Most public monuments in this city ask you to look up at a bronze man on a pedestal. “Slavery Trails” asks you to look at your phone while standing on the exact spot where the history happened. Artist Marcus Brown, who is from New Orleans and is descended from enslaved African ancestors, built four free Augmented Reality memorials at New York sites tied to slavery — two in City Hall Park, one in Brooklyn, one in Queens — under the city’s Arts in the Park initiative.

  • What it is: four AR installations that layer sculpture, sound and historical research onto specific coordinates. There is no ticket, no gallery, no closing time to beat.
  • The Manhattan two: “The Slave Market: Wall Street” and “New York Slave Conspiracy of 1741” — both in City Hall Park, Lower Manhattan (Broadway and Chambers Street).
  • The Brooklyn one: “American Gold III” at Bush Terminal Park, Brooklyn 11232.
  • The Queens one: “American Gold IV” at Astoria Park, 19th Street and Ditmars Boulevard.
  • What you actually see: the AR layers bring out the enslaved Africans and Native Americans bought and sold at the 1711 New York slave market; the 1741 conspiracy trials that ended in the execution and exile of primarily Black and enslaved New Yorkers; and, in Brooklyn and Queens, golden figures of enslaved people aboard Middle Passage slave ships.
  • Cost: free. No registration, no app purchase — the pieces load through your phone.
  • Start here: arslaverytrails.com has per-exhibit pages, addresses and directions, plus AR instructions. If you want the two City Hall Park works, they are minutes apart on foot.
  • Timing check: Time Out listed the New York run as open through July 2026, and the artist’s own locations page (updated for 2026) still lists all three park sites with directions and AR links — so check that page before you make a trip out to Bush Terminal or Astoria.
  • Bonus: the same project has pieces in New Orleans, Washington DC, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and Seoul, with a national map on the site.

The reason this is worth an afternoon rather than a scroll is what it puts back on the map. New York’s slave market operated on Wall Street; the 1741 trials used arson panic to send mostly Black New Yorkers to the gallows or into exile. Brown’s framing is explicit — the memorial centers the enslaved and their resistance, not the institutions that trafficked them, and each piece carries its own research and music rather than a single explanatory plaque.

Practically: treat the Manhattan pair as a lunch-hour walk through City Hall Park, and the Brooklyn and Queens pieces as add-ons to a waterfront walk. If you are already riding the East River ferries or walking Astoria Park’s shoreline, the Queens piece costs you nothing but looking down at your phone.