Kenny Scharf Takes Over Rockefeller Center in Midtown, NYC: "Scary and the Dancers!"

Pop artist Kenny Scharf has taken over Rockefeller Center with "Scary and the Dancers!", a public commission on view through November 1. Organized by Art Production Fund, it opened on October 9 and is described as Scharf's largest sculptural project to date. It carries the East Village street-art roots and cosmic, consumer-culture-skewering imagery that made his name into Midtown's Art Deco setting.

The centerpiece is "Scary," a 34-foot-tall inflatable (about 10.4 meters) standing in Center Plaza and surrounded by six polychromatic "dancing" sculptures. The work hovers over the ice rink, which opened on October 10.

The installation also spills indoors. The lobbies at 30, 10, 45 and 50 Rockefeller Plaza hold bespoke murals and an immersive nod to Scharf's legendary blacklight-lit Cosmic Cavern, the environment he first built in the 1980s. Above the rink, more than 100 custom artist flags fly.

For families, Art Production Fund's Art Sundae initiative is running free, hands-on children's workshops on Saturdays through October. Inspired by Scharf's "Living Sunshine Caverns," kids paint planters decorated with his expressive characters. Their finished pieces go on view as part of the exhibition at 10 Rockefeller Plaza.

Scharf has been a fixture of New York's art scene since the 1980s and, alongside Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat, helped define the downtown movement that mixed fine art, street culture, cartoons and popular imagery. Japanese readers may know him from his collaboration with Kim Jones on a capsule for Dior menswear, one of the ways his work has reached a wider audience beyond galleries.

With the show closing on November 1, there is little time left. One reviewer suggested pairing a visit with a few laps on the rink beneath the giant inflatable.

(Details are drawn from points that agree across reports by Galerie, ForumDaily New York, Kid On The Town, Ninette Murk (Substack).)