The Green

Created for New Yorkers, and the outdoor artistic performances organized by Restart Stages at Lincoln Center, the installation The Green is an unexpected urban oasis created by set designer Mimi Lien. On stage until September 2021

To reinvent Josie Robertson Plaza and transform it into a real park would have been unthinkable until a short while ago, but this institution wanted to create an initiative to restart the arts and the city of New York. The Green is a pop-up installation by set designer Mimi Lien, assigned the task of reimagining a space in which to relax and to enjoy outdoor performances.

The GREEN - Photo © Sachyn Mital, courtesy of Lincoln Center

“When invited to consider how the physical space of Josie Robertson Plaza could be re-envisioned to be a more inclusive and inviting environment, I immediately thought that by changing the ground surface from hard paving stones with no seating to a material like grass, suddenly anyone would be able to sit anywhere,” Mimi Lien explains.

The GREEN - Photo © Sachyn Mital, courtesy of Lincoln Center

The Green is the ‘physical’ fulcrum of the new open-air programming of Restart Stages, part of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation-Lincoln Center Agora Initiative, a collaboration that reinvents and reactivates public space for a new: “The arts – says Henry Timms, President and CEO of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts – can be the centerpiece of New York’s economic, social, and spiritual revival—a powerful vehicle to reconnect as we enter the spring season.”

The GREEN - Photo © Sachyn Mital, courtesy of Lincoln Center

Made with a recyclable, bio-based material similar to grass supplied by SYNLawn New York, with high soy content and fully sourced from American farms, The Green will be a stage for the entire summer of 2021, with music and dance performances: “In the past – Lien continues – Josie Robertson Plaza has been a space that you walk through in order to see a performance, to get to the Library, or even to admire the fountain for a bit, but I dreamt of making it a space of inhabitation, of pleasure, and of rest. I wanted to make a place where you could lie on a grassy slope and read a book all afternoon. Get a coffee and sit in the sun. Bring your babies and frolic in the grass. Have a picnic lunch with co-workers. I hope that this curved grass surface will feel like an embrace and an expanse at the same time and will reimagine the Plaza as a site of social infrastructure, like a town green – a place to gather, a common ground.”

Photo © Sachyn Mital, courtesy of Lincoln Center

The Green
Parco pop-up
Lincoln Center for the Performing Art
10 Columbus Circus – New York
www.lct.org