An orange box on the streets of NYC is much more than that

I was walking through Tribeca in NYC the other day when I noticed this bright orange box on the sidewalk. It grabbed my attention, with the color serving as a stark contrast to all of the gray around it. I like this image as a photograph in its own artistic way, but then my imagination went to work. What if this orange box on the streets of NYC could be be so much more than just a discarded box?

My memory went back to visiting the Hispanic Society of America Museum in Washington Heights and being taken by the orange-ish walls of the JoaquĆ­n Sorolla “Vision of Spain” gallery (scroll down in this post to see it), and then got an idea: what if this orange box held an entry into a miniature exhibition space?

Let’s see how that might work. Most people would walk right by this orange box, so I think we’d need some sort of “carnival barker” standing outside to encourage people to come in and take a look.

carnival barker invites us in
“Come in and see the art,” the man yells to passers-by.

And of course, once we’re inside, the orange walls persist here as well, and provide a vast exhibition space for paintings by Mark McKinney. Who knew that all this could be in a discarded box on the streets of NYC?

McKinney Arts Gallery paintings
Virtual exhibition of Mark McKinney paintings in an orange gallery.

See more virtual exhibitions here, or see real world exhibitions here.