Joseph Beuys – 7,000 Oaks

West 22nd Street (between 10^th and 11^th Avenue)
New York, NY, 10011

Did you ever wonder what those mysterious slabs of stone next to select trees are on the streets of West 22nd Street between 10th and 11th Avenues in Chelsea? You may not know, but they are the continuation of a project initiated by the late German artist Joseph Beuys, that were planted by the Dia Art Foundation in 1988 and again in 1996, a time when Dia had a space on that block. Joseph Beuys first started the project, titled 7,000 Oaks, in 1982 at Documenta 7, in Kassel, Germany. In Beuys’s own words, the tree “is an element of regeneration which in itself is a concept of time”…and that “the intention of such a tree-planting event is to point up the transformation of all of life, of society, and of the whole ecological system….” All I can say is that what the world needs now is Beuys, sweet Beuys.