••• White brick has started being applied to the building at W. Broadway and Reade where Serafina restaurant will be. Click on the photo to see it more clearly.

••• The Public Art Fund announced its 40th anniversary exhibits for 2017. Coming to City Hall Park in June: “Earth Potential,” by Katja Novitskova.

For her first major public art commission in the United States, emerging artist Katja Novitskova (b. 1984, Tallin, Estonia) expands her ongoing investigation of today’s image-laden culture. Advances in technology have enabled us to render images based on data, and translate them into composite photographs that could never be reproduced using a single lens or shot. In this monographic exhibition, Novitskova appropriates images of planets and celestial bodies created using this technique. These large, flat, cut aluminum sculptures feature digitally-printed imagery to which she adds a second layer of printed aluminum covered with alien-like, but terrestrial, animals and organisms. The flatness replicates the experience of viewing images online, while the form and subject of her sculptures—from science fiction and otherworldly encounters, to data sets, and advancements in image making—will encourage visitors to consider how our conception of the universe is shaped and mediated by digital imagery. Siting these works in Lower Manhattan, Novitskova recasts City Hall Park as an extraterrestrial environment, akin to those often featured in Hollywood movies and mass media sources.

••• Did we know that Express Shoe Repair on Church has closed? Did it close a long time ago?

••• New York Dolls has gotten rid of the big mural that used to be on the façade.

••• 111 Murray is really going to darken Murray in the late afternoon hours.

••• Something called “Enchanted Forest” was filming in the N. Moore/Varick area yesterday. Nothing online about it so it must be a fake title. UPDATE: James’s Googling was more productive; see the comments.

••• There’s a lot of rabid anger on Twitter—ya think?—about Robert De Niro’s feelings about Trump. Personally, however….