Art in public places is said to inspire pride and interest in one’s community, and the installations themselves often become landmarks, points of curiosity and cohesion, attracting people to sit on, look at, and share. Public art creates a common space that everyone from all socioeconomic levels can appreciate and access. Side of Culture wrote about the power of public art in May 2025 and we continue to follow its stories this year. In New York City, this mission has been championed for decades by the Public Art Fund, the organization founded in 1977 by the visionary art activist Doris C. Freedman. Freedman, who famously led the fight for artists’ residency rights in Soho, helped cement the idea that art should be woven into the very fabric of our streets.
Continuing this legacy, the Public Art Fund in New York City has announced its 2026 program, featuring 35 artists whose work will transform the city’s parks, transit hubs, and beaches into an open-air museum. These “exhibitions offer powerful opportunities to explore the threads that connect us—and the ways we shape, and are shaped by, our surroundings,” says Nicholas Baume, Artistic & Executive Director, Public Art Fund. “By reimagining everyday objects and presenting them in familiar settings, these artists bring joy, playfulness, and wonder into the fabric of daily life while offering subtle shifts in perspective and new insights. The coming season, and public art as a whole, is an investment in the city itself and in the shared experiences that reflect the richness, diversity, and global energy of New York.”
New 2026 Exhibitions in the Parks
Public art is often site-specific, created in response to the community in which it resides. This year, three major installations will anchor the city’s most iconic green spaces:
Woody De Othello (Brooklyn Bridge Park): Woody De Othello’s inaugural major public art exhibition in New York presents a selection of recent large-scale works alongside existing bronze sculptures created between 2021 and 2025. Displayed throughout Brooklyn Bridge Park, the exhibition emphasizes the artist’s sustained investigation into nkisi—ritual objects from Kongo traditions that are believed to contain spiritual power and facilitate protective or healing energies.
Genesis Belanger (City Hall Park): Opening in June, Belanger’s surrealist vignettes explore the architecture of justice and value. The presentation consists of three sculptural vignettes that connect contemporary concerns with the architectural context of the city and site. The first vignette features two crouching figures, blind yet impartial, echoing classical representations of Lady Justice and her unbiased interpretation of law. In the second vignette, Belanger explores the distinction between artificial and natural by integrating synthetic plants and trees among the existing gardens. The third vignette showcases pigmented cast cement birds extracting pennies from the City Hall Park Fountain. As the cent coin is scheduled for decommissioning by the US Mint in 2026, this work acknowledges its transition alongside the changing nature of wishes made in the fountain.
Camille Henrot (Doris C. Freedman Plaza): For her first New York City public exhibition, Camille Henrot presents sculptures of dogs—symbols of domestication—at the park entrance. This outdoor series is part of her ongoing exploration of how etiquette and societal rules influence creativity in young life. Each sculpted dog has a range of personalities, inspired by those she observes in her Upper West Side neighborhood.
Besides its green spaces, one of New York City’s beaches is set to feature some artistic activity:
- Various Artists (Rockaway Beach, Queens): The group exhibition Between Tides will be presented in June at Rockaway Beach, showcasing sculptural ping-pong tables created by artists including Moko Fukuyama, Ilana Harris-Babou, Las Hermanas Iglesias, Carlos H. Matos, Amalia Pica, and SUPERFLEX. It focuses on how community participation shapes the unique history of ping-pong. What began as a Victorian pastime has evolved into both an Olympic event and a worldwide connector, bringing people together to explore art, ecology, and inclusivity along an urban shoreline.
Current Exhibitions
This season, that encounter may happen at a bus shelter, on a beach in the Rockaways, or while waiting for a flight at JFK. Public Art Fund also has several works permanently on view at locations including:
LaGuardia Terminal B: Since June 2020, LaGuardia Airport’s Terminal B has showcased public art through a partnership with LaGuardia Gateway Partners and the Public Art Fund. Artists like Jeppe Hein, Sabine Hornig, Laura Owens, and Sarah Sze have created installations inspired by New York City’s energy and diversity. Terminal B’s open architecture and use of natural light create a backdrop, notably framing Jeppe Hein’s All Your Wishes. The exhibition displays a constellation of seventy mirrored balloon sculptures and three red benches that invite interaction and represent Minimalist and Conceptual influences.
Moynihan Train Hall: The train hall is a modern renovation of the original James A. Farley Post Office, built to replace the demolished 1910 Pennsylvania Station. Artists Stan Douglas, Elmgreen & Dragset, and Kehinde Wiley explore themes connecting the past, present, and future. Particularly, Stan Douglas created nine photographic panels for the Ticketed Waiting Room, recreating historical scenes from Penn Station’s years between 1910 and 1963. He combined archival research, live performers, and digital backgrounds for these works, marking his first permanent public commission.
Newark Terminal A: The new Terminal A at Newark Liberty International Airport showcases New Jersey’s creativity and diversity through two major permanent artworks by Layqa Nuna Yawar and Karyn Olivier. Yawar’s 350-foot mural, Between the Future Past, displays Newark’s diverse community and natural environment, guided by his Indigenous heritage to convey time’s cycle and celebrate marginalized groups. Olivier’s twin suspended sculptures, Approach, capture Newark and Elizabeth’s architecture and topography from sunrise to nightfall, making flight a central theme. These installations are augmented by 27 rotating works from local artists, honoring the region’s heroes and landscape.
Planet Word (Washington, D.C.): The willow tree, symbolising life and growth, represents today’s linguistic diversity in Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s interactive sculpture, Speaking Willow. Commissioned by Ann and Tom Friedman and Public Art Fund, this is Lozano-Hemmer’s first permanent outdoor piece, installed since October 2020 at Planet Word in Washington D.C. Inspired by Bell’s photophone, Speaking Willow uses light and sound, with speakers that gently sway in response to visitors. When visitors pass under its branches, speakers play recordings from over 99% of the world’s languages. Since the 1990s, Lozano-Hemmer has created participatory installations incorporating architecture, digital media, and public interaction. Side of Culture wrote about Planet Word in September 2021.
Doris C. Freedman Plaza, Central Park: First Sun is a large-scale sculpture by Berlin-based Kuwaiti artist Monira Al Qadiri, on display at Central Park’s Doris C. Freedman Plaza from September 3, 2025, to August 2, 2026. This 17-foot-tall painted aluminum figure, blending human and scarab beetle forms, reimagines the Egyptian sun deity Khepri and explores themes like gender fluidity and ecological interdependence. After New York, the sculpture will be shown on Toronto’s Lassonde Art Trail, supporting broader public access to contemporary art across North America.
Art in Transit: From Bus Shelters to JFK
According to Americans for the Arts, public art contributes to humanizing the built environment, and the Public Art Fund plans to utilize urban infrastructure as a medium for artistic expression. The exhibition On the Flip Side features fine art photography by six artists—Kennedi Carter, Lougè Delcy, Camila Falquez, Ruby Okoro, Dana Scruggs, and Juan Veloz—displayed in JCDecaux bus shelters across New York City, Chicago, and Boston, turning commercial zones into intimate art spaces. Renowned for their eye-catching visuals on magazine pages and billboards, these artists leverage the reach of viral imagery to influence our perception of modern culture. Their individual approaches provide thoughtful and sensitive insights into identity, sense of place, and our shared future.
Later this summer, distinguished artist Gabriel Orozco will create ten images throughout the city’s transit system. His photographs document found objects, fleeting sculptural arrangements, and unexpected moments within urban environments. For his Public Art Fund commission, which is also his first major public art exhibition in New York City, Orozco will develop 10 new images that examine urban life’s fabric. Although many of his iconic photographs originated in the 1990s and early 2000s, this project, the first photographic series he has ever been commissioned to do, marks a significant and exciting return to photography. Having lived and worked across Mexico City, New York, Tokyo, and Paris, Orozco’s art is influenced by his movement between these cities, a perspective that will shape this new collection and its exploration of contemporary urban spaces.
Arguably, the year’s most ambitious initiative is launching permanent commissions by 19 internationally acclaimed artists—including Nina Chanel Abney, Nevin Alada?, Candida Alvarez, Felipe Baeza, Kerstin Brätsch, Jane Dickson, Teresita Fernández, Charles Gaines, Sky Hopinka, Shara Hughes, Laure Prouvost, Barbara Kruger, Eddie Martinez, Kambui Olujimi, GaHee Park, Uman, Charline von Heyl, Dyani White Hawk, and Haegue Yang—at Terminal 6 of JFK Airport. Through sculptures and mosaic floor medallions, these works will greet millions of travelers with New York’s vibrant cultural energy and exemplify the “Percent for Art” policy, which requires integrating art into public construction projects.
Why It Matters: Community Cohesion and Accessibility
Art in public spaces has long brought beauty to areas everyone can enjoy. The Public Art Fund’s 2026 season carries on this legacy, showing us that we don’t need to visit museums to be inspired, sometimes we just have to go outside. “Public art is an investment in the city itself,” notes Nicholas Baume, Artistic & Executive Director of the Public Art Fund. As we face the challenges of 2026, these free exhibits provide more than just visual appeal, they create “magical moments” that spark imagination and play in our daily routines. When artists transform everyday places, a bus shelter, a park bench, or a terminal floor, they remind us that culture isn’t something distant or hard to find; it surrounds us in our everyday lives.
Plan Your Visit:
- Monira Al Qadiri: Central Park’s Doris C. Freedman Plaza (Sept 3, 2025 – Aug 2, 2026)
- On the Flip Side: Bus shelters in NYC, Chicago, and Boston (Feb 4 – Apr 5, 2026)
- Woody De Othello: Brooklyn Bridge Park (May 5, 2026 – Mar 8, 2027)
- Genesis Belanger: City Hall Park (June 2 – Nov 15, 2026)
- Between Tides: Rockaway Beach, Queens (Starts June 27, 2026)
- Camille Henrot: Doris C. Freedman Plaza, Central Park (Sept 9, 2026 – Aug 29, 2027)
For more information on the 2026 season, visit publicartfund.org or follow @PublicArtFund.
By Jamie Kaup, contributor to Side of Culture.
Featured photo: Sarah Sze, Shorter than the Day, 2020. Powder coated aluminum and steel. Commissioned by LaGuardia Gateway Partners in partnership with Public Art Fund for
LaGuardia Airport’s Terminal B. Photo: Nicholas Knight, Courtesy of the artist; LaGuardia Gateway Partners; Public ArtFund, NY; © Sarah Sze
