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166master vision167public artSimon Houpt nEW yORK — From Monday’s Globe and Mail Published on Sunday, Jun. 29, 2008 8:53PM EDT Last updated on Monday, Mar. 30, 2009 4:00PM EDT new york’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg isn’t the touchy-feely sort. He’s a tightly wound efficiency expert, a gear head who became a billionaire 10 times over by selling a computer system that helped rich people become richer. Three years ago, when he hosted a news conference at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s colossal saffron-curtain installation in Central Park known as The Gates, he acknowledged the artistic worth of the project but preferred to focus on how much money it would bring the city. Which is why it was so delightful to hear him last week, during an overflowing news conference at the South Street Seaport to officially open The New York City Waterfalls, the city’s largest public-art project since The Gates, speaking about the transformative aspects of art and calling for greater art appreciation among the public. “I was an engineer at school and I think, looking back, the one place my parents failed me is they should have beaten me over the head and had me take more courses to appreciate the arts,” he said. “Maybe if I’d done that a little earlier I would have had more great experiences.” Waterfalls was dreamed up by the Danish-Icelandic conceptualist Olafur Eliasson. It consists of four man-made waterfalls placed around the eastern belly of New York Harbor, ranging in height from 30 to 40 meters: one on Pier 35 on the east side of Manhattan, one nestled under the Brooklyn Bridge like a ruffled skirt, one tucked between a couple of piers next to the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, and one standing sentry in front of old barracks on Governor ’s Island. More than two years in the making, Waterfalls will stay up until Oct. 13. At the news conference, Bloomberg noted that his personal taste in art tends to be limited to Old Masters and large sculptures such as the ones made by the abstract expressionist Mark di Suvero, who happens to be the husband of Kate Levin, the city’s Commissioner of Cultural Affairs. But since taking office in January of 2002, he’s been making up for lost time in his art education by hanging out with artists such as Eliasson and Doug Aitken, whose silent film sleepwalkers was projected on the exterior walls of MoMA last year. Bloomberg hasn’t yet donned a beret and started puffing away on clove cigarettes; but then again, he was the one who banned smoking in city restaurants. Eliasson has noted that water tends to be a two-dimensional presence in the city’s landscape, as a river surface; he wants to make water explicit, tangible, to give it volume. (He may also be trying to remind us that the water in the East River doesn’t always look toxic.) There is a dialogue in his project between the heavy backbone of construction scaffolding and the ethereal but relentless nature of the falls. And by using four sites, he has tied together a narrative about the city’s history that takes in its role as a port, as an early industrial hub, as a purveyor of international icons, and as a place of military conflict. The change in seasons will afford a richer appreciation of the work, which mutates with the elements: On one visit, the falls seemed to dance and swirl with the warm rain of a humid day; on another, they were lost in the overcast wash of the skyline. The volume of water is less than one might expect or want, and the opening weekend didn’t offer much varied weather, but I had one transcendent moment. olaFur eliasson new York 8.A. - Page 89