Just before the US Bicentennial in 1976, a city rose inside 88 Pine Street in downtown Manhattan – Creative Time’s first public art project. It was a crazy, hilarious, participatory comic papier-mâché labrynth that was dreamed up by a beloved Pop Art power couple – Red Grooms and Mimi Gross – that was a love letter to New York City.
Their cartoon Manhattan had everything – Times Square, the World Trade Center, the Staten Island Ferry, Wall Street, and even a subway car on springs you could enter and bounce around in amid life-sized papier-mâché and soft-sculpted passengers.
Within the 6,400-square-foot area, you could walk through big brightly painted, silly constructions to experience all the sights, sounds, and crazy characters everyone observes and bumps into on New York City streets. It was sensational (drawing 50,000 visitors) and people came back over and over to catch things they didn’t notice the first time.
The Brooklyn Museum has pulled parts of this beloved art installation out of storage for the first time in 30 years for its exhibition, Red Grooms, Mimi Gross, and The Ruckus Construction Co.: Excerpts from ‘Ruckus Manhattan’, on view through June 5, 2026. Take a look in our Flickr album.
The major part of the first-floor installation depicts the blue waters of New York Harbor (an undulating, draped blue plastic sheet) and a big, cartoon-like Staten Island Ferry – Dame of the Narrows – pulling into its berth at the terminal. The yellow ferry boat is packed with picture-taking tourists, commuters, vehicles, and (as usual) a few passengers and a motorcyclist poised at the edge of the lower deck, waiting for the bump against the landing and the hinged gate release before scooting ashore.
A seagull sits atop the vertical wooden pillars that line the terminal approach. It’s the same as you’ve witnessed a thousand times in real life. Funny how the harbor smells, humidity, and seagull sounds pop into your head, making you feel as if you’re really there.
Like the rest of the larger Ruckus Manhattan, this harbor installation was created from Red’s sketches of the ferry people, architecture, and technology by a crew of around 40 other members of his team – the Ruckus Construction Company. It was a joyous mix of painters, sculptors, puppet makers, performance artists, and kids, all on view through the plate glass windows of 88 Pine Street in the Financial District, bringing the buildings and neighborhoods of Manhattan to life.
Surrounding it all are two long painted murals from 1992, featuring landmarks across the waters – the skyscrapers of Jersey City above Journal Square, the looming cranes of the container shipping port, and the Verazzano Narrows Bridge is shoved in there, too, right at the edge.
After Ruckus Manhattan closed downtown in 1975, the entire kit and kaboodle moved uptown to Marlborough Gallery on 57th Street in 1976. Nearly 100,000 people came to see it in Midtown, as did Jackie O. In 1977, Dame of the Narrows was presented to the Brooklyn Museum by the newly formed Citizens Committee for New York City, which began community initiatives to help the City rise up after its devastating fiscal crisis.
Brooklyn has a nice collection of ephemera that it’s put on display in an adjacent gallery that runs Red and Mimi’s Ruckus Manhattan documentary. Here’s a clip with Red and Mimi:
Visitors can take a minute and see photos of the full-scale installation, a brochure for a 1993 installation at Grand Central Terminal, and The Daily Ruckus newspaper handed out at the 88 Pine Street opening.
For visitors who want to see what Times Square was like before it was renovated into a more family-friendly environment, the museum has installed another Ruckus component (not as family friendly…be warned!). Around the corner (hidden from the ferry installation), you’re greeted by a seedy façade and live-sized leather-clad lurker. Welcome to the 42nd Street Porno Bookstore! Inside, you can peruse goofy magazine covers that spoof Times Square’s dicey past alongside a satirical peep show and another sketchy lurker.
Thanks to the Ruckus team for its creation, to Alex Katz for donating the Bookstore, and to Brooklyn Museum for this walk down Memory Lane and its preservation of one of New York’s best-loved art extravaganzas!
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