July 15, 2020
Drawing on the right side of his brain, Governor Cuomo created a poster entitled, “New York Tough” that memorializes our state’s struggle to flatten the COVID-19 infection curve. Subtitled “111 Days of Hell” the work depicts a steep mountain whose slopes are marked ‘Pulling Down the Curve’ and ‘The Power of We.’ Across the bottom of the poster is a timeline centered on the date that hospitalizations peaked at 18,885: Day 43, April 12. The curve itself is a heavy, gold colored rope pulled by a group of characters representing both broad categories (e.g. ‘New Yorkers’; ‘Essential Workers’) and specific people (his daughters). Anyone that followed his daily press briefings regularly will recognize the design elements the artist included here and appreciate the range of emotions (‘Winds of Fear’; ‘Clouds of Confusion’) that we experienced in New York. One fine day when this awful pandemic is ancient history, Cuomo’s poster will remind viewers of what we went through together.
