The oldest aquarium in the country, on the boardwalk since 1957, and its biggest room since the hurricane: seven hundred and eighty four thousand gallons behind one long window, a wreck on the sand, sand tigers circling, rays flying over the glass tunnel, and a school of silver that turns as one. The New Yorkers hang on the dark wall opposite the window, lit by the water.
The New York Aquarium opened in 1896 at Castle Garden in Battery Park and moved to the boardwalk at Coney Island on June 6, 1957; it is the oldest continually operating aquarium in the United States and is run by the Wildlife Conservation Society. Hurricane Sandy flooded it in October 2012, with staff on site saving about 80 percent of the animals. Ocean Wonders: Sharks!, a 784,000 gallon, 57,000 square foot exhibit, broke ground in January 2014 and opened on June 30, 2018, the first major exhibit to open after the storm. The aquarium keeps 266 species on 14 acres.
Source · New York Aquarium, Wikipedia ↗
The long acrylic window into Ocean Wonders: Sharks!, the walk through tunnel, the shipwreck and the reef, sand tiger sharks, cownose rays and a bait ball, light rays and caustics on the sand, bubbles from the aerators, and the dark hall with its benches facing the water. Mood: blue, and something circling. Everything is procedural geometry with painted surfaces; nothing is a scan or a photograph. The room is an interpretation, and it hangs the New Yorkers the census recorded at this place first.