Times Square Alliance Works with Leading Designers
to Build a Monumental “Ice Heart” Sculpture in Duffy Square

Beginning on the morning of February 11, designers from Moorhead & Moorhead, leading a team of ice sculptors and engineers, will create a 10-foot tall Ice Heart built of masonry-scaled blocks of ice in Duffy Square at 46th Street and Broadway. By day, Ice Heart will provide a kaleidoscopic view of the Crossroads of the World, magnifying and distorting its colors and textures. By night, it will be a glowing beacon to celebrate the Valentine’s Day holiday. Moorhead & Moorhead’s Ice Heart won the invitational competition, juried by representatives from MoMA, The Queens Museum of Art, Performa, and NYC Parks, among others.   

“We are thrilled to be continuing the tradition, inaugurated last year, of bringing public art to Times Square during the Valentine’s Day holiday,” said Times Square Alliance President Tim Tompkins.  “This year’s selection, Ice Heart, will become an immediate, albeit transient, landmark for visitors, tourists and New Yorkers alike who can stop by during different times of day to experience this remarkable sculpture.”   

“The Ice Heart will constantly change as its crystalline form picks up the lights, colors and chaos of the Times Square – we look forward to the kaleidoscopic effect, and think visitors will enjoy it as well,” commented Granger Moorhead.  

In the fall of 2009, the Times Square Alliance invited four NYC design firms to develop proposals for a Valentine for Times Square.  The architects were asked to envision a celebratory 3-D structure with a strong visual presence during the day, that in the evening would be illuminated.  The work was also encouraged to accommodate public interaction including photography of visitors in front of the sculpture. 

The work of Robert Moorhead and Granger Moorhead, two brothers who run a New York-based architecture and industrial design practice, has been widely exhibited and published, both in the United States and abroad. They were included in the Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum’s 2006 National Design Triennial, and named Emerging Voices by the Architectural League of New York in 2008.

The sculpture will be constructed by Okamoto Studios, a NYC-based artist collective founded by the father-son team of Takeo and Shintaro Okamoto, which has produced one-of-a-kind sculptures in ice that have been installed in venues from the Rockefeller Center to the runways of Fashion Week at Bryant Park. The structural engineering firm is Robert Silman Associates, which has participated in arts related projects throughout New York City.  The lighting, a key element to bringing the sculpture alive in the evening, is by Tillett Lighting Design Inc., an award-winning firm specializing in the illumination of landscape and public space.

The Ice Heart was selected by the Art Review Committee of the Times Square Alliance.  The committee includes Barry Bergdoll, MoMA, Tom Finkelpearl, Queens Museum of Art, RoseLee Goldberg, Performa; Cora Cahan, The New 42nd Street, Marvin Davis, Davis Reality and Jennifer Lantzas, NYC Parks.

Visitors to Ice Heart can also take advantage of the neighborhood-wide “Free Love in Times Square” promotion.  The Times Square Alliance has teamed up with local restaurants, hotels, retailers and entertainment attractions to offer tourists and New Yorkers alike special deals around the holiday.  Extending through March 31, the offers allow visitors to take advantage of even more amenities and attractions in the area. 

The 2010 Ice Heart by Moorhead and Moorhead is supported by the Rockefeller Foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Altman Lighting Inc. and Levest Electric Corp Inc.