The story
History
CITYarts, Inc. was founded in 1989 by Tsipi Ben-Haim. The organization takes part of its name from Cityarts Workshop, which closed down after losing its funding in 1988. Since its inception, CITYarts has created over 350 mural projects predominantly in New York City, and seven Peace Walls internationally.
2022 Projects
Fly Us To The Moon
We Can Stop the Speed of Climate Change
The Next Wave
Windows of Opportunity
What We Bring To The Table
A Bridge to Peace
Our Voices
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Restoration: Mosaic Rolling Bench at General Grant National Memorial
Walking with Justice
2021 Projects
The Golden Door
The Joker Stairs
The Next Wave
Restoration: Mosaic Rolling Bench at General Grant National Memorial
Always in Bloom
The Rolling Bench (1972–1974)
One of CITYarts' projects is The Rolling Bench at Grant's Tomb. A 400-foot mosaic bench, The Rolling Bench was described as the largest public arts project in the country when it was built between 1972 and 1974 by City Arts Workshop, the organization that would later become CITYarts, Inc. The Rolling Bench was designed by a group of artists and youth, and the work on the bench was led by Chilean-born New York artist Pedro Silva and the architect Phillip Danzig.
The benches were not universally popular and there was much debate over whether or not to destroy or move the benches, citing architectural conflict between the neoclassical tomb and the modern, colorful bench. In 1997, the benches were nearly removed by the Park Service as part of the 100th anniversary renovations of Grant's Tomb. The Park Service cut out a small section of the benches and lifted it a few inches to assess how difficult it would be to move them. However, The Rolling Bench was not removed and was restored in 2008 with the help of one of the original artists and many of the original volunteers, together with a group of young artists. It is also a current restoration project undertaken by CITYarts as of summer 2021.
Pieces for Peace (2002 – present)
Pieces for Peace is a CITYarts project started in 2002. As stated on the CITYarts website, this project "was designed to build bridges of international understanding by bringing together American youth and their peers from around the world to create drawings, paintings, and poems." Pieces for Peace enables national and international students, ages 12 to 18, to express their own personalized visuals of peace and what peace means or looks like to them, by drawing images on 6 in × 6 in (150 mm × 150 mm) pieces of paper. These drawings are then digitized and uploaded onto CITYarts' online gallery, and are sometimes incorporated into Pieces for Peace Traveling Exhibitions around the world. These works have been exhibited at the UN in New York City. Representative images and poems from this massively collaborative art project were incorporated into the design of the Jacob H. Schiff Park mosaic wall, under the artistic direction of the award-winning children's illustrator Peter Sís, to help share their visions for a more peaceful future and to translate those ideas into personal works of art. To date, there have been over 10,000 Pieces for Peace created, from 88 countries around the world.
Pieces for Peace Workshops & Traveling Exhibitions (2005 – present)
CITYarts' Pieces for Peace Workshops program welcomes and enables interested individuals, teachers, students, youth group leaders and more to organize a classroom, group, or personalized workshop to create their own Pieces for Peace.
The Pieces for Peace Traveling Exhibition features selected Pieces for Peace created by youths from around the world. This exhibition travels both nationally and internationally.
Some exhibition venues include, but are not limited to:
Flushing Town Hall, Queens, NY: September–October 2005.
Cork Gallery, Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center, New York, NY: May–June 2006.
Jewish Community Center, New York, NY: July–September 2006.
Paper Mill Playhouse, Millburn, NJ: September–October 2006.
Gabarron Foundation Carriage House Center for the Arts, New York, NY: March–April 2007.
Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany: July 2007.
iEARN Youth Summit, Cairo, Egypt: July 2007.
Beit-Sokolov Center for Journalists, Tel-Aviv, Israel: September–October 2007.
Museo Fundación Cristóbal Gabarrón, Valladolid, Spain: October 2007.
Fundación Casa Pintada, Murcia, Spain.
EU Parliament, Belgium: October 2009.
United Nations Headquarter, New York, NY: December 2009.
American International Toy Fair, Javits Center, New York, NY: February 2010.
Mission of the State of Quatar, New York, NY: March 2010.
Ana Tzarev Gallery, New York, NY: April–May 2010.
Fundacion Marcelo Botin, Santander, Spain: October 2010.
Association Memoire de l’Avenir, Paris, France: May 2011.
Allianz Headquarters, Berlin, Germany: December 2011.
European Capital of Culture (ECOC) Maribor 2012 Maribor, Slovenia: May 2012.
The Saatchi Gallery, London, United Kingdom: July–August 2012.
Centro Sefarad Israel, Madrid, Spain. January 2014 – 2017.
Senator Gillibrand's Office, New York, NY: November 2016 – present.
The Eastern Connecticut State University Willimantic, CT: February 2017.
The German Consulate, New York, NY: September 2017 – October 2017.
The Jewish Community Center, Madrid, Spain, September 2017.
The Palais des Nations, United Nations Headquarters, Geneva, Switzerland December 2017.
Memoire de L'Avenir, Paris, France, April 2018.
Crete Cultural Center, Crete, Greece, 2019.
Culture Center, Athens, Greece, 2019.
Toro Cultural Center, Toro, Spain, 2021.
House of Culture, Zamora, Spain, 2022.
Wetteren Town Hall, Wettern, Belgium, 2022.
Europa Experience Center, Vienna, Austria, 2024.
From Wikipedia’s article on CITYarts, Inc., shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3