MIDTOWN — Park Avenue is dotted with waterfalls from East 52nd to East 57th streets.
But, instead of remnants left over from last weekend's storm, these are made of metal.
The falls are part of a series by sculptor Bryan Hunt, presented by New York City’s Department of Parks and Recreation and The Fund for Park Avenue's Sculpture Committee, that will remain in place until November.
The works — most made of bronze and some of aluminum — went up Tuesday night, said Mark Davies, an artist who works with Hunt and helped install the hulking sculptures that each weigh hundreds of pounds.
“This is kind of traditional Bryan Hunt,” said Davies, 48, of the waterfall series, one of Hunt’s most well-known. “It’s like the essence of his work.”
Davies was back along Park Avenue on Thursday, polishing the sculptures and installing lighting to illuminate them at night.
The exhibit was supposed to be up as of last weekend, but Irene forced them to postpone. So on Tuesday, a team of 13 men and one crane arrived around 10 p.m. and worked until 7 a.m., sidestepping downed trees that the Parks Department had cut into chunks.
“It was an all-night event, and it was just great to do,” said Hunt, whose work has appeared in the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Guggenheim.
“You know, the city was totally asleep,” he added. “And I got to be on Park Avenue in a way I never have been, with no traffic, no people.”
For Hunt, displaying his work along Park Avenue provided a unique opportunity.
“It’s highly visible, kind of a classic place to exhibit sculpture,” he said. “It’s just classic New York.”
The sculptor has worked with the city before, on a permanent outdoor sculpture titled “Coenties Slip,” which stands in Coenties Slip Park in lower Manhattan.
When the Parks Department asked him to install an exhibition along Park Avenue, Hunt agreed and requested a location in the East 50s.
“It took me no time to think about that,” said Hunt, who called the area “the center of New York.”
The sculptures span several decades. Hunt completed some of the older pieces in the 1970s and 1980s, while the newest additions to the series — "Flume I" and "Flume II" situated along Park Avenue between East 52nd and East 53rd streets — were finished just a few years ago.
“Bryan Hunt’s work is the latest example of museum-quality art to grace the Park Avenue Malls,” Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe said in a statement. “The fluidity and motion of his sculptures perfectly complements the dynamism of the avenue itself.”
