A Wheatfield Grew in Manhattan

Before the high-rises, condos, and financial towers of Battery Park City, the land behind the Twin Towers was a landfill. In 1982, artist Agnes Denes was commissioned by the Public Art Fund to do something extraordinary with it. Rather than install a sculpture, she planted wheat.

For Wheatfield — A Confrontation, Denes and a team of volunteers cleared four acres of debris from the site, right in the shadow of the gleaming World Trade Center towers, and planted amber waves of grain. After months of farming and irrigation, the field produced a harvest — thousands of pounds of wheat that were donated to food banks across the city.

The contrast was the whole point: raw agricultural labor unfolding on Manhattan’s most expensive real estate, steps from Wall Street. With land values what they are today, nothing like it will ever happen again. The Walter De Maria Earth Room on Wooster Street offers a quieter but lasting echo of that same spirit — art as stubborn physical presence in an unlikely place.

Location: Battery Park City, New York, NY