Brooklyn Museum Has A Message For Crown Heights: YO/OY

CROWN HEIGHTS, BROOKLYN — YO. Or OY, depending on where you're coming from.

The OY/YO sculpture by Brooklyn artist Deborah Kass will be spend a year outside the Brooklyn Museum and is slated to be installed on Sept. 14, the artist announced.

The massive yellow YO (or OY) is part of a yearlong "Something to Say" exhibit in the museum's public spaces that will focus on text-based art and civic discourse, according to the Brooklyn Museum.

The sculpture first appeared in Brooklyn Bridge Park in 2015 then spent a brief stint last summer on the North Fifth Street Pier in Williamsburg.

Artists Brooklyn Hi-Art! Machine, Kameelah Janan Rasheed, and Hank Willis Thomas will also contribute to the series of installations that will be seen on the plaza green, steps, the promenade outside and the lobby within, the museum announced.

The eight-foot-tall OY/YO, inspired by Milton Glaser’s I Love NY logo and Robert Indiana’s LOVE, unites multiple cultures with two brief characters. From one perspective, it tells views, “YO” — "I" in Spanish and "Hey" in Brooklynese — from another, it's the Yiddish word best accompanied by an eye-roll.

"In Prospect Heights and neighboring Crown Heights, OY/YO takes on new meaning," museum officials wrote in a press release.

"It speaks to the longstanding, ever evolving, and complex social dynamics between Black, Latinx, and Jewish communities in the neighborhood."

Something to Say will be on view at the Brooklyn Museum at 200 Eastern Parkway from Sept. 14 through the summer of 2019.

Photo courtesy of Deborah Kass / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York