Lightscape, festive trail filled with illuminated artworks, to open at Brooklyn Botanic Garden

November 4, 2021 Brooklyn Eagle Staff

People passing through “Winter Cathedral” by Mandylights, soon to open to the public at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Photo courtesy of BBG

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Lightscape, an after-dark, illuminated spectacular that celebrates the beauty of winter with a festive trail winding through a 52-acre landscape, will open at Brooklyn Botanic Garden later this month.

Lightscape will take visitors on an immersive trail where they encounter monumental light installations, colorful light displays highlighting the Garden’s trees, landscapes, and architecture, site-specific music and sounds, and awe-inspiring views around every turn.

More than 18 works of light art will be on view, among them the Winter Cathedral tunnel, Fire Garden in Oak Circle, Sea of Light, an animated light installation covering the Cherry Esplanade, and a series of new light-based artworks by local artists.

This holiday season, explore Brooklyn Botanic Garden like never before at the after-dark, illuminated Lightscape. Discover international showstoppers like the Winter Cathedral tunnel, Fire Garden and Field of Light, as well as new site-specific light works by local artists, accompanied by a curated soundtrack along the way.

The installation uses more than 1 million lights along a 1-mile-long path utilizing 60,000 pea lights (small lights, usually in strings), 630 lighting fixtures, 600 strands of lights and 60 gobos (Go Between Optics). A gobo is an object placed inside or in front of a light source to control the shape of the emitted light and its shadow.

Visitors make their way through the colorful, after-dark illuminated spectacular known as Lightscape. Photo courtesy of BBG

There will be 14,000 glowing orbs of lights, a 98-foot-long Winter Cathedral tunnel, 42 sculptures, five poems by Jacquelyn Woodson projected in light, 20 treetop Wisp kinetic sculptures, 12 Pampas grass sculptures and more.

“Sea of Light by Ithaca,” an award-winning company of light artists, sound designers, composers, editors, and experimenters based in the UK, is an animated light installation that will cover Cherry Esplanade with breathtaking views from the Robert W. Wilson Overlook.

“Winter Cathedral” by Mandylights, a multidisciplinary production and lighting design house based in the UK and Australia, is a nearly 100-foot tunnel adorned with tens of thousands of individual LED lights. Guests will enter the installation—with a shape based on a traditional Gothic arch—at one end and walk through to the smaller tapered exit on the other side. This immersive, welcoming tunnel of warm light is equally spectacular when viewed from the inside or out.

Other attractions will include the Fire Garden, produced by Ashley Bertling, which uses custom-made structures to fill the garden with real fire (from candles) accompanied by seasonal music; and Laser Pond, designed by Fog-Man, in which lasers beam across the water in the Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden in time to music, taking the surface reflection with them and creating shapes that rise into the sky.

Lightscape at Brooklyn Botanic Garden runs on select dates from Nov. 19, 2021 through Jan. 9, 2022. Learn more at bbg.org/lightscape.