Duke Riley!

On August 13, New York artist Duke Riley, who grew up in Boston and studied at RISD, staged the glorious “Those About to Die Salute You” in the reflecting pool at Flushing Meadows, just outside the Queens Museum of Art. The New York museum initiated the shenanigans by inviting Riley for an artist residency. His past works have included constructing a replica of a Revolutionary War era submarine and getting arrested by New York police when he drifted with the thing rather near the Queen Mary 2 (a model of which notably goes up in flames at the end of this performance).

This time, the museum explains, Riley was thinking of “ancient Roman coliseums that were flooded to stage violent naval battles or Naumachia for the delight of spectators in the Empire’s effort to distract the masses from societal collapse by indulging them with free bread and extravagant spectacle.” So he spent months constructing boats for a naval battle between representatives of the Queens Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, Bronx Museum of the Arts, and El Museo del Barrio. All were welcome. “Dress code: Toga.”

More video here. And here.