Found Art: A Walk to Central Park

I’m just back home from a week spent babysitting the adorable #1 granddaughter in Manhattan, and once again I’m reminded why New York is my favorite city in the world (especially in Spring).  Every block  holds surprise glimpses of beauty and art, if you just look.  (Look up for sculptural and architectural surprises that might be missed.

Below are some of the sights I passed every day on the Upper East Side while pushing the stroller the three short cross-town blocks to Central Park, where three playgrounds, all a stone’s throw from the Metropolitan Museum, awaited. You may not count all of these as found art, but I do.  This is why I heart New York (now more than ever.)

 Cookies at Eli’s on Third Ave.

 Flowers outside our front door.

 Pansies in a restaurant window.

Tulips on Park Avenue. (Now they’ve finished. )

Window boxes & a sculpted head next to the garbage pails of a brownstone.

Artists selling their work outside the Metropolitan Museum.

“Woman on Horseback” on 79th  Street

Terra Cotta Warriors—All the way from China to Times Square.

A dry fountain in one playground.

Three bears outside a second playground, on the south side of the Metropolitan Museum.

The bears are irresistible to young and old. Everyone wants to climb and take a photo.

Okay, this rat, slightly larger than the ones in Central Park, is not really art.  He turns up whenever union members want to complain that a store is not hiring union labor.  While the rat could not be called artistic, he always makes me smile, because he’s a true New Yorker.