Public Art Dialogue

👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 • MAS applauds the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s () decision to include the Stonewall National Monument in its 2026 list of America’s 11 Most Endangered Places. As the first national park site dedicated to LGBTQ+ history, Stonewall commemorates the Stonewall Uprising on June 28, 1969, a watershed moment of q***r resistance and civil rights in New York City. We’re heartened to see it included on this list of our country’s great treasures.

In a moment when q***r civil liberties are at risk, our monuments can tell the story of resilience and the power of collective action.

📸: Whitney Browne, National Parks Conservation Association

➡️ Visit the link in ’s bio to take a look at the proposals and let us know what you think via the form by May 31, 2026.

NYC is getting ready to honor the legacy of jazz icon Billie Holiday with a permanent, public artwork in Queens - and we’re asking for New Yorkers’ input on the proposed designs!

Commissioned through our program, the monument will be situated at the Jamaica Performing Arts Center (), near the historic locations of venues where Holiday performed and the neighborhood she once called home.

Born Eleanora Fagan Gough, “Billie” Holiday is among the most celebrated and influential jazz vocalists of all time. Rising to fame in the 1930s, she would go on to transform American music, performing and recording iconic versions of now-classic songs and collaborating with leading musicians including Count Basie and Artie Shaw. She also broke racial barriers as one of the first Black women to perform with integrated white bands.

Now through the end of the month, members of the public are invited to explore the proposals, share their feedback, and help inform the final selection process and contribute to preserving Billie Holiday’s legacy in New York City.


Go to to see proposed designs:
1. William P. Gottlieb/Ira and Leonore S. Gershwin Fund Collection, Music Division, Library of Congress.
2. Artwork proposal: La Vaughn Belle, “Billie Holiday: Still, at the Crossing.”
3. Artwork proposal: Nikesha Breeze, “Lady Sings the Truth: A Monument to Billie Holiday.”
4. Artwork proposal: Nekisha Durrett, “Bending the Note.”
5. Artwork proposal: Tanda Francis, “Blood at the Root.”
6. Artwork proposal: Thomas J. Price, “Held Within.”
7. Artwork proposal: Tavares Strachan, “The Very Thought of You.”

Get • Excited to announce that on June 17, presents my exhibition, Taking Over: Subvertising in NYC, a decades long photographic record of interventions by artists and activists. While the output is varied—from graffitied billboards to spoofed ads in phone booths and bus shelters—the intent is the same: to hijack ad space and replace it with alternate messaging. Subvertisers envision public space that is not dominated by advertisements, preferring instead to inject doses of art, humor, and politics into the city’s veins. As such interventions are typically short-lived, often removed within 24 hours, photographic documentation plays an essential role in their dissemination. // Come through! // RSVP link in stories. // Thanks to for the flyer!

Woody De Othello's Guardian Spirit at Pier 1 in Brooklyn Bridge Park, NYC.

Get • Inside Out started in 2011 with a simple idea: take a portrait, print it large, and paste it somewhere your community can see it. Since then, 600,000 people in 154 countries have done exactly that. Teachers have brought it into classrooms, students have gotten in front of the camera and decided how they wanted to be seen, and the results have gone up on school walls and yards.
The Project gives students a way to explore what they care about and turn it into something visible. Not a classroom exercise that stays inside the room. Something the whole community walks past.
We want to help you create one of these installations with your students, no matter where you are in the world.

If you are a teacher and want to bring Inside Out to your school, DM us!

This is a poorly executed photo taken on the fly yesterday, but I thought it was fun to at least try to frame Daniel Chester French's allegory of Brooklyn through the relatively new addition to the plaza, Mark Di Suvero's Sooner or Later (2022; installed 2024). French's allegories of Brooklyn and Manhattan used to grace the Brooklyn side of the Manhattan Bridge (from 1916-1963). The Iris Cantor Plaza (so named after a 2023 re-design by Brook Klausing and Rebecca McMackin featuring a pollinator garden) has become a lively public space and also an extension of the museum out onto Eastern Parkway with Deborah Kass's Oy/Yo (installed 2018), changing exhibits on and around the outdoor amphitheater, and Di Suvero's sculpture added in 2024.

A new temporary public installation by Keisha Scarville at the Brooklyn Museum layers snapshots from family archives and textile patterns to "engage the space between remembrance, grief, and love."

Get • Creative Philadelphia is seeking a full-time Assistant Public Art Director!

With a collection of over 1,000 works throughout every neighborhood in the city, Philadelphia’s public art collection reflects its rich history, diverse communities, and long-standing commitment to the arts.

Are you passionate about public art and want to support the City's management of new, in-progress, and existing works?

Apply by May 31 to be Creative Philadelphia's Assistant Public Art Director!

For full details or to apply today ➡️ link in bio!

"Stewardship of public art is an ongoing project" says "I walked through White Park to do a graffiti check on the mural. Originally painted in 2017 as a temporary public art installation, we were allowed to leave it up. More recently it was in need of restoration so I reached out to former Deputy Speaker and city council member .ayala.161 and her then Chief of staff and current City Council member for the funding. A few weeks later artist and I drove in the scissor lift and went to work. Today the mural looks great and serves as the backdrop for afternoon pickup games and evening salsa dancing. I can’t imagine White Park without this magical painting that reflects how we use public space."

Get • "What is a monument?" We asked this question to visitors at MONUMENTS, read some of their responses above.

MONUMENTS closes this Sunday, May 3, 2026. Admission is FREE at The Geffen Contemporary and The Brick. Don't miss your chance to see the most-talked about exhibition this year.

For more information: moca.org

Get • On this last day of National Poetry Month and Arab American Heritage Month, we went to Lower Manhattan for an unveiling of an art installation honoring the poets and writers of Little Syria, the first Arabic-speaking community in the United States, centered on Washington Street in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. Displaced by the construction of the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, the history of Little Syria is now finally marked in the landscape of New York City.

Artist Sara Ouhaddou worked with the Washington Street Historical Society to create Al Qalam: Poets in the Park, a mix of mosaic, sculpture, and recorded poetry to punctuate Elizabeth H. Berger Plaza. Al Qalam means ‘the pen’ in Arabic, and Ouhaddou’s piece reflects the work of the poets of the Little Syria community, and the continuing role of Arab Americans in New York City and the nation.

Learn more about the former Little Syria neighborhood--its people, churches, newspapers, and stores--and the work of the Washington Street Historical Society. Go see Al Qalam the next time you are in Lower Manhattan!