Slide into September with MAAM! Enjoy a special DJ set with featured artists Nicholas Galanin and Benjamin Verdoes, create something new with hands-on artmaking in the studio, and more.

Admission is free with advance registration.

Join us for the culminating performance of Adela Goldbard’s “Invadieron por mar, respondemos con fuego. Un presagio. They invaded by sea, we responded with fire. An omen.”, a time-based artwork in the form of a quarter-scale replica of a 17th-century sailing ship used by European colonists landing in the Americas. All are welcome to this free three-part pyrotechnic performance taking place on September 12th from 7:00 — 9:00 PM at City Hall Plaza. (Please see below for details for those with noise and light sensitivities.)

Goldbard’s sculpture, becomes prop and site in this fictionalized “first encounter” performance between Indigenous people and European colonists. Accompanied by live Brazilian drumming, the performance will transition from a somber battle into a festive traditional Mexican Castillo pyrotechnic display and the theatrical destruction of the ship. Through this work, Goldbard addresses the legacy of colonization across the Americas, highlighting the painful and violent process of cultural erasure and hybridization.

The performance acts as a counterpoint to the colonial violence rooted in Massachusetts, where Native American communities—including the Wampanoag, Nipmuc, and Pocumtuc peoples—faced displacement, war, and attempted erasure. Through shared ritual and spectacle, it honors their resistance and resilience, offering a communal act of healing and remembrance. Learn more about the artist and the project here.

About the Event

The event begins at 7:00 pm with a short speaking portion at 7:45 pm and pyrotechnic performance at 8:00 pm; the duration of the entire event is approximately 1 hour and 30 minutes. City Hall Plaza is handicapped accessible and is served by the MBTA Blue and Green Line’s Government Center Station. Seating will not be provided; however you’re welcome to bring your own.

This event is rain or shine. In the event of high winds or hazardous weather, the performance may be canceled and an announcement will be posted by 3:00 pm on our website and social media channels.

Please note, this performance features live pyrotechnic effects, sudden loud noises, and flashing/strobe lighting. These effects may trigger discomfort or health concerns for individuals with photosensitive epilepsy, light or sound sensitivities, or sensory processing disorders. Hearing protection is recommended for sensitive ears. Parents and guardians are advised this program may not be suitable for very young children. For your safety, please remain within designated audience areas during pyrotechnic effects.  

Visit the Goethe-Institut Boston for an afternoon of Art on Film. Screenings begin at 2pm.

Explore the powerful connections between art, ancestry, and spiritual tradition in this compelling virtual program. Join artist Stephen Hamilton for a virtual conversation with Dr. Kyrah Malika Daniels, Assistant Professor of African American Studies at Emory University. The two will discuss Hamilton’s multimedia work, which he has described as a “conceptual and visual bridge between the ancient and modern worlds.” Informed by Yorùbá artistic techniques and the close study of West and Central African religious traditions—including the Kongo cosmogram Dikenga, which maps the human life cycle—Hamilton’s work incorporates meticulous research, skillful technique, and spiritual practice, embodying narratives that are both personal and collective.

Join for an evening performance of two experimental works by Isaura Oliveira & Power of Skirts at the Triennial Hub at Lyrik. Following the performance, stay for a conversation between Isaura Oliveira and Aaron Myers, Executive Director of the Boston Dance Alliance, moderated by Marguerite Wynter, Director of Partnership + Engagement at the Triennial.

The first work unfolds within Julian Charrière’s Triennial commission Calls for Action. It is inspired by the phrase “the future is Ancestry”, a reverence to the Native Indigenous peoples of the American continent, also known as Amerindians.

The second work is a preview and in-progress presentation of YABÁS, which will premiere at The Strand Theater in November. YABÁS is a ritual performance honoring the female deities of the African Yoruba cosmology of Orisha, central to Afro-Brazilian ancestry, culture, and spirituality. The Orishas embody sacred wisdom within the natural elements.

Three Yabás are celebrated through dance, recorded drumming, spoken word, and chant:

• Yemonjá:  mother of all fish, Orishas, and beings. In the diaspora she is the Atlantic Ocean, but in Nigeria she is the spirit of the Ogum River.

• Osun/Oshun/Oxum: goddess of fresh water, divination, femininity, and fertility, the spirit of all “sweet” waters, and protector of the Osun River.

• Oyá: spirit of the Niger River, Orisha of winds and storms, embodying the natural force of transformation.

Performers

Isaura Oliveira: leader artist, choreographer, performer

Performers: Hilani Morales, Yarumi Eliza, Cherish Casey, Brittany Owens, Kaitlyn Jolly

Ebere Oparaeke, Jireh Calo

About the Event

Doors open at 5:45pm and the performance will begin promptly at 6:30pm

Isaura Oliveira

Isaura Oliveira was born and raised in Salvador - Bahia, Brazil, one of the cradles of African Brazilian culture, where many African, Amerindian traditions and arts are maintained and nourished. Isaura is a Multidisciplinary Artist of Dance, Theater and Costume. As a cultural educator and an independent scholar, Isaura’s expertise is African Brazilian Culture & its Dance. She is dedicated to studying and teaching culture and creating experimental dance performances. In parallel with culture and dance, Isaura’s curiosity goes to a consistent research in the history and social movement of her African Brazilian and other cultures of the African Diaspora. Isaura follows updates on the contemporary life of Native Indigenous of Brasil and beyond. Her interest in Arts and Humanities is influencing the approach of her creativity and teaching methodology. Spirituality, Nature, and Ancestry have been her guides; thus, her artistic and educational work is connected with culture, social justice and healing arts. From the results of Isaura's community classes, in 2019 she launched Power of Skirts as a street parade for BIPOC students and guest musicians to perform in neighborhood events. Since then, Isaura’s vision has evolved to building a training program for students/mentees and guest artists to perform her experimental choreographies, ritual performances, and collaborations among their talents. Today, Power of Skirts is an in-progress community performance group and healing arts practitioners.

This program is presented in partnership with Boston Dance Alliance.

Boston Dance Alliance

Since 1994, Boston Dance Alliance (BDA) has been supporting the local dance ecosystem by creating shared resources and forging productive partnerships to help dance flourish in Greater Boston. BDA’s aims include  increasing access to dance for diverse communities, building dance audiences, and fostering the sustainability of dance locally.

The Unity Newspaper Workshop Series is an intergenerational public art program that brings together children, caregivers, students, and community members through creative workshops centered on grassroots political movements and publishing. Participants engage in performative table reading of archival activist newspapers, annotated storytelling, and the creation of broadsheets and community newspapers. These workshops foster collaborative spaces for reflecting on collective histories and connecting political activism with artistic process. In the workshops, facilitators will help children produce their print media, while caregivers and community members perform and annotate historical and kid-created materials. The series reimagines how knowledge and activism are shared across generations—building a living archive of creative resistance and community kinship.

Rosalyn D. Elder invites community members to participate in her latest art installation, A Requiem For Victims, a mixed-media textile piece that honors the lives of African Americans impacted by state-sanctioned violence. Participants will embroider the names of nearly 4,000 names. This installation will serve as a "tangible acknolwedgment of the sacrifices of those victims, as an effort to begin to understand the why of that violence and to begin a healing process within each of us."

Each name will take approximately one hour to embroider. Sewing experience not required.

Join us for this free musical event, Joy Takes Flight: A Celebration of Art, Music, and Conservation, on the evening of October 1. The special program will bring a Boston Symphony Orchestra string quartet to Boston Nature Center for a performance of Haydn’s “The Lark” paired with an open dialogue with conservation expert Lyra Brennan, director of Mass Audubon’s coastal waterbird program. A Q&A discussion will follow. 

The inspiring and interdisciplinary program will be held in the Solar Meadow at the Boston Nature Center where Triennial artist Laura Lima’s installation, Indistinct Form (Forma Indistinta), is on view throughout the trails as part of the Triennial 2025: The Exchange through October 31, 2025. 

This collaboration is both a part of the Triennial’s effort to bring free dialogue-sparking programs to the community alongside its exhibition and is part of the BSO’s humanities initiative to explore the multi-season theme “Where Words End: Music and the Natural World,” which brings together composers, scientists, poets, and visual artists to explore questions about our relationship with nature, helping us better understand ourselves, each other, and our relationship to the planet. 

Guests will have the opportunity to explore the trails, see the artwork, and enjoy light refreshments before the program begins at 6:30 p.m. In the event of rain, the program will be held indoors at Boston Nature Center’s visitor center. 

Space is limited, so advance registration is strongly encouraged.

Program Details
+ 5:30 p.m. | Doors open, welcoming guests to explore Laura Lima’s outdoor installation and enjoy light refreshments

+ 6:30 p.m. | Opening remarks from Daniel Mallampalli, Assistant Vice President, Artistic Planning at Boston Symphony Orchestra, Erin Kelly, Sanctuary Director at Boston Nature Center, and Marguerite Wynter, Director of Partnerships and Engagement at Boston Public Art Triennial

+ 6:40 p.m. | Performance of HAYDN String Quartet Op. 64 No. 5 “The Lark” by BSO musicians: Glen Cherry, violin; Lisa Ji Eun Kim, violin; Mary Ferrillo, viola; Christine Lee, cello 

+ 7:10 p.m. | Presentation on the successful conservation of the piping plover’s habitat and Q&A led by Lyra Brennan, Director of Mass Audubon’s Coastal Waterbird Program 

This program is created in partnership between The Boston Public Art Triennial, the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO), and Mass Audubon’s Boston Nature Center.

Rosalyn D. Elder invites community members to participate in her latest art installation, A Requiem For Victims, a mixed-media textile piece that honors the lives of African Americans impacted by state-sanctioned violence. Participants will embroider the names of nearly 4,000 names. This installation will serve as a "tangible acknolwedgment of the sacrifices of those victims, as an effort to begin to understand the why of that violence and to begin a healing process within each of us."

Each name will take approximately one hour to embroider. Sewing experience not required.

Join Triennial artist Evelyn Rydz for an exploration of Boston’s past and future waterlines through drawing, writing and community conversation.

Gather on-site at Rydz’s Triennial installation, Convergence: Porous Futures, to learn more about the artwork and its natural components, complete with creative writing and drawing activities where participants are invited to reflect upon their personal connections to water, resilience, and what we hope to preserve for future generations.

This program is created and facilitated in partnership with the Coastal Stewardship Corps and Massachusetts Rivers Alliance.

New Red Order Presents: The Urge 2 Merge is an innovative live event format that weaves between public assembly, academic symposium, music and film festival. Artists, activists, and academics share the line-up with musicians and historical re-enactors in order to present a night of discursive delirium and historical hallucinations on the unruly legacy of Thomas Morton - Plymouth Colony’s most scandalous settler and proto-countercultural visionary. 

Inspired by New Red Order’s new work Material Monument to Thomas Morton as part of the Boston Public Art Triennial the event will feature contributions from Phil Deloria, Lucky Dragons, Mallie Sanford, Les Leveque, Jim Fletcher, Lana Romanova, Karthik Pandian, and more!!

Registration and more info coming soon.

Local artist Lena Noni Browne hosts Air Out Your Laundry, a Caribbean community-oriented workshop where participants can gather, reflect on and share their Caribbean culture, and create artwork that will become part of a future public art installation. More information to come!

This reception celebrates The Other One: Dependency, Distortion, Displacement, a component of the larger exhibition Sites of Convergence. Created by House for the End of the World, featuring Boston University School of Music Professor Joshua Fineberg, performance artist Elana Katz, and AI and visual artist Dario Srbic, the exhibition is open from 12:00-7:00pm between October 11-14.

For more information about the opening reception, exhibition hours, and panel discussion, click here.

Join Los Angeles-based artist Patrick Martinez for an event discussing the role of art in public space as a tool for advocacy. 

In Cost of Living (2025), a series of Boston-wide installations that are part of the inaugural Boston Public Art Triennial, Patrick Martinez reflects the landscape of his hometown, Los Angeles. Influenced by murals on liquor store walls, taco truck LED signs, graffiti, and neon signs from pawn shops, money services, locksmiths, and realtors, Martinez foregrounds “the overlooked beauty found in the city.” Drawing from his conversations at Breaktime, an organization dedicated to ending the cycle of homelessness, Cost of Living illuminates their words and experiences. Martinez also created a series of signs through an exchange with Breaktime Associates, a three-year youth employment program.Cost of Living serves as a platform to raise awareness, foster empathy, and promote understanding of the challenges unhoused young people face, elevating their voices and experiences through art. 

Martinez will present his work in a lecture, followed by a conversation with Triennial artistic director Pedro Alonzo and GSD design critic Malkit Shoshan, moderated by Charles Waldheim.

Speakers

Patrick Martinez is a versatile artist known for his mixed media landscape paintings, neon sign pieces, cake paintings, and the Pee Chee series, which documents threats to black and brown youth by law enforcement. His landscape paintings blend Los Angeles surface elements to evoke place and socio-economic themes. His neon sign works remix words from literary sources, while his Cake paintings memorialize leaders, activists, and thinkers. Martinez earned his BFA from Art Center College of Design in 2005. His work has been exhibited worldwide, at venues including the Whitney Museum of American Art, MOCA Los Angeles, and the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, and is in the permanent collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art and LACMA. Martinez was awarded a 2020 Rauschenberg Residency and, in 2022, a residency at the Atlantic Center for the Arts. His neon pieces are on display at the Whitney Museum of American Art, and he has had solo exhibitions at the ICA San Francisco, the Dallas Contemporary, and the Tucson Museum of Art.

Pedro H. Alonzo is an independent curator and the artistic director for the inaugural Boston Public Art Triennial, who has served as adjunct curator at Dallas Contemporary, the ICA Boston, and the Institute of Visual Arts at the University of Wisconsin. He is a lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, where he teaches a course on curating in public spaces. Alonzo specializes in exhibitions that transcend the museum walls. In 2017, he collaborated with JR on an installation at the U.S.-Mexico border and, in 2022, he and Pedro Reyes installed Amnesia Atómica in Times Square. In 2024, Alonzo was part of the curatorial team for the Noor Riyadh Festival in Saudi Arabia. In November 2024, he produced and curated Midnight Zone, a large-scale video installation and sculptural lighthouse lens by Julian Charrière in Los Cabos, Mexico, addressing the dangers of deep-sea mining.

Malkit Shoshan is a Design Critic in Urban Planning and Design. She was the 2024-2025 Senior Loeb Scholar at Harvard GSD and a 2024 Resident at The Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center. She is a designer, researcher, and writer, and founding director of the architecture think tank FAST (Foundation for Achieving Seamless Territory). FAST employs research, advocacy, design, and public art to explore the complex relationships between architecture, urban planning, and human rights. In 2021, Shoshan was awarded the Silver Lion at the Venice Architecture Biennale for her collaborative project Border Ecologies and the Gaza Strip: Watermelon, Sardines, Crabs, Sand, and Sediment, which is also the subject of her forthcoming book with Amir Qudaih (Mack Books, 2026). Her award-winning books on spatial equity, peace, and conflict include BLUE: The Architecture of UN Peacekeeping Missions (Actar, 2023), Atlas of Conflict: Israel-Palestine (Uitgeverij 010, 2010),  and Village: One Land, Two Systems. Shoshan’s research and design work has been exhibited internationally and featured in prominent newspapers, magazines, and academic journals.

Moderator

Charles Waldheim is the John E. Irving Professor of Landscape Architecture, Director of the Office for Urbanization, and Co-Director of the Master in Design Studies program at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. He is an American Canadian architect and urbanist. Waldheim’s research examines the relations between landscape, ecology, and contemporary urbanism. He has authored and edited numerous books on these subjects, and his writing has been published and translated internationally. Waldheim is the recipient of the Rome Prize Fellowship from the American Academy in Rome, the Visiting Scholar Research Fellowship at the Study Centre of the Canadian Centre for Architecture, the Cullinan Chair at Rice University, and the Sanders Fellowship at the University of Michigan.

Harvard University welcomes individuals with disabilities to participate in its programs and activities. If you would like to request accommodations or have questions about the physical access provided, please contact the Public Programs Office at (617) 496-2414 or events@gsd.harvard.edu in advance of your participation or visit. Requests for American Sign Language interpreters and/or CART providers should be made at least two weeks in advance. Please note that the University will make every effort to secure services, but that services are subject to availability.

Northeastern University Center for the arts will host Triennial artist Beatriz Cortez and Northeastern CfA featured artist Hannah Perrine Mode in conversation. More information coming soon!

The Unity Newspaper Workshop Series is an intergenerational public art program that brings together children, caregivers, students, and community members through creative workshops centered on grassroots political movements and publishing. Participants engage in performative table reading of archival activist newspapers, annotated storytelling, and the creation of broadsheets and community newspapers. These workshops foster collaborative spaces for reflecting on collective histories and connecting political activism with artistic process. In the workshops, facilitators will help children produce their print media, while caregivers and community members perform and annotate historical and kid-created materials. The series reimagines how knowledge and activism are shared across generations—building a living archive of creative resistance and community kinship.

Join Boston Public Art Triennial and UMass Boston in hosting featured artist Cannupa Hanska Luger for an artist talk. More information coming soon!

This fall, Boston Public Art Triennial and New England Foundation for the Arts presents Triennial 2025: Closing Convening, a one day gathering with cross-disciplinary voices speaking to the power of public art in activating the city of Boston. More information coming soon!