The first Boston Public Art Triennial officially opened on May 22. For a decade, the nonprofit Now+There had been installing one-off temporary public art around Boston. It rebranded as the Triennial to produce a burst of simultaneous installations designed to make a bigger splash every three years, and “signal who we are as Bostonians in a different way,” Triennial Executive Director Kate Gilbert told The New York Times in the flurry of press attention the festival’s debut attracted. “We wanted to concentrate it in a not-to-be-missed, festival-type experience. We really want to see a more open and equitable city through people having extraordinary art experiences.”
On a recent Sunday, we drove around Boston trying to see as many of Triennial artworks as we could in one afternoon. We picked Sunday for our experience because we thought Boston’s free parking on Sundays might help us visit more spots—though bicycling is probably the best way to tour the widely distributed sites.
1) As we drove by Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, we glimpsed the silvery, realistic indigenous figures standing on plinths beside the grand front stairs, which have been there since last November (and I’ve seen up close a number of times previously). They’re part of the museum’s ongoing response—a corrective—to the statue of a stereotyped indigenous man on horseback with his arms thrown open, Cyrus Dallin’s “Appeal to the Great Spirit,” which has been an icon at the front of the museum since 1912.
These new temporary sculptures, “Knowledge Keepers” by Boston-raised, Museum School-educated, New York-based Alan Michelson, a Mohawk member of Six Nations of the Grand River, depict two contemporary local Indigenous cultural stewards—Aquinnah Wampanoag member Julia Marden and Nipmuc artist Andre StrongBearHeart Gaines Jr.—cast in bronze, gilded with shimmering platinum. The point is that they’re rigorously specific and now and individual—rather than the generic, White-gaze symbol of the Native American man on the horse.
“What is a statue of an anonymous Plains rider doing in front of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston? Why is he wearing a war bonnet yet unarmed, and also a Navajo necklace? Why is he supplicating? I often asked myself these questions when passing the statue on the trolley while attending the nearby Boston Latin School in the 1960s and the Museum School a decade later,” Michelson said in a museum announcement. “In 1909, when Cyrus Dallin cast Appeal to the Great Spirit in Paris, the image of the noble but defeated Plains warrior as an exemplar of the ‘vanishing race’ was popular worldwide. In 2024, I hope my site-specific installation will challenge ingrained stereotypes and racial myths by presenting a story of survivance and agency, not defeat or appeal.”
2) We double-parked around the corner, at Evans Way Park in front of the Isabella Stewart Gardener Museum, to see a bronze statue set along the paths at the middle of the park: Alaska-based Lingít and Unangax artist Nicholas Galanin’s “I think it goes like this (pick yourself up).” A friend described it as a totem pole Transformer with chunks falling off. Triennial artworks often are driven by concept and backstory—and often that backstory isn’t apparent until you read the signs. Galanin’s sculpture is “cast from chopped-up imitation totems,” according to the Triennial. “The bronze logs form a kneeling figure, gathering itself from a pile. The form reflects damage to Indigenous culture and technology inflicted by colonization. The work acknowledges the difficulty of repair following generations of outside interference and homogenization of culture and settler-colonial fantasy.”
We missed Boston artist Yu-Wen Wu’s artwork “Reigning Beauty,” which was installed a few days later as the new billboard on the facade of the Gardner: “transforming individual blossoms [from the Gardner Museum’s flowers] into a windswept shower blooming bright against dark storm clouds.”
3) From there we drove over to Newbury Street, parked and walked to the Boston Public Library at 700 Boylston St. Inside the central library’s main atrium is New York artist Caledonia Curry a.k.a. street artist Swoon’s “In the Well: The Stories We Tell About Addiction,” which feels modest in its creative ambitions, but still probably the best piece in the Triennial. It evocatively resembles a ramshackle cabin, pieced together from various recycled odds and ends, seemingly floating on a sort of pan boat—like a dream. There are three figures—women, girls—two looking out of doorways, one wearing a Dolly Parton shirt sitting inside on a chair amidst low, leafy green plants like you find along the shady floor of a forest. (The shack is built atop an existing planter at the library.) The sculpture, the Triennial explains, is “derived from the artist’s novella, ‘Sibylant Sisters,’ a story about two sisters who live with a witch beholden to a noxious substance brewed in the well of toads. Through a charming story of girlhood imagination, Swoon challenges how drug addiction is perceived, explained, and often misunderstood.”
4) Then we drove through Downtown Crossing, where we briefly blocked traffic to glimpse Los Angeles artist Patrick Martinez’s “Cost of Living,” a pair of neon signs in storefront windows at 63 Franklin St. One reads “No Jobs, No Homes,” the other says “Affordable Housing Now.” Then we drove across the Zakim Bridge, over the Charles River, toward the obelisk of the Bunker Hill Monument and the masts of the USS Constitution at Charlestown Navy Yard.
Triennial artworks are distributed throughout Boston neighborhoods, which makes it a challenge to see many of them on one day. It’s probably better to visit them just one or a few at a time across the months-long run of the Triennial, through Oct. 31, 2025.
5) Our last stop was to see three artworks displayed at 1 5th St., on a lawn in the Navy Yard. Boston artist Evelyn Rydz’s “Convergence: Porous Futures” is a minimalist sculpture made from a grid of mirror strips standing on low posts above winding lines of stones cut into the lawn suggesting rivers. “A reflective sculpture, modeled after a storm drain, hovers over a living garden featuring bioswales shaped to mirror the geography of the two rivers,” the Triennial says. The site is near the confluence of the Mystic and Charles Rivers. “This design draws attention to the often-overlooked water infrastructure and its environmental impact amidst increasing weather extremes.”
6) Boston artist Alison Croney Moses’s “This Moment for Joy” is another minimalist sculpture—a curving wall of slanted wooden planks. “A trained woodworker, Moses investigates themes of craft, community, identity, and motherhood through the intricate forms and delicate impressions of the natural world and the human body,” the Triennial says. “’This Moment for Joy’ is inspired by the great pleasure and warmth of the Black women in the artist’s life. Composed of wooden slats in a gradient curve, the sculpture is designed for gathering and exploration. The warm hues beckon for fingers to touch the wood, while the inner nook of the curved form offers a sense of safety and shelter.”
7) Andy Li has been stitching charming pennants with personal thoughts and slogans for some time now. Inspired by the Navy Yard’s flags, here the Boston artist installs a pole ringed by numerous rectangular flags in bright blue, yellow, orange and green. “Flying up top on the main flag, ‘Today is The Day’ serves as a beacon and prompt for reflection,” the Triennial says. “Below, a pulley system displays 12 smaller flags, each appliquéd with different everyday achievements, allowing one to choose how to finish the sentence on the top flag.” Among the options: “I acknowledged my ego and turned it off again,” “I let myself rest,” “I wanted to celebrate survival,” “I disrupted negative thoughts I had about myself,” “I walked my dog and did not forget poop bags,” “I celebrated starting over,” “I decided to continue working on all my projects and not give up on my dreams.”
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