Nature of Change
Maya Lin's Ghost Forest raises forty-nine dead Atlantic white cedars over Madison Square Park, an installation about a climate crisis already underway.
BY Jezy Gray
EARTH’S VULNERABILITY HAUNTS Maya Lin’s Ghost Forest, a public art installation looming over Madison Square Park in Manhattan. The artist’s background as an environmental activist informs the large-scale work—composed of forty-nine rootless Atlantic white cedar trees, each about forty feet tall—gesturing toward the scope of the impending global climate crisis. Populated by large stands of dead cedars from the Pine Barrens of New Jersey, the project continues Lin’s exploration of our fragile ecosystem through a reimagining of both urban and rural outdoor spaces. Ghost Forest also includes an audio soundscape, featuring the calls of animal species once common to Manhattan, sourced from the Macaulay Library sound archive of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
Maya Lin: Ghost Forest will be on view in Madison Square Park through November 14, 2021. madisonsquarepark.org