Etched Granite Pavement by Matt Mullican near the Unisphere in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park. September 2007

Matt Mullican
Etched Granite Pavement, 1995

Location: Core Area, Flushing Meadows Corona Park, Queens
Architect: Miceli Kulik
Design/Sponsor Agency: Department of Parks and Recreation

At the heart of Flushing Meadows Corona Park, adjacent to the Unisphere, Matt Mullican's black granite pavement etching rekindles the spirit of the 1940 and the 1965 World's Fairs. A 3,000 square foot granite tableau celebrates the fairs and the bio-geographical history of the site. The 464 individual blocks which compose the piece are etched with selective images that highlight the events, buildings, inventions, and technical achievements advanced by the fairs. The entire work creates a hieroglyphic documentation of New York City's fairs and world expositions.

About the Artist ...
Matt Mullican is an internationally renowned artist whose work derives from universally coded pictographs seen daily in public places, airports, restaurants, and other areas. Using those pictographs as departure points, he incorporates his own meaning by altering the existing shapes. His work has been exhibited in museums throughout the U.S. and Europe, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Dallas Museum, and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, and is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the collections at Worldwide Plaza in New York City and in the city of Munster, West Germany.

Text from: www.nyc.gov/html/dcla/html/panyc/mullican.shtml