Chanel UFO to Descend Onto Central Park

If you’re strolling through Rumsey Playfield in Central Park between Oct. 20 and Nov. 9, and you stumble across a grounded UFO, don’t panic. It was sent by Chanel (not the Sci-fi Channel) as a nomadic exhibition of artistic interpretations on its classic 2.55 quilted-style handbag, named not for its price but for its debut month of February 1955. Coming off stops in Hong Kong and Tokyo, the 7,500-square-foot space donut will round up its voyage in London, Moscow and Paris.

The pieces inside the mobile museum come from origins as international as the trip’s itinerary. The Russian arts collective Blue Noses submitted a collection of boxes with a series of satirical handbag videos called “Fifty Years After Our Common Era or Handbags Revolt.” Sylvie Fleury of Switzerland created a mammoth model of a handbag lined with pink fur and containing a TV rolling clips of women firing at handbags. Other sculptures, photos, videos and installations come from France, India and elsewhere.

The Central Park Conservancy will receive a payoff “in the low seven figures” for hosting the slick behemoth, and the city will be paid a “use fee” of $400,000.

Eminent London architect Zaha Hadid told The New York Times she likes that the “Mobile Art” structure “lands, creates a buzz and disappears.” To infinity, and beyond!