Artlog

Key to the City 06/03

Starting today you can get a key to unlock NYC’s secret doors; at least all the interesting ones.

Creative Time and the City of New York have collaborated with artist Paul Ramirez Jonas and created this summer’s coolest scavenger hunt. With Key to the City they have reinvented and democratized the civic honor of bestowing keys to visiting dignitaries. As Mayor Bloomberg said at this morning’s press conference: “Throughout the month of June, I won’t be the only person to award keys to the city. You can give a key to anyone you chose, for any reason you want. … These keys are usually only symbolic. They don’t open anything. This is not the case with our latest public art project.”

True; Ramirez Jonas’ Key to the City actually unlocks steel gates, padlocks, PO boxes, secret doors and secret compartments at over 20 sites throughout the five boroughs of NYC. Some of our favorites?

The key will unlock:

*A secret door on the fifth floor of the Brooklyn Museum
*A box with limited admission buttons per day at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
*A do-it-yourself artist studio and gallery in the Point Community Development Corportation in the Bronx
*The churchyard that contains Hamilton’s tomb at Trinity Church
*A box at coat check with a preview of the Whitney Museum’s future
*A room in the Louis Armstrong House Museum not on the public tour
*A closet in the master bedroom on the 2nd floor of Gracie Mansion
*A garden maintained by the monks at the Staten Island Buddhist Vihara

The keys are being distributed from a kiosk in Times Square, open daily until June 27th (Monday – Friday 2-8pm, Saturday-Sunday 12-8pm). Right behind the kiosk, Ramirez Jones created an open space, somewhat like a village lawn – where the bestowal ceremonies takes place. During the ceremony, participants can declare the reasons for which they are recognizing each other and will be given keys to exchange.

I gave mine to Adam, a complete stranger I met standing in line, for his awesome beard. He gave me mine “in consideration of your return from the Land Downunder.” So not only did I get a key to NYC, a map and description of each of the sites the key unlocks but I also made a new friend. As Anne Pasternak, President and Artistic Director of Creative Time said: “The Key to the City allows everyday people the chance to honor one another, grants access to the city that is already theirs, and celebrates us all.” Each testimony is also recorded in the project’s communal ledger – an archive celebrating the citizens and visitors of NYC. Adam, I hope you enjoy unlocking that “extra helping of a delicious treat” at Eddie’s Sweet Shop.

Who are you going to give your key to?

About the Artist: Paul Ramirez Jonas, born in California and raised in Honduras, currently works and lives in NYC. His work challenges the boundaries between artwork and spectator, requesting full participation, through a penny, wish or key, to fully engage with his projects. Keys have been an important part of his work for several years – including in Mi Casa Su Casa (2005) when he delivered a series of lectures about how space can be defined as either locked or unlocked, before inviting his audience to to exchange keys with him and one another. Also in 2005, Ramirez Jonas created a permanent public art project in Cambridge, MA called Taylor Square. 5’000 keys to the park were mailed to the homes closest to the park to symbolize a shared sense of ownership. For the Sao Paulo Biennial in 2008, Ramirez Jonas once again used the symbol of the key. As part of Talisman he asked visitors to engage with his work by leaving a copy of one of their keys in exchange for a key to the front door of the iconic Ciccillo Matarazzo Pavillion that house the biennial.

About Creative Time: Creative Time has worked with over 1’400 artists in its 35-year old history. Projects often include animating the unique spaces of NYC’s urban landscape and engaging with public spaces in new ways. Recent collaborations have included Sleepwalkers, a film by Doug Aitken projected on the Museum of Modern Art and Tribute in Light, which served as a gesture of hope and healing after 9/11.

Make sure you also read our interview with Key to the City Curator Nato Thompson