NEW YORK, NY.- Prominent, innovative choreographers, dancers, musicians and poets including musicians Limpe Fuchs and Lea Bertucci, choreographers Rashaun Mitchell and Silas Riener, and poets Joshua Bennett and Mónica de la Torre will be in residence as an integral part of Josiah McElheny's outdoor public art project, Prismatic Park, in Madison Square Park from June 13, 2017 through October 8, 2017.

These professional artists will undertake rehearsals, workshops, and performances in full view of the public on McElheny's prismatic glass tile and wood sculptures: a curvilinear, translucent blue sound wall for experimental music; a circular, reflective green floor for vanguard dance; and a vaulted-roofed luminous red and yellow pavilion for poetry. The public will also have access to the sculptures, to view or to adopt as a framework for their own innovative use.

As part of the project, Madison Square Park is collaborating with three nonprofit organizations based in New York City: Blank Forms, Danspace Project, and Poets House. The nonprofits selected the resident artists who will participate in Prismatic Park.

McElheny has urged the artists to use his sculptures and the site of a public park in New York City as the starting point for their own creative expression. He has prompted them to envision “publicness" as the subject of their works: what it means to make new dance, music, and poetry inspired by the site and the myriad, often chance encounters with the public that a park provides.

"It is a great honor for Danspace Project to be invited by Josiah McElheny and Madison Square Park Conservancy to be part of his Prismatic Park installation," stated Judy Hussie-Taylor, Executive Director and Chief Curator of Danspace Project. “The opportunity he offers us to consider new collaborative models for activating the public imagination couldn't be more relevant and urgent."

“For Josiah McElheny's Prismatic Park, Blank Forms has invited six musicians that deal with ideas of public space, collectivity, and community in their artistic practices,” said Lawrence Kumpf, Artistic Director of Blank Forms. “It's a great chance for Blank Forms to work in a city park and to see what dialogues and interactions develop between the musicians that we work with and the wide range of Park visitors through the openness of the residency structure.”

“Poets House's has asked a diverse group of contemporary poets to bring the intimate art of poetry into a bustling urban oasis and to develop projects that bring their poetic practice into a public setting defined by civic engagement and chance encounters,” said Stephen Motika, Artistic Director, Poets House. “Their efforts will involve poetry walks, translation and book making workshops, and performances of all sorts; we hope the result will underscore the energy of poetry in our time and remind the public of the transformational possibility of language in these challenging times."

Josiah McElheny emphasizes that this project is one of shared effort, between himself, the Park, the collaborating artists and, not least, inhabitants of and visitors to New York. “One of the most urgent societal issues today is how can we best share what little public space is left to us. Prismatic Park attempts to provide a partial answer to this question by suggesting that the arts can expand existing public spaces through the visionary efforts of individuals and small groups, creating works of art, dance, music and poetry in the middle of our city.”

"Our program of public art continues to push the boundaries of this field. Josiah McElheny's Prismatic Park is a hopeful use of a Park site where sculpture and performance will seamlessly unite for the tremendous benefit of Parkgoers," said Keats Myer, Executive Director, Madison Square Park Conservancy. "We are delighted to have this project on view in the summer of 2017 and to collaborate with our colleagues at Blank Forms, Danspace Project and Poets House."

Brooke Kamin Rapaport, Director and Martin Friedman Senior Curator, Mad. Sq. Art, said: "Josiah

McElheny's Prismatic Park scrutinizes and poses alternatives for the use of public space for a democracy, for solidarity, for optimism. This project takes the impetus from recent activism in public parks and squares, but its core comes from an idealistic, almost utopian, concept for the shared responsibility of a public site by people and the artist's role in solidifying that contract. By making three stunning prismatic glass and brightly colored painted wood works and by partnering with three nonprofits, McElheny is positing his works as platforms for questions of how sculpture can revamp other disciplines."

A weekly giveaway poster available in the Park will list when the resident artists will inhabit Prismatic Park.