The Public Art Fund's "Between Tides" installation opened June 27 at Beach 67 in Rockaway Beach, Queens — six sculptor-designed ping-pong tables planted in the sand, free and open to anyone who shows up.

Six ping-pong tables landed in the sand at Beach 67 in Rockaway Beach, Queens on June 27 — but not the folding kind from a rec center basement. The Public Art Fund opened "Between Tides" there that day, an installation of sculptor-designed playing surfaces by artists from New York and around the world, each one a functional table and a piece of art.

Among the six, Moko Fukuyama's piece — titled "Old School" — may require the most composure from a serious opponent: a purple sea monster erupts from the sand, grabs a life-size recovered boat parked beside the table, and sends its tentacles poking through the playing surface itself. Competitors rally over the creature's back.

Gabriela López Dena, the Public Art Fund's Associate Curator of Public Practice, conceived the project around the game's accessibility. "I really love ping-pong, because it has a very low barrier of entry and almost everyone can be a part of it, regardless of their age or gender or nationality or class," López Dena told Hell Gate. "It's just something that's very accessible." A closing date for the installation was not listed on the fund's website, and the full roster of participating artists was not retrievable from public sources at time of publication.

The address matters as much as the art. Beach 67th Street sits in Queens Council District 32, a peninsula the city's cultural institutions routinely reach last. PAF's decision to anchor a summer exhibition here — free, on a public beach, with no admission and no RSVP — is the most legible thing about it.

"Between Tides" is at Rockaway Beach, Beach 67th Street, Queens. Free and open to the public.