Woodlands Art Collection at 1855 Broadway
Welcome to the Woodlands Art Collection on New York Tech’s New York City campus. The bright, airy first floor of our flagship building on the corner of Broadway and 61st Street serves as an affirmation of the university’s renewed dedication to ecology, to the acres of ancient forests on our sister campus in Long Island, and to providing our students with unequaled experiences.
Access to opportunity and a world-class education is the hallmark of New York Tech’s mission. We understand that education, to be truly successful, must be holistic. For our students to excel, they not only need access to our unparalleled education, but also to all that the world has to offer. New York Tech’s ongoing commitment to providing an outstanding student experience ensures that its students—the world’s future innovators, makers, doers, and healers—enjoy access to high-quality, immersive cultural experiences that spark their creativity.
We look forward to sharing this new space with our students, faculty, and staff, and to showcasing the supportive environment our campus provides for an unparalleled learning experience. The Woodlands Art Collection is one vital piece of the diverse mosaic of learning that takes place every day at New York Tech and acknowledges the delicate balance of nature while reinforcing the connection between our students in New York City and on Long Island.
Inaugural Exhibit: “Art, Health and Wellness: The Power of Creativity and Nature—Through the Eyes of Sculptor Emilie Brzezinski” — Opening Monday, November 8, 2021
New York Tech is debuting the Woodlands Art Collection with an inaugural exhibit featuring the sculpture of Emilie Brzezinski. Sharing themes from Brzezinski’s life, ”Art, Health and Wellness: The Power of Creativity and Nature” includes three original sculptures: Cherry Bench II, a formidable bench hewn from a single cherry trunk, and Girl and Boy, two pieces from Brzezinski’s Water Garden Collection.
Featuring images of the artist in action and many of her other works, the exhibit will also explore the critical connections between art and nature, healing, family, resilience, learning, and design.
Note: This exhibit is open during regular campus operating hours to New York Tech students, faculty, and staff. The community at large may view it by invitation only or during once-a-month open gallery hours on select Fridays. Information regarding the first Friday viewing will be posted here when available.
About the Artist
Emilie Brzezinski
Born in 1932 in Geneva, Switzerland, Emilie Benes Brzezinski immigrated to the United States and grew up in California. She graduated from Wellesley College with a degree in art history in 1953. She began her art career in the 1970s, working in a variety of media including resins, latex, and wood fiber. Her expressive themes always related to nature. Eventually, she shifted focus to creating monumental wood sculpture, using a chainsaw and axe to carve towering forms that breathed new life into felled trunks.
During the past two decades, Brzezinski has had several gallery and museum installations in the United States and overseas. Many of her works are in the Czech Republic, the country of her family’s origin. There, “Prague Titans” gazes upon the Vltava River. A more restrained installation, “Broken Blocks II” and “Broken Blocks III,” was recently installed in the National Gallery in Prague. In the United States, her bronze Arch in Flight stands just two blocks from the White House in front of the Federal Reserve building on New York Avenue. One of her most monumental works to date, a bronze cast of “Lament,” greets visitors in the entrance circle of The Kreeger Museum. Outside the nation’s capital, Brzezinski sculptures can be found in Chicago at The Society for the Arts, as well as in New Jersey at the respected Grounds for Sculpture park. A career-spanning monograph of her artwork, Emilie Brzezinski: The Lure of the Forest: Sculpture 1979 – 2013, was published in spring 2014 and is available in bookstores and art museums nationwide.
Brzezinski continues to work with her sculpture in Jupiter, Florida, where she now resides. She is the widow of Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzezinski, United States National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter.