Derrick Adams

5. “Derrick Adams: Funtime Unicorns” at Rockefeller Center, New York

Derrick Adams looks to bring Black joy to the heart of Midtown Manhattan with his new Art Production Fund public installation Funtime Unicorns, featuring interactive black unicorn sculptures-cum-playground toys. The figure of the black unicorn first appeared in Adams’s “Floater” painting series, of portraits of Black people resting on pool floats that the artist later fabricated as actual inflatables. Now, kids will be able to play on a coiled spring playground rocker version of the colorful figure, for a project that pushes back against the narrative that Black art needs to foreground pain and suffering, rather than joy and play.

Location: Rockefeller Center, Channel Gardens, between Fifth Avenue and Rockefeller Plaza, New York
Price: Free
Time: On view daily at all times

—Sarah Cascone