Public Art Watch: Big Apple Invisible in “The Big Apple”

During my Manhattan meanderings yesterday, I also stumbled upon this:

CultureGrrl is a native New Yorker (as if you couldn’t tell), so I fully understand the local custom of never making eye contact with strangers. But even I was surprised yesterday afternoon as I stood at the southeast entrance to Central Park for a few minutes, observing that absolutely NO ONE cast so much as a sidelong glance at this sculptural stranger—a large, garishly iridescent green-and-purple urethane alien that had been plunked down in midtown by the Public Art Fund.
Admittedly, no naturally curious children scampered by while I was loitering. When I had this same spot under surveillance three months ago, Sarah Sze’s “Corner Plot” was there. As I then observed:
It’s amazing how many jaded New Yorkers pass this odd fragment of an apparently sunken apartment building without giving it a single glance. Curious children, however, invariably peer into the windows and climb the walls.
Sze’s piece was somewhat camouflaged, so I deduced that preoccupied adults might reasonably miss it. But how could you fail to notice Liz Larner‘s glossy “2001”—12 feet high, deep and wide—unless you were highly practiced at New York City insularity?
According to the description on the Public Art Fund’s website:
Larner’s sleek experiment with simultaneity invites the viewer in, and around, for a closer look.
Not a chance. Don’t they realize who they’re dealing with here? Just fuhgeddaboudit!