Camille Henrot: Dogs

At the southeast corner of Central Park, where 60th Street meets Fifth Avenue, Doris C. Freedman Plaza is now home to a pack of oversized dogs. Camille Henrot: Dogs is the Paris-born artist's first public exhibition in New York City, presented by Public Art Fund and curated by its Senior Curator, Melanie Kress.

The show gathers twelve sculptures, building on an existing series of Henrot's and adding new works made from materials that suit the outdoors: bronze, stone, steel and concrete. The forms vary widely. One piece is a negative image of a dog cut from a sheet of steel, another a white dog carrying a book on its back, another a concrete-and-epoxy figure. Henrot drew on Saul Steinberg drawings, Tex Avery cartoons, ancient Egyptian sculpture and dog-show competitions.

Henrot works across painting, drawing, film, installation and sculpture. Her film Grosse Fatigue won the Silver Lion at the 2013 Venice Biennale, and her solo shows have included the New Museum and Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery. Here she turns to dogs as a way into her longtime interest in attachment, dependency and domestication, while also celebrating sculptural craft and her affection for New York as a city of insistent individual expression.

Admission is free and the plaza is open daily. The installation stays up through August 29, 2027, so it's easy to fold into a Central Park walk or a stroll down Fifth Avenue, and to revisit as the seasons change.