Down to Earth!
Early Childhood Art to be Exhibited in Stuyvesant Square Park:
New York City preschoolers and their teachers present Down to Earth: Preschoolers & Their Beloved Local Park, a site-specific public art exhibition intended to move New Yorkers of all ages to reimagine the politics of early childhood education and care in the Big Apple
[New York, NY. Monday, June 22, 2026] New York City preschoolers’ artworks and their teachers’ photographic documentation of their learning inspired by urban ecological experiences—Down to Earth: Preschoolers & Their Beloved Local Park—will be publicly and site-specifically exhibited in Manhattan’s Stuyvesant Square Park via a collaboration between the Collaborative for Early Childhood Representation (CECR), Beginnings Nursery School, NYC Parks’ Art in the Parks program and Stuyvesant Park Neighborhood Association (SPNA) and with generous support from the Center for the Study of Childhood Art between June 22nd, 2026 and August 22nd, 2026. The exhibition’s opening will take place on Monday, June 22nd at 4 pm – 6 pm at the entrance to Stuyvesant Square Park located at East 16th Street and Rutherford Place in Manhattan.
The Collaborative for Early Childhood Representation (CECR) is a volunteer group of early childhood teachers and caregivers collaborating on publicly presenting their educational and care-based creative work with and for the youngest of New York City’s children and their families. CECR’s director and the curator of Down to Earth: Preschoolers & Their Beloved Local Park Andrew Hauner is an early childhood teacher and arts-based educational researcher interested in whose learning gets framed as creative and why; he has worked with children and their families across educational contexts in New York City, including Beginnings Nursery School, the Brooklyn Public Library, Brooklyn Children’s Museum, Blue School, Imani House and P.S. 10K; his arts-based and participatory research into creativity and education has been published and exhibited internationally (www.andrewhauner.com).