Mel Chin, Wake + Unmoored

Climate change and New York City’s maritime history are the intertwined themes in this pair of public art projects. In Wake, a 21-foot-tall animatronic female sculpture (a replica of the figurehead the once graced the prow of the 19th-century clipper ship, USS Nightingale—which, during its lifetime, included guns and slaves as part of the manifest) presides over an installation of wooden ribs that evoke a shipwreck or the skeleton of a sea creature. Meanwhile, in a nearby pavilion, Unmoored invites visitors to don VR goggles and view Times Square as it would appear after rising sea levels transform it into a midtown version of Waterworld.