Swedish art at Hudson Yards

Tapestry by renowned Swedish textile artist Helena Hernmarck is among the commissioned works at the New York City development. 

  • Helena Hernmarck with Frida Lindberg of Alice Lund Textilier looking at the sample weaving in process. The tapestries are being made by Alice Lund Textilier in Sweden. The weavers are Ebba Bergström, an expert weaver who's woven 20 of the artist's earlier large tapestries, and Tova Vibrant. The Hudson Yards commission is the most extraordinary tapestry ever woven at Alice Lund and will have occupied the weavers for close to four years when finished. Photo Credit: Pär Olsson

  • Swedish tapestry artist Helena Hernmarck was commissioned to create a piece for 35 Hudson Yards, part of the redevelopment of the west side of Manhattan and quite possibly the largest residential development in the U.S.
    Titled "Flowers," the piece will occupy the lobby and vestibule of the building. A first installation will be in mid-March but the final hanging will have to wait until more of the building has been completed in the fall of 2019. The tapestry, which will appear to seamlessly cover the wall and ceiling near the elevators of the residential building—an area of over 200 square feet—will be changed every half year.

  • The artist enjoying a first view of the just arrived wall tapestry in her Connecticut studio. Photo: Mae Colburn

  • Her first commission for the Related Companies and developer Stephen Ross is hung at the Warner Center where Ross presently resides. He is moving to the Hudson Yards building and allegedly claimed to want to “wake up to one of Hernmarck’s tapestries" wherever he lives.
    Indeed, Stockholm born Helena Hernmarck stands without peer. Her work, selected for scores of fine public spaces, is seen each year by millions all over the world. Her specialties are large woven tapestries for display in banks and public buildings with pieces varying from nature themes, often several feet wide, to reproductions of documents with text as small as a pen stroke. Her commissioned tapestry joins art works by other internationally renowned artists such as Jonathan Borofsky, Frank Stella and Joel Shapiro.

  • Hernmarck left Sweden for America at the age of 22 after an apprenticeship at the weaving studio of Alice Lund and studies at Konstfack School of Design in Stockholm. She currently resides in Connecticut, and we met her in her studio as she was inspecting the wall section of her most recent work for the Hudson Yards development.

  • For more info on the artist, see www.hernmarck.com and on the installations, see Commissioned art installations at Hudson Yards