Dale Suttle, So Sugita, and Gina Nguyen’s “Gathering” is one of twelve sukkahs on view in Union Square Park on Sunday and Monday
Union Square Park
14th to 17th St. between Broadway & Park Ave.
Sunday, September 19, and Monday, September 21, dawn until dusk
Admission: free
www.sukkahcity.com
www.unionsquarenyc.org
With Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur over, Jews now turn their attention to Sukkot, the fall harvest festival that remembers the temporary dwellings their ancestors built during their forty-year journey through the desert on their way to the Holy Land. Today and tomorrow, twelve such structures will be set up in Union Square Park, a dozen artistic renderings chosen from more than six hundred entries. The winners, selected by a fourteen-person jury that included Ron Arad, Matias Corea, Paul Goldberger, Steven Heller, and Maira Kalman, are fanciful reimaginings of the sukkah, which means “booth,” from Ronald Rael and Virginia San Fratello’s “Sukkah of the Signs” and Matthias Karch’s “Repetition meets Difference / Stability meets Volatileness” to Volkan Alkanoglu’s “Star Cocoon” and Henry Grosman and Babak Bryan’s “Fractured Bubbble.” The twelve sukkahs are being auctioned off to benefit Housing Works, the nonprofit organization that battles AIDS and homelessness, making the sale of these temporary structures particularly relevant; the bidding start at $5,000 and ends on Monday at 5:00.