Fifth Avenue Blooms returned from May 1 through May 31, 2024, between 50th and 59th Streets in Manhattan. Van Cleef & Arpels and the Fifth Avenue Association commissioned French artist Alexandre Benjamin Navet to turn the avenue into an open-air floral sketchbook. TheNakedNYC documented the installations in video from Fifth Avenue and the Plaza Hotel.
TheNakedNYC Coverage
YouTube: Fifth Avenue Blooms Along the Avenue
Instagram: Fifth Avenue's Floral Route
Instagram: Blooms at the Plaza
What to Know
A Month on Fifth Avenue
The 2024 edition ran throughout May from 50th to 59th Streets, with additional work at the Plaza and Peninsula hotels. The outdoor presentation was free and placed art directly within the movement of Midtown rather than inside a ticketed gallery.
Navet's Unfolding Garden
Alexandre Benjamin Navet treated the avenue as a three-dimensional sketchbook. Ten large sculptures combined painted architectural forms with live potted flowers, arches, and benches. Violets, peonies, clematis, and delphiniums informed a palette drawn from early spring.
Sculpture That Changed After Dark
Selected structures used animation, sound, motion, and nighttime illumination. Those elements changed how the work met pedestrians over the course of a day, moving it beyond a fixed streetscape display.
A Third Annual Edition
The Fifth Avenue Association began the broader Blooms initiative in 2021 as a gift to a city recovering from the pandemic. Van Cleef & Arpels partnered on the project, and Navet returned after creating the maison's 2022 installations.
Culture Joined the Flowers
The daytime program at 550 Madison Avenue included contemporary dance, storybook readings, live painting, poetry, and public conversations. Stores, hotels, and restaurants along the route also took part with artist appearances and other limited programs.
The Artist Behind It
Navet works across oil pastel, pencil, Japanese watercolor, collage, and spatial design. Van Cleef & Arpels first collaborated with him on boutique exteriors in 2020. The maison's official Fifth Avenue Blooms archive preserves the 2024 installation map and project record.