A celebration of Albany's public murals
City’s investment in visual art creates more than two dozen works on display throughout capital city streets
In a 10-year-old mural on the north side of downtown Albany, a young man pushes a vaguely intestinal squiggle of green, which flattens into a yellow ribbon that undulates beneath a 1-story-high painted close-up in black and white of former Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller's aging face.
A few blocks south, giant bluebirds for the past five years have appeared to be descending into downtown alongside vehicles using a highway exit ramp. Beneath the ramp, support pillars offer brightly colored scenes, and around the corner, a 51-foottall, sun-yellow wall is the backdrop for a portrait of a Black woman in eyeglasses and head scarf, looking contemplative, with slogans and short inspirational message appearing across the mural. Among them are “U are necessary beyond explanation,” “Your strength moves mountains” and “We are authentic.”
It was painted last fall.
Still farther south, people on Broadway passing beneath I-787 since 1999 encounter one of the largest trompel'oeil murals in the country, with 7,500 square feet of smooth concrete painted to look like rough walls of carved rock, hewn granite blocks and three-dimensional columns topped with decorative medallions depicting historic ships that once sailed the Hudson River.
More than two dozen commissioned murals appear throughout downtown, complementing other visual displays installed over the years, including a giant metal tulip,
“Public art creates a sense of place." — Georgette Steffens
festively painted Dutch wooden shoes the size of small rowboats and the head-cocked curiosity of artist-decorated fiberglass statues of the Nipper dog mascot.
"Public art creates a sense of place," said Georgette Steffens, executive director of the Downtown Albany Business Improvement District, which has a $20,000 line item in its
annual budget devoted to commissioning and promoting public art. The BID has contributed funds to Capital Walls, a joint project of Albany Center Gallery, the Albany Barn arts incubator and the Albany Parking Authority.
Since the bluebirds mural was created in 2016, on the north side of the city-owned Quackenbush Parking Garage, Capital Walls has paid 15 artists to make 18 murals, stretching from a cluster behind Quackenbush Square 10 blocks south, to three murals at the parking authority's Green-hudson Garage. The campaign represents a $150,000 investment in public art, according
Take a tour
For an interactive map of mural locations in Albany, go to timesunion.com.
to Tony Iadicicco, executive director of Albany Center Gallery. The latest infusion of support was a $72,000 allocation for four murals as part of a $10 million grant the city of Albany received as part of the state's Downtown Revitalization Initiative. Two of the murals went up late last year, with two more due this summer.
"The new public art that has taken shape across downtown Albany not only spurs additional creativity and an opportunity to collaborate with our local artists, but invigorates our historic architecture and makes Albany’s newest neighborhood a vibrant hub of connectivity that attracts new residents, visitors and businesses alike," Albany Mayor Kathy Sheehan said via email.
"The conversations about really pushing more public art, art out in the community, started about 10 years ago," said Iadicicco, who as of last month has run the gallery for a decade. Before that, he said, "So much focus was on art inside, in gallery spaces. We wanted to have art more accessible and out where it could be seen, where people could have access to it all day and night."
Iadicicco's arrival at ACG roughly coincided with a 2011 event called Living Walls that brought together local and national street artists for three days of creating works still visible around Albany today. Curated by longtime Albany artist Samson Contompasis, Living Walls' contributions to the capital city's public art include the Rockefeller portrait, a bellowing elk, the Empire State Building with a pen tip as a spire and, over a wall that includes a garage door, an image of a lounging girl, one arm wrapped around her upright knees.
Among Contompasis' own works are a large 2019 mural in the Empire State Plaza food court that is part of his ongoing Ghost City Project, in which he paints evocations of Albany streetscapes from historic photos, and, new last month, a 30-foot-tall Minotaur on an exterior wall of a Hamilton
“We're going to bring the next Picasso, the next Mondrian to transform Albany in a positive and beautiful way on a massive scale." — Samson Contompasis
Street tasting room and meadery called The Bull and Bee.
"We're going to bring the next Picasso, the next Mondrian to transform Albany in a positive and beautiful way on a massive scale," Contompasis told the Times Union in May 2011, when he announced plans for the Living Walls festival that fall.
Speaking of the artists who would visit and the visual appeal they would leave behind, he said, "This is all about lifting up Albany and making this city better than it is by creating art and bringing attention and energy to areas where there's only decay and blight right now."