Culture News Blog

CITY OF NEWBURGH — On the spot where a Christmas tree sits in winter, a giant shark fin will rise up from the street.

You'll see it if you drive down Broadway in late summer. It stands 12 feet tall and stretches more than 13 feet from the front of the fin to the back. New York City artist James Johnson built it out of gleaming aluminum, tooling images across the surface and accenting the details with copper nails. He calls it "Freedom of Movement."

The fin appeared at Riverside Park in Manhattan and Socrates Sculpture Park in Queens but needed a permanent home, Karen Conway said. Conway works with the Newburgh Arts and Culture Commission to bring public art to the city. Eventually, commission members want to display enough pieces for a walking art tour of Newburgh. They're concentrating on Broadway and Liberty Street in hopes of drawing people up from the water front and into the city.

The giant fin will be an early, massive notice of that effort.

It will sit just east of Grand Street in the middle of Broadway as if a monster of a shark had come up the hill from the Hudson River and decided to swim west just below the surface of the city's main thoroughfare.

Johnson wanted to depict the shark's constant need to move or die which, in a way, is how it came to Newburgh. Johnson needed to move Freedom of Movement somewhere after temporary exhibits in New York City — a 12-foot-tall shark fin requires an awfully big storage locker — or consider destroying it. So the fin will come up the river to Newburgh.

Conway said they hope to install it by the last weekend in July. It will stay on Broadway for 90 days and then move to a permanent site in the city.

A 54-inch study for the fin will sit in the Newburgh Free Library with a book for comments.

Conway said people can suggest where to move the fin, and the commission plans to hold a public forum in September to talk about locations for future sculptures.

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