CYNTHIA BROWN

 

 

 

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In Hard Beauty fine artist Cynthia Brown turns the spotlight on a part of city life most of us rarely notice, let alone admire.  With a painter’s eye for detail and a deep curiosity for overlooked truths, Brown finds unexpected beauty in the machinery and labor behind New York City’s systems - sanitation, water works and parks.  Our water supply, the care of our green spaces, and cleaning our streets, are built on sophisticated systems and feats of engineering that are often taken for granted, ignored, or hidden in plain sight.

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The journey begins with a 19th-century reformer whose visionary work laid foundations for systems we still rely on today.  Brown's work honors the enduring legacy of this figure and illuminates his impact on the complex choreography and the ingenious strategies he employed to provide us with clean water, green spaces, and functioning streets.

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This exhibition invites us to recalibrate our focus on these systems, the workers, and our own role within the urban ecosystem.  By illuminating what we often take for granted, Hard Beauty challenges passive spectatorship and asks us to consider the part we play, or refuse to play, in maintaining and improving the intricate network that sustains our city.​

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Hard Beauty is a fiscally sponsored project of the New York Foundation for the Arts and can be supported through your tax deductible donations.  Thank you!

 

To ensure funding is specifically targeted to Hard Beauty go to:

• NYFA.org

• Toggle PROGRAMS in horizontal search bar

• Toggle BROWSE SPONSORED PROJECTS

• Search CYNTHIA BROWN

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Hard Beauty is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

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