Twenty-six artists from across the country are turning a Williamsburg gallery into a shrine to New York City's most overlooked bird this Saturday. “PIGEONS!,” a one-day exhibition running from 4 to 9 p.m. at Cloud City, 85 N. 1st St., brings together photography, painting, collage and sculpture that all take feral pigeons as their muse, alongside a live pigeon feeding scheduled for 5:45 p.m. and a draw-your-own-pigeon station for anyone who wants to try their hand at avian portraiture.
The show grew out of a nationwide open call from Brooklyn creative group Team Nicki, which accepted pigeon-inspired submissions from artists across all 48 contiguous states, according to Cloud City. Team Nicki has been producing community art and culture events in Brooklyn since 2015. As the Brooklyn Eagle reports, the 26 participating artists explore the many aspects of New York pigeons, and the exhibition will also include photo opportunities for visitors.
Prices for the artwork on display range from $25 to $1,000, with pieces available for purchase at the gallery itself or through an online store at teamnicki.com, per Cloud City's event listing. The gallery has operated as an independent performance, art and comedy venue since early 2013, when it took over the space formerly occupied by the DIY venue Dead Herring — part of a Williamsburg underground arts scene that has weathered years of gentrification pressure.
A Brooklyn Heights Artist's Feathered Regulars
Among the featured contributors is David Fobair, a Brooklyn Heights-based artist who will exhibit two recurring pigeon characters he calls Harry and Harrietta. Fobair based the pair on real feral pigeons that regularly visit his neighborhood balcony, and he paints them using mixed media including acrylic, oil stick and ink, according to posts on his Facebook page.
“I like that pigeons are ordinary, overlooked and completely part of New York. Harry and Harrietta let me give them a little stage of their own,” Fobair said, per the Brooklyn Eagle's report on the show.
New York's Million-Strong Feral Flock
The exhibition taps into a genuinely massive local population: wildlife research estimates New York City is home to roughly 1 million feral rock pigeons, descendants of domesticated rock doves brought over from Europe centuries ago, making them one of the city's most numerous wild residents. That scale keeps the Wild Bird Fund, the city's only dedicated wildlife rehabilitation hospital, busy year-round — feral pigeons consistently make up more than half of the roughly 7,000 avian patients the Upper West Side facility treats annually, according to Wikipedia.
Pigeons occupy a complicated legal space in the city, too. Feeding any wildlife, pigeons included, is explicitly banned inside municipal parks under NYC Parks & Recreation Department rules, though informal street feeding remains widespread regardless. Separately, state Environmental Conservation Law gives the city's Department of Health authority to trap pigeons or issue trapping permits if officials declare them a public nuisance or health menace, with the law requiring any removal to be done humanely and without endangering other wildlife.
Following a Brooklyn Tradition of Pigeon Art
Brooklyn's fascination with pigeons long predates this Saturday's show. The borough has a deep history of rooftop pigeon keeping, which artist Duke Riley memorialized in 2016 with “Fly By Night,” a Creative Time installation that sent 2,000 LED-lit homing pigeons flying over the Brooklyn Navy Yard and drew more than 45,000 waitlisted viewers along the East River.
Pigeons have also proven useful to science well beyond the art world. A 2018 study of feral pigeons at the Wild Bird Fund found the birds act as urban bio-indicators, since they ingest city dust and ground grit that leaves traces in their blood chemistry — researchers used that data to reveal localized spikes in lead contamination in specific areas, including near Brooklyn's Gowanus Canal.
For Saturday's crowd, though, the focus stays firmly on the lighter side of pigeon life: art, a live feeding, and a station where anyone can sit down and draw their own bird. Doors are open from 4 to 9 p.m. at Cloud City in Williamsburg.
