This week, I took a trip down to South Brooklyn for an exhibition called Park Space/Play Space, organized by one of my guests, painter Katherine Gressel.

The show is part of a series of exhibitions called Brooklyn Utopias, for which Gressel invites artists, activists, architects and urban theorists to imagine new visions of an ideal city — using Brooklyn as their template. Past exhibitions have touched on everything from gentrification and overdevelopment to urban agriculture. Park Space Play Space looks at the history, politics and planning surrounding Brooklyn’s public parks and recreation spaces.

Park Space Play space is on view at the Old Stone House , a reconstructed 17th century Dutch farmhouse in Washington Park that has seen it’s share of Brooklyn history. In 1776 the first battle of the American Revolution, the Battle of Brooklyn, engulfed the area where the house sits today. In the late 19th century Washington Park was home to the Brooklyn Baseball Club, which went on to become the famous Brroklyn Dodgers.

Today the Old Stone House functions as a museum, educational resource, and exhibition space, and its Executive Director Kim Maier joins me on this week’s show.

On a rainy morning last week I visited the Old Stone House  to talk with Katherine Gressel and Kim Maier about the Park Space/Play Space exhibition, the history of the Old Stone House, and the ways that contemporary artists are imagining the future of public space.

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