A giant, translucent Hello Kitty is collecting objects made by children for special art project (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza
East 47th St. bet. First & Second Aves.
Through Sunday, September 13, free
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time after time slideshow
Every four years, athletes, tourists, and sports fans from around the world descend on a city for the Summer Olympics. The 2020 Games are being held in Tokyo, where artist Sebastian Masuda’s “Time After Time Capsule” will be shown, a participatory project involving large-scale translucent animal sculptures that are traveling the globe (Miami first, with Amsterdam, Beijing, Berlin, London, Los Angeles, Paris, and Kyoto also on the itinerary). In each city, they are being filled up with objects made by children during special family workshops. For New York City, Masuda has installed a nine-foot-tall Hello Kitty in Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza, just up the street from Japan Society, which is currently hosting “Life of Cats: Selections from the Hiraki Ukiyo-e Collection.” (Masuda was at Japan Society in March to talk about the work.) “‘Time After Time Capsule New York’ is a project where people’s memories — that is to say, the concept of ‘kawaii’ [cute] — is sent to the future,” Masuda recently said on Kickstarter. “I truly hope that everyone will collaborate with me and we can build our dreams together.” Be sure to get up close and personal with Hello Kitty, which was created back in 1974 by Sanrio as a marketing character and became a huge part of kawaii culture, to check out the goodies that are piling up inside, entering through the back of her head. Masuda has his own “cute” kawaii concept shop as well, 6%DOKIDOKI, in Tokyo’s Harajuku district. For the 2020 Olympics, all the objects will be placed in a super-large capsule, bringing together the hopes and dreams of children everywhere.