (Jan 9, 2008)

D said:
			
		

> That was quite a bump!


It came up in a search for something else and I got a-wonderin'!


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## lang rabbie (Jan 9, 2008)

It was just a shortlived folly to coincide with the Smithson retrospective at the Whitney in autumn 2005 - AFAIK the trees went back to a nursery and the Manhattan Schist boulders were returned to Central Park.


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