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    The Works of Christo and Jean-Claude Are Experiencing a Revival

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    Known for their outsized and revolutionary art projects, the couple’s work is seen again in Florida, New York and Germany.It was 42 years ago. Miami awoke to a strange, crooked line of hot pink images floating in the waters of panoramic Biscayne Bay.Eleven small islands had been wrapped in wide, rippling swaths of pink plastic. They were almost glowing as the morning sun swept over the beaches and skyscrapers of the city. Crowds came out in helicopters and speedboats and the family car. Some people perched on condo balconies.It was the work of Christo and his wife, Jeanne-Claude, the European artists who had wrapped the Reichstag building in Berlin, the Pont Neuf bridge in Paris and run a billowing, tall white nylon fence 24.5 miles over the cattle ranges just north of San Francisco and into the Pacific Ocean.People flew in from Europe and around the world to see the show, and collectors and museum directors and many others say it lifted the curtain on Miami as a city of natural beauty that would eventually become a dazzling global art center.“It was a world happening,” said Norman Braman, a former owner of the Philadelphia Eagles, a collector and a Miami car dealer with about a dozen brands, from Hyundai to Rolls-Royce.But it was a tough time for Miami. Cocaine seemed to be everywhere. Gunmen were in the streets. Time magazine had put the city on its cover as “Paradise Lost.” In 1984 — a year after the extravaganza on the bay — the “Miami Vice” TV show took the city’s crime and fashion into American living rooms.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Kehlani Concert in Central Park Is Canceled After Pressure From Mayor

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      The singer, a vocal critic of Israel, had been scheduled to perform in June as part of Pride festivities. Two weeks ago, Cornell dropped a plan to have her headline a concert.The nonprofit group behind the SummerStage concerts has canceled a scheduled Central Park performance by the popular R&B singer Kehlani under pressure from the administration of Mayor Eric Adams.The move came on Monday after a top New York City official warned the group, the City Parks Foundation, that its license to stage the long-running concert series could be at risk if it did not “promptly take steps” to address “security concerns” raised by the planned show.Billed as “Pride With Kehlani,” the concert was to take place on June 26 as part of the city’s broader Pride festivities. It was the second scheduled Kehlani performance to be canceled in recent weeks amid a furor over the singer’s pro-Palestinian stance.Unlike Cornell University officials, who explicitly cited what they said were Kehlani’s antisemitic and anti-Israel views when they dropped the singer two weeks ago as the headliner of an annual campus concert, the city official, First Deputy Mayor Randy M. Mastro, did not invoke the singer’s personal opinions.Instead, he said in a letter to the foundation’s executive director, Heather Lubov, that the Adams administration’s concerns were based on “the controversy” surrounding the scheduled Cornell performance, as well as the security demands posed by such an event in Central Park and by other Pride events around the city.Mr. Mastro wrote that the police would conduct a security assessment of the concert. If the department determined that the event posed “an unacceptable risk to public safety,” he added, there could be implications for SummerStage’s future. The series began in 1986.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      A Stunning New Pool in Central Park Helps Heal Old Wounds

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      For more than a century and a half, Central Park has been a leafy barometer of New York’s shifting fortunes. Projecting the city’s vast ambitions and ideals in the 19th century, it morphed into a Hooverville during the Depression, becoming a beehive of ball fields and “Be-Ins” during the 1960s.A decade later it was a lawless dust bowl, the poster child for urban decline. “An unattended Frankenstein,” one city parks commissioner called it.Restoring Central Park’s glory has been a labor of decades, its maintenance an endless task. But the $160 million Davis Center, opening to the public Saturday, is a culmination of sorts.The Davis Center, under construction, with the pavilion tucked underneath the hill to the left and the pool covered by artificial turf for the spring season.Todd Heisler/The New York TimesIt’s a spectacular new swimming pool, skating rink and pavilion on six remade acres at the Harlem end of the park — the most dramatic change in years to Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux’s pastoral masterpiece of the 1850s.This northern stretch of the park was shamefully neglected when the city was at its nadir and it became the site of a brutal attack that led to one of the more horrendous miscarriages of racial justice in New York’s history.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Joseph Gitnig, Central Park Minstrel Known as Pegasus, Dies at 95

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      For nearly two decades, he delighted children and adults in New York City with songs and silly antics. He also scored a victory for free speech.Pegasus, the mythological winged stallion, symbolized divine inspiration and boundless freedom. So did Joseph Gitnig, the itinerant minstrel who called himself Pegasus and delighted children and adults who gathered spontaneously for nearly two decades to see him perform at the Central Park Zoo.Pegasus, the stallion, achieved immortality when Zeus transformed him into a constellation in the northern sky. Pegasus, the man, died on Sunday in Tilburg, the Netherlands, where he had lived since he gave up his New Age performance art in 1984. He was 95.Tineke Gitnig-Bertrums, his wife and only immediate survivor, said the cause was kidney failure.Pegasus — referring to him formally as Mr. Gitnig would be demystifying — epitomized a more innocent era, or at least one in which children, and adults, could be distracted and even entertained by a ballad, a soap bubble or a balloon and other less mind-blowing diversions than violent video games, Super Bowl halftime pyrotechnics and Las Vegas extravaganzas.“I’m a poet, writer, actor, dancer, and I put it all together in the package of a clown,” he told The New York Times in 1974. He once told Dramatics magazine, “I’ve been called an astronaut of inner space, a cosmonaut of the imagination, bard of brotherhood, troubadour, rhapsodist, folklorist and the indefinable fool.”Whatever you want to call him, he did more than entertain. After being arrested twice in the mid-1970s, he helped establish a precedent for free speech: For better or worse, according to Arthur Eisenberg, executive counsel of the New York Civil Liberties Union, the city agreed that performance art in parks and other public spaces is a form of free expression protected by the First Amendment.“Creative Sharer” was how he described himself on the business cards that he handed out, hoping to be booked at children’s parties and other events as a way to supplement the up to $3,000 a year in coins and small bills he collected in a basket at the zoo. He made a living in the off-season as a clerk and shoe salesman.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Met Museum Unveils Design for New Modern Wing

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      The architect Frida Escobedo has drawn on her Mexican heritage in reimagining the galleries for Modern and contemporary art.The metaphor of weaving has informed Frida Escobedo’s design for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s long-awaited new wing for Modern and contemporary art, which was unveiled on Tuesday.It is present in the architectural screen of limestone lattice that wraps the new wing’s exterior on the museum’s southwest corner, creating a diaphanous surface that will change as the sun moves through it during the day. It is present in the placement of windows, offering glimpses of the city and the park. And it is present in the way that the new wing will connect to the adjacent galleries, emphasizing the connectivity between different regions, disciplines and civilizations.“How can we start understanding the rhythm and the cadence that the museum has?” Escobedo said in a recent joint interview with Max Hollein, the museum’s director, in his Met office.“The challenge was to weave these connections with the existing museum and adjacent wings and also to make connections with the park in a very subtle way,” she continued. The current campus “is very complex — it looks like a medieval town with plazas and towns and squares and little alleys, where you can get lost, which could be fascinating, but also very disorienting.”The architect Frida Escobedo and Max Hollein, director of the Met, looking over a model of the new Tang Wing for Modern and contemporary art that Escobedo is designing.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesAt a time when museums all over the world are rethinking how they present art for a modern audience, Escobedo’s design marks a significant step forward for the long-delayed Met project. It also represents a do-over; a previous design by the architect David Chipperfield, who was selected for the job in 2015, was jettisoned after ballooning in cost to as much as $800 million.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      An N.Y.P.D. Manhunt Caught a Subway Shooter. This Time, It’s Different.

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      Capturing a suspect who slips away from a crime scene requires solid police work, help from the public and a little luck, experts say. So far, it’s not working.A shocking early morning act of violence, a frantic New York Police Department search for a suspect and a gunman seemingly in the wind: The year was 2022, and the man the police had fanned out to find was Frank R. James, who had set off smoke grenades inside a crowded subway car in Brooklyn and opened fire.Now, more than two years later, another manhunt has gripped the city. But unlike Mr. James, who was apprehended the day after his rampage, the man who assassinated the chief executive of a health insurance company just before dawn on Wednesday in Midtown Manhattan has not been caught or even identified after more than four days.The two most recent fugitive searches in New York City have involved gunmen who made seemingly improbable escapes in a city teeming with surveillance cameras and people. But despite some similarities between the cases and the investigative tactics being used to try to solve them, the search for the man who killed Brian Thompson, the chief executive of UnitedHealthcare, has proved far more challenging.The suspect’s ability to evade capture appears to be tied to his methodical planning, including wearing a mask and a hood during nearly all of his time in New York City and paying with cash everywhere, along with using a fake driver’s license.And unlike Mr. James, who did essentially nothing to conceal himself after slipping away amid the chaotic aftermath of the shooting that wounded 10 people, the suspect in Mr. Thompson’s killing fled quickly into Central Park, away from the surveillance cameras that blanket much of Manhattan. He also appears to have left the state long before the police could possibly have begun to track his movements.“I don’t think I’ve seen this level of operational preplanning in any crime, never mind in a murder,” said Kenneth E. Corey, a former chief of department in the New York Police Department.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      For Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, Millions Line Sidewalks and Tune In

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      There will be some differences this year because, after three decades, a new company has taken over production of the annual event.As the 98th iteration of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade makes its way down Central Park West and to the heart of Herald Square, there will be all the old familiars: Snoopy overhead, Tom Turkey kicking things off and, of course, the Taylor Swift of Thanksgiving, Santa Claus, bringing up the rear.But there will be some differences this year because, after three decades, a new company has taken over production of the annual event.Changes introduced by the new company, Silent House, will include more cameras trained on the spectators lining the parade route, according to a spokeswoman.There will also be cameras from the parade itself, circulating among the 700 clowns, 11 marching bands and the thousands of volunteer balloon handlers, who will keep icons like the new Minnie Mouse balloon from flying away.The spokeswoman for Silent House — which produced the halftime performance of this year’s Super Bowl — said its aim was to make the expected 30 million people watching on screens feel as if they’re standing and cheering alongside the 3.5 million or so people watching in person.Just before start time on Thursday morning, a group of star-shaped sugar cookies and human jingle bells stepped off a coach bus on Columbus Avenue and 77th Street, headed into position. Groups of people were gathered around the knees of a new Spider-Man balloon, and cheers were going up among the balloon handlers as they made ready to hit the parade route.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Storm Expected to Bring Snow to Northeast and Mid-Atlantic, Again

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      Two to four inches of snow were possible in New York City overnight Friday through early Saturday, forecasters said.A fast-moving storm system was expected to bring several inches of snow to parts of the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions for the second time this week, with two to four inches predicted for New York City overnight Friday into Saturday morning and up to 10 inches in portions of West Virginia and Maryland.Dominic Ramunni, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in New York, described the system that was expected to move through as a “quick hitter.”“It’ll be in and out before folks may even wake up tomorrow morning,” Mr. Ramunni said.The greatest snowfall totals were expected across parts of Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland and southern Pennsylvania, where a winter storm warning was issued for late Friday through Saturday morning, according to the National Weather Service.In parts of Maryland and West Virginia, up to 10 inches of snow were possible, with snowfall rates of up to two inches per hour at times, the Weather Service said.Austin Mansfield, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service office in Sterling, Va., said the snow could make travel difficult at times and reduce visibility.“Anytime you have a significant accumulation like that, you certainly start to see road impacts across those areas,” he said.Philadelphia could record four to six inches of snow, and Washington could see snowfall totals ranging from two to five inches, forecasters said.In New York City, where snow from a storm on Tuesday was still melting on Friday afternoon in parts of the area, there could be snowfall totals from two to four inches, Mr. Ramunni said.The storm system is expected to bring snow to some Northeast cities for the second time this week.A storm that moved through the region on Tuesday dropped 3.2 inches in Central Park and more than eight inches of snow in parts of Maryland, according to the Weather Service.Ahead of the expected weekend snowfall, the New York City Emergency Management Department issued a citywide travel advisory, warning that slippery roadways and reduced visibility were possible late Friday through early Saturday.Temperatures overnight Friday into Saturday were expected to be lower than during Tuesday’s storm, indicating that New York City could get a more powdery snow.“We’re not expecting that really heavy wet snow that we saw with this last event,” Mr. Ramunni said. “You’re not shoveling bricks of cement, so to speak, tomorrow morning.”Snow has been something of a rarity in New York City over the past couple of years. After 701 days without meaningful accumulation, a total of 1.7 inches fell in Central Park on Jan. 15 and Jan. 16.If more than 3.2 inches are recorded in Central Park on Saturday, it would be the city’s highest snowfall in two years, Mr. Ramunni said.“As a snow lover,” he said, “my tail’s wagging.” More

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      Matt Damon Joins Fight Over Upper West Side Church

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      The actor will appear in performances meant to benefit a group that wants to save West Park Presbyterian Church on the Upper West Side from demolition.Good morning. It’s Wednesday. Today we’ll look at how a campaign to save a church from demolition — despite church leaders wanting the building torn down — lined up the actor Matt Damon for a fund-raiser.Julia Nikhinson/Associated PressHow do you get a star like Matt Damon to appear in a benefit performance of a play in a church on the Upper West Side?“You ask him,” said Kenneth Lonergan, who wrote the play in question, “This Is Our Youth.”Damon will appear in a performance of “This Is Our Youth” on Nov. 16. The show is a fund-raiser for the Center at West Park, which leases the West Park Presbyterian Church, on West 86th Street at Amsterdam Avenue. Tickets start at $500. The top price for a second performance, on Nov. 17, will be $250, and there will be no fixed admission for some seats; those who attend can pay what they wish.Damon is the latest celebrity to support the center and its campaign, against the congregation’s wishes, to prevent the demolition of the Romanesque Revival-style church. The actors Mark Ruffalo and Wendell Pierce; the comedian Amy Schumer; and the rapper and actor Common have also gotten involved in the cause.Together, they are lending their boldface names to an effort to raise money for the center, including to make repairs to the building that are necessary so that the scaffolding and sidewalk shed that have long covered the property can be removed.Debby Hirshman, the center’s executive director, said the goal was to bring in more than $300,000 from the “This Is Our Youth” performances. That would be in addition to a new capital campaign meant to raise $2 million for repairs to the building — a sum that opponents of demolition say would cover the cost of work outlined in a recent report by an engineering consultant for the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission.A spokeswoman for the church challenged that analysis, calling it “a Band-Aid solution” that would not pay for interior work that is needed to satisfy fire safety rules and accessibility regulations, just as a lawyer for the center disputed a financial analysis done for the landmarks commission.That document said the building, in the hands of an owner other than the congregation, could not earn a reasonable return. Hirshman said she had met with church officials last summer and had offered to make the church “financially whole” if it withdrew a hardship application it filed with the landmarks commission last year.The application was a first step toward demolishing the building as part of a real estate deal that would give the congregation space in what would be a new apartment building on the site. The church — which was designated a city landmark, over the congregation’s objections, in 2010 — stands to receive $30 million from a developer it signed a binding contract with in 2022.Hirshman said church leaders had rejected her proposal.The center had offered earlier to buy the building; a spokesman for the church said that “none of the offers have been feasible or realistic, given the cost of repairs.” The spokeswoman also questioned the center’s “ongoing inability to raise sufficient funds” to pay for repairs.The landmarks commission has not scheduled a vote on the church’s application.As for Damon’s appearances in “This Is Our Youth” next week, Lonergan turned to him because Josh Hamilton, who had appeared in the original Off Broadway production, was unavailable. The rest of the cast was already set — Ruffalo, reprising his breakout role from 1996, and Missy Yager, along with the director Mark Brokaw. Ruffalo became involved with the center last year and even buttonholed Mayor Eric Adams at the Tribeca Film Festival to argue for saving the building.It helped that Damon and Lonergan knew each other, and that Damon knew the play: He appeared in a London production of it for two months in 2002.“I explained the situation to him and immediately he said, ‘I’m in,’ which is what I thought he would say if he was available,” Lonergan said, “and as a matter of fact, he had an apartment one block away from the church for a year or two, maybe. This is going back a ways.” He said Damon wanted to “keep what’s special about the neighborhood special.”WeatherEnjoy a mostly sunny sky today with high temperatures around the low 50s. In the evening, prepare for a chance of rain and temps near the high 40s.ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKINGIn effect until Friday (Veterans Day).The latest New York newsFlaco perching inside an East Village sculpture garden on Monday. His life on the loose could be entering a dangerous new phase.Jacqueline EmeryLocal newsFeathered fugitive: Flaco the Eurasian eagle-owl, whose escape from the Central Park Zoo captured the public’s attention, turned up in Manhattan’s East Village, about five miles from the wooded park area he had settled into since flying free nine months ago.Code of conduct: New Yorkers are reacquainting themselves with the unofficial subway rules — no eye contact; no stinky food — as the city rebounds from the Covid-19 pandemic.Sunny-day flooding: As high tide floods increase in some parts of the city, residents are asking themselves: When does a place become unlivable?ICYMI: Trump’s testimonyTakeaways: Former President Donald J. Trump took the witness stand in a Manhattan courtroom on Monday as he tried to preserve the business empire that made him famous. Here’s what we learned.Understanding Trump’s defense: Christopher M. Kise and Alina Habba, the two lawyers who joined the former president at the defense table, represent different aspects of what their client seeks in a defender.In South Brooklyn, a Democrat defeats an ex-DemocratAnna Watts for The New York TimesDemocrats held onto a City Council seat in Brooklyn that had shown signs of drifting away. Justin Brannan, a Democrat who is the Council’s powerful finance chairman, defeated his Republican opponent, Ari Kagan, according to The Associated Press.Both are sitting Council members who found themselves facing off in the same district because of redistricting. Kagan, a former radio and television host from Belarus who was elected as a Democrat in 2021, switched parties last year.On Tuesday, Brannan called his victory a triumph over “toxic tribalism” and promised to serve all constituents, regardless of their political affiliations.In another Brooklyn district, created to amplify the voices of Asian voters, the Democrat, Susan Zhuang, defeated Ying Tan, the Republican. Both candidates built their campaigns around the issues of crime, education and the quality of New York City life.Elsewhere in the city, many Democrats ran unopposed, including Yusef Salaam, one of the so-called Central Park Five defendants, Black and Latino men who were exonerated in 2002 in the rape and assault of a female jogger in Central Park 13 years earlier. He won a contested primary in Harlem this past summer.As Salaam prepared to give his victory speech on Tuesday, my colleague Jeffery C. Mays noted, it was not lost on him that former President Trump was facing multiple criminal trials. Trump had called for the reinstatement of the death penalty after Salaam’s arrest.“Karma is real, and we have to remember that,” Salaam said.METROPOLITAN diaryJob at Macy’sDear Diary:One thing I always wanted to do was work at Macy’s in New York City. I got the opportunity when things slowed down at my actual job and management asked for volunteers to take unpaid time off.I took a month, and my husband and I went to New York City. We found a short-term apartment and I applied for a job at Macy’s during the Christmas season. I did not say I only planned to work there a month.I was in my 50s at the time and I started working with a group of men and women who were much younger.I spent my first day learning how to operate the cash register and where everything in the store was. It was so exciting.When it was time for lunch, some of the younger women asked me to go to lunch with them at McDonald’s. Wow. Of course I went. They mostly spoke Spanish. I didn’t understand them, but I didn’t care.I couldn’t have been any more excited when the day was over and I clocked out and headed to the door. Outside, the young women yelled out to me: Come on, Alice. It’s this way to the subway.They wanted me to come with them, but I just said no, thank you. I lived right across the street.— Alice RedmondIllustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.Kellina Moore and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com.Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. More