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"Must-See Outdoor Art\nFrom city plazas to pastoral art parks, a survey of alfresco exhibitions and installations you don't want to miss this summer\nColor Jam by Jessica Stockholder\n\n Intersection of State and Adam streets, Chicago\n\nPerhaps redeeming itself for the Marilyn debacle (i.e., the much-maligned and recently dismantled 26-foot-tall sculpture of the buxom blond actress by J. Seward Johnson that had been prominently perched on Michigan Avenue), Chicago's latest foray into public art takes a decidedly different approach. Stockholder, known for using vibrant color in her work, has temporarily added bright swaths of red, green, and blue to the streets, sidewalks, and buildings clustered at a busy city intersection. The eye-catching transformation completely reshapes Chicagoans' experience of the everyday space, creating an effect, as Stockholder has described it, that's akin to \"walking through an animated film.\" On view through September; chicagoloopalliance.com\nDoing Nothing Garden by Song Dong\n\n Karlsaue Park in Kassel, Germany\n\nEvery five years, the art extravaganza known as Documenta takes over the otherwise unremarkable industrial city of Kassel. Since the 13th edition of the exhibition opened in early June, the international art set has been flocking there to check out the must-see, largely site-specific offerings. One of the most talked about works is Chinese artist Song Dong's Doing Nothing Garden, in the city's elegant Karlsaue Park. It's a 23-foot-high mini mountain range of garbage and rubble, topped with sod and dotted with neon Chinese characters that spell out \"Doing\" and \"Nothing.\" Like many of the artist's works, the piece deals with consumption and waste, a monument to the folly of failing to deal with underlying ecological issues. On view through September 16; d13.documenta.de\nWendy by HWKN\n\n MoMA PS1, Long Island City, New York\n\nFor the past 13 years, the Museum of Modern Art's youthful outer-borough sibling, PS1, has been commissioning architects (usually up-and-comers) to design a structure in its walled-in front court to enliven the space and serve as a centerpiece for the Summer Warm-Up concerts and performances held there each Saturday. The honor this year went to Matthias Hollwich and Marc Kushner, the duo behind the New York firm HWKN, who conceived a giant spiky blue mass they named Wendy. Encapsulated in a matrixlike metal cage\u2014like an otherworldly sea urchin in a lobster trap\u2014the structure is made from a titanium-treated nylon fabric that neutralizes nearby pollutants, effectively cleaning the surrounding air. And the spikes themselves are activated, emitting music and a light mist, for revelers looking to cool off. On view through September 8; momaps1.org\nJoana Vasconcelos Versailles\n\n Ch\u00E2teau de Versailles, France\n\nThe Paris-born, Lisbon-based sculptor Vasconcelos follows in the footsteps of Jeff Koons, Takashi Murakami, and Xavier Veilhan\u2014previous artists who were invited to install their work inside the iconic Ch\u00E2teau de Versailles. Vasconcelos has placed her ornate, often crocheted sculptures throughout the resplendent buildings. But it's in the gardens where her work takes on a truly monumental scale. One of the outdoor pieces, Blue Champagne, comprises two 30-foot-tall candlestick-like structures (one seen here) studded with thousands of LED-lit Champagne bottles and installed in shallow pools near the palace's terrace. It's a display of bubbly extravagance that seems to conjure the spirit of Versailles's most famous resident, Marie Antoinette. On view through September 30; vasconcelos-versailles.com\nThe Rainbow: Certain Principles of Light and Shapes Between Forms by Michael Jones McKean\n\n Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, Nebraska\n\nFew natural phenomena inspire the kind of joy and wonder prompted by the fleeting beauty of rainbows. Surely you saw the weepy, stoner-transcendental \"double rainbow\" video that became a YouTube sensation. Well, this summer artist Michael Jones McKean is hoping to produce a similar effect with his piece at the Bemis Center, which uses captured rainwater to produce a rainbow that arcs directly over the museum for 20 minutes, twice a day (specific times are posted on the museum's website). The rainwater is pumped to nozzles affixed to the roof. At showtime, certain nozzles activate, producing a wall of water from which the rainbow emerges\u2014each one a unique creation with variations based on the time of day and the position of the sun. On view through September 15; therainbow.org\nLevitated Mass by Michael Heizer\n\n The Los Angeles County Museum of Art\n\nFew works of art capture the public's attention en route to their installation, but a 340-ton granite boulder that Land Art pioneer Michael Heizer handpicked for an outdoor commission at LACMA made major waves earlier this year when it was being transported to the museum from a quarry in Riverside County. The 105-mile journey took 11 days, as the stone traveled exclusively at night, at speeds of just a few miles per hour, along a special route of side streets and bridges sturdy enough to support its weight. Heizer\u2014whose most famous work, City, is a collection of massive concrete and earthen structures on a vast site in the Nevada desert\u2014suspended the giant boulder over a 456-foot-long concrete trough on LACMA's Resnick North Lawn so that visitors can walk beside and beneath it. On view indefinitely; lacma.org\nCloud Cityby Tom\u00E1s Saraceno\n\n Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York\n\nArgentine artist Saraceno snagged this summer's coveted commission on the Met's roof garden, where expectations were raised following 2010's hugely popular Big Bamb\u00FA installation by Doug and Mike Starn. Combining ideas about visionary architecture and an interest in naturally occurring patterns, Saraceno created a navigable structure of interconnected, molecule-like multisided forms. The artist (who has a concurrent show at Manhattan's Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, through July 27) fabricated the piece with a metal framework and mirrored and transparent surfaces that enhance the irresistible fun-house aspect by reflecting and distorting views of the surrounding trees, buildings, and sky. On view through November 4; metmuseum.org\nColumnby Anthony McCall\n\n Birkenhead waterfront, Merseyside, U.K.\n\nOne of several public artworks commissioned on the occasion of the London 2012 Olympics, Anthony McCall's ambitious alchemical installation has been in the planning stages since 2009. After several setbacks, it recently got the official go-ahead from the local city council in Birkenhead, which is directly across the Mersey River from Liverpool. It's the largest-ever piece by the artist, whose work typically involves projecting light\u2014often in shaped beams\u2014through air particles to create the illusion of volume and form. (Some of his signature pieces are included in a stunning solo exhibition at Berlin's Hamburger Bahnhof this summer.) For Column, McCall will project a skinny beam of warm air upward through the seaside mist, creating a cyclonic waterspout as it extends high into the sky. As seen in the artist's rendering here, the column\u2014which will be visible throughout the region\u2014will twist and sway with the breezes. On view late August through next summer; artscouncil.org.uk\nBreathing Flowerby Choi Jeong Hwa\n\n The Civic Center Plaza, near the San Francisco Asian Art Museum\n\nChoi Jeong Hwa's Breathing Flower is on view in conjunction with \"Phantoms of Asia: Contemporary Awakens the Past,\" a group exhibition at the Asian Art Museum that examines ways in which contemporary Asian artists are using traditional themes and iconography. The Korean sculptor's kinetic sculpture riffs on the lotus blossom, a common motif in Buddhist art. With its inflated and motorized petals, the 24-foot-tall piece has an anthropomorphic feel to it, gently inhaling and exhaling as if equipped with giant lungs. On view through September 2; asianart.org\nHow I Roll by Paola Pivi\n\n Doris C. Freedman Plaza (60th Street and Fifth Avenue), New York\n\nThe Italian-born, Anchorage-based Pivi often toys with absurdity, upending viewers expectations by placing familiar objects in unnatural settings. How I Roll, a piece commissioned by the Public Art Fund, consists of a six-seat Piper Seneca held aloft by metal supports attached to the ends of its wings. A motor rotates the plane slowly throughout the day, nose first, making steady balletic flips, like a toy. Installed on a bustling corner of Central Park, the playful piece, with its tongue-in-cheek title, will no doubt delight passersby, and perhaps even inspire them to expand their notions of what constitutes art. On view through August 26; publicartfund.org\nLines in Four Directions in Flowers by Sol LeWitt\n\n The Philadelphia Museum of Art\n\nLeWitt's Lines in Four Directions is a long-term installation at the PMA that takes the artist's conceptual abstractions beyond the gallery walls and presents his work in a whole new medium. Created with more than 7,000 flowers and plants, the piece consists of four contiguous plots, each with a distinct pattern, on the long plaza in front of the museum's columned western fa\u00ECade. The late artist stipulated the basic arrangements of red, yellow, blue, and white flowers, which will take on an entirely different look in fall and winter. On view through summer 2014; philamuseum.org\nLight Shines Out of Me by Anya Gallaccio\n\n Jupiter Artland, Edinburgh, Scotland\n\nOne of several new commissions at the bucolic Edinburgh sculpture park, Gallaccio's Light Shines Out of Me is a dazzling otherworldly crater lined with amethyst crystals and volcanic glass. The Scottish artist often incorporates elements of nature into her sculptures and installations, and this piece\u2014a kind of imaginary excavation\u2014alludes to the rich and unexpected wonders that lie beneath the earth's surface. On view indefinitely. jupiterartland.org\nLast Light by William Lamson\n\n Storm King Art Center, Mountainville, New York\n\nLocated about 60 miles north of Manhattan, Storm King, the 500-acre Hudson Valley sculpture park, has long been a favorite destination of art-savvy day-tripping New Yorkers. Works from the permanent collection are always on view (April through November), but this summer's temporary exhibition, \"Light and Landscape,\" is particularly compelling. It features artists who use natural light as a key component in their work, including William Lamson, whose Last Light is submerged just below the surface of the center's south pond. Composed of a long reflective foil strip, the work is angled specifically to catch the glow of the setting sun, giving form and color to the sun's last rays and\u2014at least metaphorically\u2014allowing them to live on through the darkness. On view through November 11; stormking.org"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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