Hill Arches

I have a charming story to relate!  Before last fall I hadn't been to the New York Botanical Garden in years.  On Sunday I went for the third time in six months.  The garden is having two exhibits I wanted to see:  Darwin's Garden and Moore in America.  The latter is the largest collection of Henry Moore's works ever exhibited in North America.  Both exhibits are excellent and well-worth seeing.  If that's not enough excitement there's a giant turtle in the Bronx River.

On to the charming story!  There were two boys, about four years old each, and a guy I took for their father when I approached Hill Arches, the sculpture above.  Then I noticed the guy wasn't paying attention to the kids and subsequently went away.  I waited for the kids to return to their nowhere nearby parents so I could take a clean photo of the sculpture.  A different family walked up.  Their son, who was about the same age as the original kids, tentatively approached the sculpture.  The original kids stopped playing, threw back their shoulders, balled up their tiny fists and got in the face of the new guy.  One kid started yelling "F*** you a$$!  F*** you a$$!  F*** you a$$!" 

Charming, right? 

The new kid ran bawling back to his mother.  Mom, and everyone else within earshot, was astonished.  A woman walked over from the row of tulip trees to the left.  The mother of the offended boy said "Your son said 'F*** you a$$' to my child."  The arriving woman replied "That's not my son," then grabbed him and his companion and walked away.  Everyone but me took their leave of the Henry Moore sculpture and I got my picture.

Comments

[Melissa]

BIZARRE!

[Ann Z]

so, did you ever figure out who the kids belonged to?

[Joe]

The woman that took him away had an accent that was consistent with the flag on his shirt. I'm guessing she was his aunt or mother.

[Jessica]

Gorgeous light and shadow, there!
How long did the You a$$ f***ing go on for? Did this start out as a very different composition?

[Joe]

That's a very good question. If you look through my Flickr photos you'll notice that almost every photo is missing people. So, when I saw the kids playing on this sculpture, which was the last sculpture I was going to see, I thought the kids interacting with the art would make a nice counterpoint. I took a couple of pictures, including one as the confrontation, which only took 20-30 seconds, took place. Telling the story while using one of those photos seemed exploitive of the kids, so I opted for the sculpture alone.