Tag: 22975

Prince Mario-Max Schaumburg-Lippe: Chuck Connelly’s ‘Tribeca’s Midnight Parade’ Turns ONE Art Space Into a Theatrical Animal Kingdom

In the heart of Tribeca, where the streets still remember decades of artistic experimentation, ONE Art Space has given Chuck Connelly the showcase his work deserves. “Tribeca’s Midnight Parade — When Art Runs Wild” opened to a celebrity-packed private gathering before its public run, and the room glowed.

PR powerhouse Norah Lawlor curated an A-list guest list that included HSH Princess Tina Radziwill, among the East Coast’s most exclusive and elegant figures — and H.H. Dr. Prince Mario-Max Schaumburg-Lippe was there to take it in.

The painting that anchors it all

At the center stands “Animals in the Street” (1994), the defining statement of Connelly’s gift for turning observation into symbol. Painted during his years in a Franklin Street loft, it reimagines Tribeca’s residents as figures blurring human and animal: a judge striding forward as a lion in a trench coat, the artist himself watching quietly as a horse.

The choices are playful and incisive at once — personality and social role made visible through transformation. The canvas preserves a 1990s Tribeca that felt interconnected and alive with creative exchange, before rapid change rewrote the neighborhood.

Stewardship and setting

Co-curated by Adrienne Connelly and MaryAnn Giella McCulloh, the show reflects careful stewardship of an artist whose paintings hang in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Brooklyn Museum. McCulloh — daughter of Joe Giella, the comic artist known for collaborations with Stan Lee — directs the gallery with Mei Fung, bringing a storyteller’s sensibility to the hang. Since opening in 2011, ONE Art Space has bridged established and emerging voices; past programs have drawn figures from Al Diaz and Shepard Fairey to Alec Baldwin and Spike Lee.

Connelly’s work endures because it meets the city head-on. His figures shift and evolve as you look, rewarding close attention with humor, intensity, and the texture of real urban life. In Tribeca, in the neighborhood that made him, the parade feels exactly where it belongs.

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Originally published on Times Square Chronicles.