Mayor Wu Announces Year Two Recipients of Un-Monument | Re-Monument |De-Monument: Transforming Boston

 

Photo by Greg Cook. Artist Ifé Franklin and the completed “Slave Cabin” with Reginald Jackson (right) led a Yoruba prayer in 2017. The Un-monument Initiative will fund the “Cabin in The Sky” to be installed at The Overlook Ruins, Franklin Park. Un-monument will also fund a community engagement program of the artist's project.

 

Mayor Michelle Wu and the Mayor’s Office of Arts & Culture (MOAC) today announced the selected artists and temporary public art projects for year two of the City’s Un-monument | Re-monument | De-monument: Transforming Boston initiative. Through a $3 million grant from the Mellon Foundation—the largest-ever investment into public art programming in Boston—this multi-year, citywide program continues to spark conversations about public memory, monuments, and collective history through free public art installations, community programming, and interactive experiences.

As Boston prepares to mark the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution in 2026, Un-monument underscores the City's commitment to sharing a more inclusive and expansive story of Boston’s past, present, and future. In its first year, Un-monument commissioned artist-led temporary monuments through an open call organized by MOAC, alongside projects developed in partnership with five local curatorial organizations. Artists were also selected to participate in an augmented reality workshop, and community members joined the Un-monument Advisory Team, helping to shape community engagement strategies and contributing to inaugural programming. Building on that foundation, the second year expands opportunities for artists, cultural organizations, and residents to reimagine Boston’s commemorative landscape. By working with multiple curatorial partners and piloting new forms of artist support, the program challenges traditional commissioning models, prioritizing equity, transparency, and the elevation of lesser-told histories through a more inclusive and distributed approach to public art.

“Public art helps us honor our past and inspire the future we are building together everyday,” said Mayor Michelle Wu. “As we celebrate the second year of Un-monument with another round of commissions, we use our public spaces to celebrate the many voices and cultures that honor Boston’s commitment to no justice, equity, and community.”

After the success of last year's public conversation series at The Embrace, MOAC is launching a new season of free talks and dinners in 2025 in partnership with the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University, the Boston Parks and Recreation Department, the Friends of the Public Garden, Downtown Boston Alliance, and Embrace Boston. These gatherings will bring together leading scholars, artists, and cultural leaders to explore the evolving roles of monuments, democracy, and justice in our daily lives, beginning with "Freedom Dreams in America," co-hosted by the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum featuring Professors Peniel E. Joseph and Danielle S. Allen on May 14, 2025 at 6:00pm.

In addition to public art and public conversations, Un-monument is deepening its impact through partnerships with the Boston Art Review, which is producing expanded research and writing about Boston’s commemorative landscape; Bloomberg Connects​, a free digital guide that makes it easy to access and engage with arts and culture from mobile devices; Hoverlay, which provides a platform for artists using augmented reality; and PRX, which is recording and preserving oral histories connected to public memory and creating a podcast. Together, these initiatives ensure that Un-monument engages audiences across generations, geographies, and disciplines as Boston reimagines its public spaces.

TEMPORARY PUBLIC MONUMENT COMMISSIONS

New public art commissions across Boston, ranging from $5,000 to $60,000 each, will include temporary sculptures, murals, augmented reality monuments, and community-led performances. These projects reflect a wide range of approaches, including honoring the lives of Boston’s early Black residents, celebrating immigrant and Indigenous communities, preserving LGBTQ+ histories, uplifting cultural memory through murals and sculptural interventions, and reimagining public storytelling through new media. Highlights include a life-size Afro-futuristic cabin, swinging golden hoop earrings as functional sculptures, a vibrant memory field honoring Vietnamese American histories, and new monuments focused on activism, belonging, and collective healing.

• Exhibiting Culture by Brandon Breaux
• On This Site… by Diane Dwyer
• Waiting Shelter by Pat Falco and Melissa Teng
• Cabin in The Sky by Ifé Franklin
• Ways of My Ancestors – Imagery: Lighting the Path to Awareness by Scott Foster
• Love Letters to Malcolm by L’Merchie Frazier and Hakim Raquib
• Breathe Life: Black Joy by Robert ‘ProBlak’ Gibbs
• All for Love mural by Ricardo ‘Deme5’ Gomez
• Honoring the Women of the Home for Aged Colored Women at Cedar Grove Cemetery by Ekua Holmes
• Caminantes/Wayfarers by Salvador Jiménez-Flores
• Untold Stories from the Old Corner The Old Corner Bookstore by Joanne Kaliontzis
• Interwoven Herstories by Neda Moridpour, Azadeh Tajpour, and Rashin Fahandej
• Undocumented Monuments by Studio Lenca
• Big Hoops to Fill by Ja'Hari Ortega
• Democratization of Art by Steven Peters of SmokeSygnals and the Wampanoag Consulting Alliance
• Our Names by Audrey Watkins
• Journey of Light: 1975 Memory Field by Ngọc-Trần Vũ
• The Busing Boycott by Daphne Xu

RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT COMMISSIONS

Two additional artists were selected to receive grants to support research and development for future projects. These projects include a proposal to create a monument preserving the stories of LGBTQ+ activists across Boston’s civic spaces, and a new public artwork honoring the cultural protectors and revolutionary elders who shaped Dorchester’s historic Franklin Park.

• Mapping Queer Boston by Kimm Topping
• ON THE PROWL by rixy

CURATORIAL PARTNER COMMISSIONS

MOAC is continuing to fund additional commissions led by five curatorial partner organizations, expanding the conversation about what monuments could look like across Boston. Commissioning local organizations strengthens Boston’s creative ecosystem, fosters cross-community collaboration, and ensures that a broad range of artistic and cultural perspectives shape the City’s commemorative landscape. The 2025 partner projects span archival research, community storytelling, cultural symbolism, and material critique,expanding the visual and conceptual language of public monuments in Boston.

The curatorial partner organization commissions are:

Boston Public Art Triennial, curated by Pedro Alonzo and Tess Lukey

• I think it goes like this (pick yourself up) by Nicholas Galanin

Emerson Contemporary, co-curated by Leonie Bradbury and Shana Garr

• Hidden Histories by Elisa Hamilton, Clareese Hill, Sue Murad, and Kameelah J. Rasheed

Pao Arts Center, Public Art Series in Chinatown, curated by Lani Asunción

• planTable by Ecosistema Urbano

North American Indian Center of Boston, co-curated by Janelle Pocowatchit and Jean-Luc Pierite

• Memorialization of Urban Indigenous Presence in the City of Boston by Ella Nathanael Alkiewicz, Robert Peters, and Janelle Pocowatchit in collaboration with Shirley Paul

National Center of Afro-American Artists, curated by Barry Gaither

• FINDING OURSELVES IN PUBLIC SPACES: An Un-monument Project created in collaboration with Hibernian Hall and the Museum of African American History

PROJECTION MAPPING WORKSHOP PARTICIPANTS

Because of the novelty of the technology and the access barriers to getting started in making new media art, MOAC continued its partnership with Emerson Contemporary to offer an Art and Technology Incubator in spring 2025. This incubator provided creative technology training for artists interested in expanding and diversifying their practices, helping to grow the pool of applicants for future commissions and to broaden representation within the media art field. The following artists have been selected to participate in the 2025 workshop:

• Lincoln Nemetz-Carlson
• Timothy Hyunsoo Lee
• Kledia Spiro
• Yue Hua
• Roman Johnson
• Hernán “Nan” Joubá
• Iwalani Kaluhiokalani
• Shozab Raza
• Sean “2ruTh7” Evelyn
• Megan Hyde

In 2024, Un-monument laid a powerful foundation for rethinking Boston’s commemorative landscape through public art, dialogue, and education. The City awarded 16 grants totaling $253,100, including eight research and development grants totalling $55,000, and launched 13 commissioned projects through partnerships with local curatorial organizations, totalling $472,500. The inaugural year also saw the launch of a public conversation series at The Embrace, bringing together prominent scholars such as Professor Joshua Bennett, Professor Imani Perry, and Kerri Greenidge to explore the intersections of monuments, memory, and democracy.

Forthcoming Artist-led commissions from Year One include:

• We Were Here Too by Roberto Mighty in collaboration with the Freedom Trail® Foundation will revive the memory of Boston’s colonial Black neighborhood of New Guinea through a multimedia augmented reality experience in the North End. The project launches Wednesday May 21, 2025 at 1pm at Copp’s Hill Burying Ground with a dedication and a guided historical tour by the artist. An artist talk will be held on Wednesday May 28, 2025 at 5:30pm at the historic Old North Church hosted by MOAC with Old North Illuminated.
• Going to Ground by LaRissa Rogers, with a performance by Zalika Azim and curated by Audrey Lopez, explores memory, place, and Black resilience through a soil-based sculpture honoring Zipporah Potter Atkins on the Rose Kennedy Greenway. While the sculpture itself is produced independently, Un-monument supports the accompanying dance performance and public programming by Zalika Azim taking place in the fall of 2025, activating the site and engaging audiences in dialogue with the themes of Rogers’ work and the broader Un-monument initiative.
• Boston Chinatown: Stories on The Streets by Alison Yueming Qu will be a site-specific theatrical project on Saturday June 21, 2025 at 2pm engaging the Chinatown neighborhood through community storytelling and performance in public space.
• The Lot Next Door by Jaronzie Harris will be a site-specific theatrical work rooted in Dorchester, developed through collaborative storytelling with local residents on Saturday August 2, 2025 at 2pm at the Crossroads of Woodrow Ave and Norfolk St, in Dorchester. 
• Generation Peace Poles by Ruth Henry will expand a vibrant trail of peace-centered public artworks connecting Dorchester and Roxbury. Installations will be completed over the summer and dedicated at a ceremony on September 21, 2025 on International Day of Peace.
• Project inspired by A People's Monument by Cedric Douglas reimagines the former site of the Christopher Columbus statue in the North End—now a vacant plinth at Park Square—as a platform for inclusive public memory. Through interviews in the spring and summer of 2025 with stakeholders, students, and community members across Boston, the project will center on the themes of emancipation and freedom.

"After the success of Un-monument’s first year, it’s exciting to see how this work is growing and resonating across the city," said Karin Goodfellow, Director of Transformative Art and Monuments for the City of Boston and lead for the Un-monument initiative. "We are continuing to create space for artists and communities to reframe Boston’s commemorative landscape, and to imagine a public realm that better reflects who we are and who we aspire to be."

Through these collective efforts, Un-monument has already begun transforming how Boston understands, engages with, and reshapes its public spaces,laying the groundwork for an even more expansive second year.

To learn more about Un-monument, visit boston.gov/un-monument. 

PRESS CONTACTS

Ali Rigo

Senior Director, Cultural Counsel

ali@culturalcounsel.com

 

Allison Brainard

Associate Director, Cultural Counsel

allison@culturalcounsel.com

 

Jane Drinkard

Senior Account Coordinator, Cultural Counsel

jane@culturalcounsel.com

 

Bonnie Rosenbaum

Director of Communications, Mayor’s Office of Arts and Culture

bonnie.rosenbaum@boston.gov

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