Rockefeller Center

The History Behind New York City's Most Iconic Holiday Decorations

Visitors descend on New York City during the holidays to eat highly suspicious roasted chestnuts from food carts, take in the holiday storefronts along Fifth Avenue, and see some of the most iconic decorations in North America in and along Rockefeller Center.

Between Thanksgiving weekend and New Years Eve, you can view a slew of bigger-than-life-sized art exhibits simply by walking up Avenue of the Americas between 48th and 52nd Streets. The tradition started during the Depression and became solidified as an annual event in 1933 when the plaza at 30 Rock first opened. Since then, an array of decorations have been added to the plaza and now bleed out to the rest of the buildings in the Rockefeller Group, running along Sixth Ave. Some of the works out this year have been on display for decades, finding themselves the background scenery in movies and TV shows, while others are relatively new additions. … Read More

The Best of Christmas Tree Photography

In honor of this evening’s lighting of the Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center, we’ve pulled together a few favorite photographs of the various incarnations of coniferous trees, the emblem of the season.

In the mix: out in the desert, Mike Sinclair and Stephen Antonopoulos capture the glory of the beginning and the bitter end of the tree’s journey from farm lot to disposal. In Tim Barber’s photograph, a truck and tree make a great getaway, gliding off stealthily in the fog. A tiny tree is lost in a bright, white sterile room, as photographed by Joseph O. Holmes. And Daniel Cheek, Emily Shur, Trent Parke and Brent Clark make light of suburban holiday… Read More

Daily Dose Pick: Anish Kapoor

Celebrated for his gigantic, stainless steel Cloud Gate sculpture in Chicago’s Millennium Park, Anish Kapoor is changing the cultural environment with his public works.

The Indian-born, London-based artist represented Britain at the 1990 Venice Biennale and took home the 1991 Turner Prize with his monochromatic, pigment-covered, abstract forms. Since then, he’s carved mysterious cavities in stone, made massive wax installations, and fabricated shiny concave disks — like the enormous Sky Mirror in New York’s Rockefeller Center — that dynamically reflect their surroundings. … Read More