An Artist Reimagines the Spaces of Childhood, With Thorny Results

Hugh Hayden’s “Brier Patch” (2022). Yasunori Matsui / Madison Square Park Conservancy.

The first time Hugh Hayden tried to build a playground, his client said no. The sculptor’s pitch to the nonprofit Public Art Fund included a full-size play structure made of wood and covered in thorns. The curators got the point of the piece, titled “America.” The problem was that the prickly playground would have to be fenced off.

The piece Hayden ultimately made had an equally thorny backstory, but a smoother shell. “Gulf Stream” is a beautifully crafted oak rowboat that, upon approach, reveals itself to have the frame of an enormous ribcage — as if Jonah’s boat and Jonah’s whale had merged into one uncanny object. Hayden drew on references from art history, namely Winslow Homer’s painting of a Black man alone in a boat in shark-infested waters and Kerry James Marshall’s depiction of a more idyllic version of the same. Kids got it right away.

“We had no idea how popular it would be as a playground,” Hayden says. “Literally within 30 seconds that we installed it, children ran up and parents started taking their photos with children climbing on it.”

Lesson learned: Put a climbable structure in a park and it’s gonna get climbed.