Public Art Works Public Art Fund

In our season one finale, we question and explore the ways in which artists wield their work as an activist tool by revisiting Ai Weiwei’s 2017 citywide blockbuster exhibition, “Good Fences Make Good Neighbors”. Weiwei joins Public Art Fund Director & Chief Curator Nicholas Baume for a conversation about the project and his own history here in New York City. We’ll also hear from Bitta Mostofi, the Commissioner for the New York City Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs about the intersectio...

Public Art Fund has long explored ways to insert public art into ubiquitous New York City formats, from manhole covers—as we discussed—to bus shelters to our big, public, ad-covered screens. Public Art Fund first utilized screens as a medium for public art with “Messages to the Public,” which ran on the first electronic billboard in Times Square from 1982 to 1990. The 2017 exhibition “Commercial Break” paid homage to this early endeavor, inviting 23 artists to invade advertising on screens ci...

In the year 2000, Public Art Fund installed 19 functional manhole covers in Lower Manhattan, conceived and designed by the renowned conceptual artist Lawrence Weiner. We brought Lawrence and former Public Art Fund Director Tom Eccles back together to discuss the project and process, which included working in close collaboration with Con Edison. It was a significant project for both Lawrence and Tom in that it emphasized the quieter, more personal experiences that certain kinds of public art c...

Public art is not necessarily static, nor is it necessarily sculptural. Performance is a kind of public art, and one that brings with it a host of other concerns and associations regarding the body and the ways in which a public is engaged. For Public Art Fund artists Kate Gilmore and Xaviera Simmons, performance is inherent to much of the work they do. In this episode, they join filmmaker and activist Paola Mendoza for an intimate discussion about the ways in which they’ve used performance t...

What do public art and street food have in common? More than you’d think… Join famed restaurateur Danny Meyer and Public Art Fund president Susan K. Freedman as they unpack the little-known, public-art-fueled story behind the global street food phenomenon: Shake Shack, which was born out of a 2001 collaboration with the artist Navin Rawanchaikul for a Public Art Fund group exhibition in Madison Square Park. Artist Erwin Wurm joins the conversation, calling in from Vienna to discuss the many w...

To kick off season one, we break down the past, present, and future of a very particular kind of public art: the permanent monument. At the core of this episode is a conversation between Public Art Fund artist and Board Member Hank Willis Thomas and Ford Foundation President Darren Walker, both of whom have thought deeply about the “monument” as history, ideology, and form as it relates to both their personal and professional lives. We’ll also hear about some of the activists and civic organi...