Events Calendar
From artist talks and neighborhood workshops to installations and performances, this is your place to find upcoming programs with our artists and partners across the city. You can replay many of our engaging artist talks and panels on our YouTube.
Triennial Art + Stroll Series: Downtown Crossing
Looking for a new way to see and understand the world around you? Curious about contemporary art, or how public art shapes Boston’s built environment? Want to get out of the office and into the fresh air?
Join the Boston Public Art Triennial for an intimate walking tour that invites conversation, fresh perspectives, and shared discovery. Together, we’ll explore not just the buildings and artworks, but also the people, histories, and memories that shape the city’s landscape.
No prior art experience is needed! Just bring your curiosity and a willingness to participate, learn, and connect with others.
Check back soon for registration information.
This walk will begin at King’s Chapel and finish at the Dewey Square Mural on The Greenway.
Know Before You Go:
We recommend comfortable shoes, appropriate clothes for the weather, and of course some water as Boston in the summertime can be hot!
Weather Notice:
The tour will run in sun or light precipitation and will be entirely outdoors. In the case of extreme weather, registered participants will receive an email with advanced notice of cancellation and rescheduled tour date.
Accessibility:
American Sign Language interpretation for this walk and other public programs is available free of charge upon request with three weeks’ advance notice. Please email programs@thetriennial.org with the subject line “Art + Stroll”.
Better Angels, Waterfront Park
Better Angels at Waterfront Park
Come as you are.
This summer, in parks, plazas, and public spaces across Boston, you’re invited to explore Better Angels, a free participatory pop-up installation by Boston artist Heather Kapplow. Step inside a playful world of inflatable clouds, heavenly gates, and campy angels, where visitors are invited to reflect on their ideals, share moments of connection, and move through an experience centered on empathy, grace, and understanding.
Through humor, performance, and participation, Better Angels offers a sanctuary from judgment and an invitation to imagine our best selves together. Read more about the project here.
Better Angels Hours:
Friday, August: 21—8 PM
Saturday, August 22: 1—8 PM
Better Angels, Waterfront Park
Better Angels at Waterfront Park
Come as you are.
This summer, in parks, plazas, and public spaces across Boston, you’re invited to explore Better Angels, a free participatory pop-up installation by Boston artist Heather Kapplow. Step inside a playful world of inflatable clouds, heavenly gates, and campy angels, where visitors are invited to reflect on their ideals, share moments of connection, and move through an experience centered on empathy, grace, and understanding.
Through humor, performance, and participation, Better Angels offers a sanctuary from judgment and an invitation to imagine our best selves together. Read more about the project here.
Better Angels Hours:
Friday, August: 21—8 PM
Saturday, August 22: 1—8 PM
Public Art Accelerator Info Session #2
Join us for a drop-in info session to discuss your questions about the Triennial’s Public Art Accelerator.
Public Art Accelerator Info Session #1
Join us for a drop-in info session to discuss your questions about the Triennial’s Public Art Accelerator.
Triennial Art + Stroll Series: Downtown Crossing
Looking for a new way to see and understand the world around you? Curious about contemporary art, or how public art shapes Boston’s built environment? Want to get out of the office and into the fresh air?
Join the Boston Public Art Triennial for an intimate walking tour that invites conversation, fresh perspectives, and shared discovery. Together, we’ll explore not just the buildings and artworks, but also the people, histories, and memories that shape the city’s landscape.
No prior art experience is needed! Just bring your curiosity and a willingness to participate, learn, and connect with others.
Check back soon for registration information.
This walk will begin at King’s Chapel and finish at the Dewey Square Mural on The Greenway.
Know Before You Go:
We recommend comfortable shoes, appropriate clothes for the weather, and of course some water as Boston in the summertime can be hot!
This tour will be photographed.
Weather Notice:
The tour will run in sun or light precipitation and will be entirely outdoors. In the case of extreme weather, registered participants will receive an email with advanced notice of cancellation and rescheduled tour date.
Accessibility:
American Sign Language interpretation for this walk and other public programs is available free of charge upon request with three weeks’ advance notice. Please email programs@thetriennial.org with the subject line “Art + Stroll”.
Better Angels, Atlantic Wharf
Better Angels at Atlantic Wharf
Come as you are.
This summer, in parks, plazas, and public spaces across Boston, you’re invited to explore Better Angels, a free participatory pop-up installation by Boston artist Heather Kapplow. Step inside a playful world of inflatable clouds, heavenly gates, and campy angels, where visitors are invited to reflect on their ideals, share moments of connection, and move through an experience centered on empathy, grace, and understanding.
Through humor, performance, and participation, Better Angels offers a sanctuary from judgment and an invitation to imagine our best selves together. Read more about the project here.
Better Angels, Atlantic Wharf, Hours:
Friday, June 26: 12—7 PM
Saturday, June 27: 12—7 PM
Sunday, June 28: 10 AM—4 PM
Better Angels, Atlantic Wharf
Better Angels at Atlantic Wharf
Come as you are.
This summer, in parks, plazas, and public spaces across Boston, you’re invited to explore Better Angels, a free participatory pop-up installation by Boston artist Heather Kapplow. Step inside a playful world of inflatable clouds, heavenly gates, and campy angels, where visitors are invited to reflect on their ideals, share moments of connection, and move through an experience centered on empathy, grace, and understanding.
Through humor, performance, and participation, Better Angels offers a sanctuary from judgment and an invitation to imagine our best selves together. Read more about the project here.
Better Angels, Atlantic Wharf, Hours:
Friday, June 26: 12—7 PM
Saturday, June 27: 12—7 PM
Sunday, June 28: 10 AM—4 PM
Better Angels, Atlantic Wharf
Better Angels at Atlantic Wharf
Come as you are.
This summer, in parks, plazas, and public spaces across Boston, you’re invited to explore Better Angels, a free participatory pop-up installation by Boston artist Heather Kapplow. Step inside a playful world of inflatable clouds, heavenly gates, and campy angels, where visitors are invited to reflect on their ideals, share moments of connection, and move through an experience centered on empathy, grace, and understanding.
Through humor, performance, and participation, Better Angels offers a sanctuary from judgment and an invitation to imagine our best selves together. Read more about the project here.
Better Angels, Atlantic Wharf, Hours:
Friday, June 26: 12—7 PM
Saturday, June 27: 12—7 PM
Sunday, June 28: 10 AM—4 PM
Let’s Talk: Building A Heaven For Everyone
When you think of heaven on earth, what comes to mind? How might you “build” heaven on earth, and how might your vision of heaven differ from someone else’s?
Better Angels envisions our best selves for one another and the city by offering up grace where we fall short, in exchange for providing witness to a stranger. Giving someone else grace is a pathway to collective hope – and, in the case of Better Angels, grants you entry into heaven on earth. The artist, Heather Kapplow, will moderate a conversation about how we might construct “heaven” for all with the backdrop of the 250th anniversary of this country’s founding.
Jha D. Amazi leads the Public Memory and Memorials Lab at MASSDesign, where she works with communities to design projects that shape our public realm. She believes that public narratives should be expanded to honor and represent those who have been historically marginalized.
Dan McKanan is the Ralph Waldo Emerson Unitarian Universalist senior lecturer at Harvard Divinity School. He studies religious and spiritual movement for social transformation, focusing particularly on creating intentional communities as well as environmental activism.
Neda Moridpour (she/they) is a Kurdish-Iranian cultural futurist, artist, and organizer. They create collaborative spaces that center mutual care and visualization of future world-building through their community-engaged social practice art.
Triennial Art + Stroll Series: Downtown Crossing
Looking for a new way to see and understand the world around you? Curious about contemporary art, or how public art shapes Boston’s built environment? Want to get out of the office and into the fresh air?
Join the Boston Public Art Triennial for an intimate walking tour that invites conversation, fresh perspectives, and shared discovery. Together, we’ll explore not just the buildings and artworks, but also the people, histories, and memories that shape the city’s landscape.
No prior art experience is needed! Just bring your curiosity and a willingness to participate, learn, and connect with others.
This walk will begin at King’s Chapel and finish at the Dewey Square Mural on The Greenway.
Know Before You Go:
We recommend comfortable shoes, appropriate clothes for the weather, and of course some water as Boston in the summertime can be hot!
Weather Notice:
The tour will run in sun or light precipitation and will be entirely outdoors. In the case of extreme weather, registered participants will receive an email with advanced notice of cancellation and rescheduled tour date.
Accessibility:
American Sign Language interpretation for this walk and other public programs is available free of charge upon request with three weeks’ advance notice. Please email programs@thetriennial.org with the subject line “Art + Stroll”.
Collective Futures Fund x Accelerator: Info Session and Artist Talk
Join the Public Art Accelerator and Collective Futures Fund to learn about exciting opportunities for artists and cultural workers.
Matters of Consequence Opening Celebration
You’re invited to a free, participatory opening of Matters of Consequence by Lan Tuazon, presented in partnership with the Boston Public Art Triennial and Arts on the Point at the University of Massachusetts Boston.
Thursday, March 26, 3-5 PM
University Hall Atrium
Free and Open to all
Bring something to share!
Join us as Lan Tuazon shares reflections on her sculpture and its themes of alternative economies, and help us kick off the artwork’s 1-year exhibition in the Atrium through a gift exchange.
We are celebrating the opening of Matters of Consequence sculpture with a Swap Meet. Do you have a cherished item, book, or clothing you no longer need and want to share it with others? Have something too good to waste? Come and share it and join us in this give one, take one exchange.
Come celebrate the installation, meet the artist, and take part in this shared moment of exchange and reflection. Light food and refreshments will be served.
This event is free and open to all. Registration helps us welcome you with plenty of snacks!
Learn more about Matters of Consequence, including viewing hours, here.
About the Boston Public Art Triennial:
Boston Public Art Triennial is the city’s first and only public art organization dedicated to supporting artists and communities in bold, contemporary, public art with annual artwork commissions and an every-three-year citywide exhibition. The Triennial’s mission is to foster relationships between artists and the public to create bold public art experiences that open minds, conversations, and spaces across Boston, resulting in a more open, equitable, and vibrant city.
About Arts on the Point:
Arts on the Point is UMass Boston’s revolving public art program established in 1997 by Professor Emeritus Paul Tucker. Over the course of thirty years, world class artworks have been lent to the university and made accessible to students and the surrounding community. Focusing on postmodern and contemporary sculpture, Tucker’s curatorial projects for AoP have featured artworks from the likes of Sol LeWitt, Roy Lichtenstein, Willem de Kooning, Dennis Oppenheim, Luis Jiménez, Sheila Pepe, and Mark di Suvero, among others. Works were selected for their quality, significance, and relationship to the site. During their time on campus, artworks aided in the cultivation of the identity and profile of UMass Boston as a top tier research institution. Paul Tucker retired from UMass Boston in 2012, and since 2017 the program has been led by Gallery Director Sam Toabe. Established as a free, public sculpture park here at UMass Boston’s campus on Columbia Point, it has since developed to include large-scale sculptures, socially engaged artworks, temporary installations, exhibitions, and events. Arts on the Point continues to engage students, faculty, and staff, as well as local communities, through collaborations and free public programs.
Build DIY Speakers from Recycled Materials with Boston Building Resources
Participants will learn to make speaker cabinets from everyday objects to explore the variety of tones made by different materials.
In this class we will:
Turn trash and scrap materials into speaker cabinets
Learn how to power audio components
Disassemble and tinker with old speakers
Explore materials around the shop (or bring found materials to try out)
Each make a speaker to take home
This class is open to all ages and skill levels.
Nelly Kate (s/h) is a studio artist with an expanded practice in sound, expressing its material power through tones, tapes, water, wood, metal, and fiber. Over the past decade, Nelly has experienced fluctuations between late-deafness and hearing. This informs her creative research and practice in slowness, the awkwardness of inclusion, collaboration, and repetition.
Her work takes the form of installation, performance, and print. She creates spaces for public imagination and healing, often working with trash, reclaimed, and repurposed materials.
Nelly Kate holds an MFA in Print Media from Cranbrook Academy of Art and a BA in English from James Madison University. She is currently a creative director at MIT Spatial Sound Lab, working across the unceded lands of Massachusett, Pawtucket, and Wampanoag nations.
This program is presented in partnership with the Boston Public Art Triennial.
Final Ñ Press Open Hours at Maverick Landing Community Services
Join Triennial artist Gabriel Sosa and his studio assistants at Ñ Press for risograph printing press open hours!
DS4SI Curatorial Converations | Nato Thompson: Intervening in the Moment
Join DS4SI for a Curatorial Conversation on Intervening in the Moment. Much of DS4SI’s work has been about trying to sharpen how social interventionists interested in arcing towards social change might better design their social interventions. With Nato Thompson, this theme will engage seasoned interventionists in asking the question “How might social practice continue to sharpen its practice towards social change?”
Each week, the 20 Questions curators invite guests and studio staff into a conversation centered on the themes for their respective weekends. All events are free and open to the public.
More about Nato Thompson:
Nato Thompson is a curator, writer, and cultural strategist working at the intersection of art, politics, and community engagement. He is the co-founder of The Alternative Art School (TAAS), a global, artist-led platform for experimental art education. Through his consulting practice Dreaming in Public, he supports artists, institutions, and organizations in developing visionary projects, expanding visibility, and building sustainable careers.
Thompson previously served as Artistic Director of Philadelphia Contemporary and Chief Curator at Creative Time, where he organized landmark projects with artists such as Paul Ramírez Jonas, Trevor Paglen, Tania Bruguera, and Pedro Reyes. He began his career as Curator at MASS MoCA, curating exhibitions that blurred the lines between contemporary art and lived experience.
A widely respected voice in the art world, Thompson is the author of Seeing Power: Art and Activism in the 21st Century and Culture as Weapon: The Art of Influence in Everyday Life. His writing, curatorial projects, and lectures have helped shape a generation of socially engaged art.
DS4SI Curatorial Converations | Grisha Coleman: Rehearsing & Performing the Everyday
Join DS4SI for a Curatorial Conversation on Rehearsing and Performing the Everyday. Much of DS4SI’s work is about both understanding the everyday as a political project and finding collective agency to reimagine the everyday. Many of our social interventions invite participants into rehearsing and performing otherwise. Grisha Coleman will bring their own artistic and political vision to why a critique and reimagining of the everyday is needed.
Each week, the 20 Questions curators invite guests and studio staff into a conversation centered on the themes for their respective weekends. All events are free and open to the public.
More about Grisha Coleman:
Grisha Coleman is an artist working through choreography, performance, experiential technology and sound composition. Her research explores tensions across our physiological, technological, and ecological systems; human movement, our machines, and the places we inhabit. I engage this exploration in interdisciplinary ways, centering presence and experience to counter conventional dichotomies of quantitative/qualitative thought. Working with time-based performance and technology began at the California Institute for the Arts in Music Composition and Integrated Media. As a Fellow at the STUDIO for Creative Inquiry, Carnegie Mellon University, her work forged bridges among workers in the arts, human-centered computing, robotics and natural sciences. Ms. Coleman continued to build hybrid systems across applications of health, education, and the arts with teams of engineers and computer scientists as faculty in the School of Arts, Media, and Engineering and School of Dance at Arizona State University. Previous to this, she worked full time as an artist, notably founding and composing the music performance company HOTMOUTH, as well as a dancer with the acclaimed company the Urban Bush Women. She currently holds the position of Professor of Movement, Computation, and Digital Media in the in the College of Arts, Media, and Design at Northeastern University, and an affiliation with the School of Arts, Media, and Engineering, the School for the Future of Innovation in Society, and the Center for Race and Democracy at Arizona State University.
Her work has been generously supported by The Doris Duke Foundation’s Performing Arts Technologies Lab, a Harvard-Radcliffe Fellowship, The National Endowment for the Arts in Media grants, the Rockefeller Multi-Arts Project [MAP] Fund, Creative Capital, the Jerome Foundation, the Surdna Foundation Thriving Cultures Grant, the MacDowell Arts Colony, the New York Foundation for the Arts, Carnegie Mellon University’s STUDIO for Creative Inquiry, Pioneer Works, the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center, and Stanford University’s Mohr Visiting Artist Fellowship.
Ms. Coleman is a New York City native.
Ñ Press Open Hours at Maverick Landing Community Services
Join Triennial artist Gabriel Sosa and his studio assistants at Ñ Press for risograph printing press open hours!
Triennial 2025 Convening: Making Public
A gathering of cross-disciplinary voices speaking to the power of public art in shaping a more vibrant, open, and equitable city through inclusive public art. The day-long event will feature panels, small roundtables, artmaking, a musical performance, and celebration with new and old friends.
Participants include Adela Goldbard, Alexandra Paul Zotov, Catherine Morris, Alex Leondedis, Joseph Henry, Lori Lobenstine, Matthew Hinçman, Rita Lara, Steph Davis, Vic Quiñonez 'Marka27'—and make your voice heard in co-creating Triennial 2028 with the Department of Public Imagination.
Having trouble registering? Please email us at info@thetriennial.org.
Schedule
11:30 AM | Doors open
12:00 PM | Making Public Welcome
Michael Bobbit, Executive Director of Mass Cultural Council, and Kate Gilbert, Executive Director, Boston Public Art Triennial in an energetic, empathetic, and transparent conversation discussing the highlights and learns of Triennial 2025. A celebration of what was achieved, recognizing the collective effort, highlighting new forms of public art and community engagement, and emphasizing the Boston Public Art Triennial’s vision of a vibrant, equitable, and open city with public art. Introduction by Karin Goodfellow, Director of Transformative Art and Monuments, City of Boston.
12:30 PM | Why How It’s Made? Boston Public Art Triennial
With so many biennials and triennials taking place globally, why is now the time for a Public Art Triennial in Boston? At the end of the five months of Triennial 2025: The Exchange and over 100+ programs, we’re often asked what goes into making and expanding on the phenomenon of ‘ennials and the need for it in Boston. In this conversation, we’re joined by a collection of practitioners, thinkers, artists, and partners who helped to create this first-ever in Boston, and how the momentum of this moment continues throughout the years until the 2028 edition.
Panelists:
Adela Goldbard, Multidisciplinary and Triennial 2025 artist
Joseph Henry, Curator and Designer, Director of Cultural Planning for the City of Boston
Alex Leondedis, Triennial Public Art Ambassador, Teaching Artist
Rita Lara, Executive Director, Maverick Landing Community Services
Moderator: Marguerite Wynter, Director of Partnership and Engagement, Boston Public Art Triennial
Introduction: Catherine T. Morris, Founder & Executive Artistic Director, Boston Art & Music Soul (BAMS) Fest and Director, Arts & Creativity, The Boston Foundation
2:00 PM | Performance with Steph Davis
Celebrate the unveiling of Ekene Ijeoma’s second Stone Circle Bench as part of Triennial 2025 and his ongoing work Black Forest. A newly planted Kwanzan Cherry tree and bench will be the site of calming sounds and music by Steph Davis, marimbist, composer, and cultural activist.
3:00 | How Why It’s Made? Public Art In Boston
How do you make public art? Artists, administrators, and local community members often ask this question. But what if we started with why, not how? Whether you’re a creative or organizer who wants to bring art to your neighborhood’s shared spaces, or just someone curious about the conceptual and practical logistics behind public art production– this panel gathers makers, producers, community organizers, and cultural leaders from the public art ecosystem of Boston to discuss how public art is made by starting at the why. The panel will explore why making public art requires a unique ethos and intention throughout all of its processes–from the structural to the conceptual and the interpersonal–to help demystify the complexity of how it’s made and empower Bostonians towards making Boston a public art city.
Panelist:
Matthew Hinçman, Artist and Professor, Massachusetts College of Art and Design
Lori Lobenstine, Co-Founder of Design Studio for Social Intervention (DS4SI)
Victor "MARKA27" Quinonez, street artist and Creative Director of Street Theory
Alexandra Paul Zotov, administrator, producer, archivist
Moderated by: Jasper Sanchez, Assistant Curator, Boston Public Art Triennial
Introduction by: Kate Gilbert, Executive Director, Boston Public Art Triennial
4:30 | Roundtable Intermission and refreshments
Attendees are welcome to drop in to either roundtable during this Intermission.
A roundtable discussion on curating artists and conceiving a theme for Triennial 2025: The Exchange between Curator Tess Lukey and Executive Director Kate Gilbert.
A roundtable discussion for artists and folks interested in making public art centered on your questions about Public Art Permissions with Leo Crowley, Triennial Project and Exhibitions Director and Birgit Wurster, Senior Public Art Project Manager of the Mayor’s Office of Arts and Culture.
Ongoing | Future Visioning Workshop
Join us for an engagement activity with the Department of Public Imagination as we explore questions such as: How can we better listen while imagining what the future of Boston and public art will be, feel, and look like in 2028? What do you envision for public art in your city? All ideas—whether experimental, risky, or still in their early stages—are welcome. Let’s see what we can create together!
5:30 | Making Public Closing
Participants
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Adela Goldbard is a transdisciplinary artist-scholar and filmmaker from Mexico, based in Providence and Mexico City. Her work explores the potential of violence and destruction as aesthetic tools in the resistance against power. Drawing from experimental ethnography, her practice merges video, film, sculpture, photography, sound, text, and traditional crafts—including textiles, pottery, woodwork, and pyrotechnics. Goldbard is Associate Professor at the Rhode Island School of Design and holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has presented over 25 solo exhibitions, including a mid-career retrospective at Centro de la Imagen (Mexico City, 2024) and a major exhibition at Ex Teresa Arte Actual (Mexico City, 2025). Her significant public commissions include a collaborative pyrotechnic play with the Mexican community of La Villita for the University of Illinois (2019–20), a socially engaged project with the P’urhépecha community of Arantepacua for the FEMSA Biennial (2020–21), and, more recently, a pyrotechnic performance for the Boston Public Art Triennial. She is currently in post-production on her first feature film.
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Alexandra Paul Zotov is a creative strategist dedicated to advancing civic expression in public spaces by bringing people and culture together through participatory digital and physical initiatives. Her research driven practice creates frameworks for access and collaboration that expand the perception of what the role of culture can be in our everyday lives. With experience across institutions such as the City of Boston, Parrish Art Museum, Creative Time, and Elite Model Management, Zotov crafts innovative programs and policies that amplify the connection and impact between creativity and the public. Beyond her leadership roles, Zotov has mentored young designers at Artists for Humanity, championed equitable digital access, helped bring an exhibition that uplifts Young Thug’s contributions to culture at large to Art Basel, and regularly advises on grant-writing with artists and friends. A first-generation Ukrainian-American raised in Boston, Zotov studied Art History and Studio Art at Tufts University, School of the Museum of Fine Arts. Her independent practice has appeared in Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, NOWNESS, among others. In her free time, she writes.
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Catherine T. Morris is a proud mother, social entrepreneur, philanthropist, and visionary, who works at the intersection of culture, placekeeping, and movement building. As a cultural strategist, Ms. Morris has spent the last 25+years supporting Black artists and creatives through advocacy, artist development, platform creation, and the mobilization and engagement of local audiences to experience the arts from the perspective of Blackness.
Currently, she is the Director of Arts & Creativity at The Boston Foundation, where she leads strategic thinking, evaluation and implementation around grantmaking and the ways in which Foundation can best serve artists, communities and arts-supporters-at-large.
Ms. Morris is also the Founder and Executive Artistic Director of Boston Art & Music Soul (BAMS) Fest, a nonprofit organization that has built a cultural movement of breaking down racial and social barriers to arts, music and culture for communities and artists of color across Greater Boston and beyond. Since 2015, BAMS Fest has employed, supported and presented 900+ local artists, provided 600+ jobs to creative entrepreneurs, activated (65+) public spaces and attracted over (100,000+) visitors and residents to their programs.
Among many of Catherine’s many awards, honors and recognitions, she received the 2024 Arthur Fiedler Achievement Award for Bringing Arts to the Public, the 2022 Newell Flather Award for Leadership in Public Art, and was named one of Boston Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People. She has served as a thought leader on panels with institutions such as Berklee College of Music, the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, Emerson College, Longy School of Music, Northeastern University, Simmons University, the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, the Esplanade Association, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and the Museum of Fine Arts.
Catherine is a proud alumna of Temple University School of Sport, Tourism and Hospitality Management in Philadelphia, PA, and has received her Masters of Science from Simmons College (Boston, MA).
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Joseph Zeal-Henry is a designer and curator currently serving as Director of Cultural Planning for The City of Boston and is an assistant professor at Columbia GSAPP. He has written for Tank Magazine, Dezeen and Casabella. Joseph was selected as the 2024 Artlab/Loeb Fellow at Harvard University GSD.
In 2022, the British Council selected Joseph to co-curate the British Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2023. The pavilion, 'Dancing Before the Moon,' explores the need for architecture to look beyond buildings and economic structures and towards everyday social practices.
Joseph worked for the Mayor of London in the Culture & Creative Industries Unit, delivering new cultural infrastructure for London. Joseph worked on the New London Museum, East Bank and the Thames Estuary Production Corridor. In 2019 co-founded the social enterprise platform Sound Advice to explore new forms of spatial practice through music. In 2020, they published the book NOW YOU KNOW.
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Rita has 30 years of local and global nonprofit sector experience and in her ninth year, has managed Maverick Landing Community Services (MLCS) through a pandemic, distributing over 500 thousand pounds of food to East Boston in 2020 and working with cross sectoral partners to launch East Boston's first housing support station. She has been twice recognized for her work by the city of Boston with a 2020 Boston Community Champion award through the Mayor's Office for Immigrant Advancement and an Extraordinary Woman award from the Mayor's Office of Women's Advancement in 2023. She was also recognized with a housing advocate award from Eastern Bank in 2023. Prior to coming to MLCS she served as Director of Philanthropic Partnerships for Corporate Accountability International, an advocacy organization that safeguards human rights and the environment. Locally, she has worked with several Boston organizations serving Latinx communities. Rita has an Ed.M. in Human Development & Psychology with a concentration in Risk and Prevention from the Harvard University Graduate School of Education and a B.A. from Tufts University.
Rita serves on the board of the United Way of Massachusetts Bay and in 2025 was recognized by the Latino and Black Legislative Caucus.
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Alex Leondedis (he/him) has been working as a Public Art Ambassador for the past four years across various programs with the Triennial. Outside of public art, Alex is an actor, director, and teaching artist. Alex holds a BFA in Contemporary Theatre from Boston Conservatory at Berklee. Select acting credits include An Irish Carol and The Play That Goes Wrong (Greater Boston Stage Company),The Antelope Party and Lunch Bunch (Apollinaire Theatre Company); Hamlet, Macbeth, Much Ado, Romeo and Juliet, and Midsummer (Sh!t-Faced Shakespeare); A Wrinkle In Time (Wheelock Family Theatre); and Hurry Home: A Collaborative Performance (Samuel-Lancaster Productions). Select directing work includes Assistant Directing Fairview (Speakeasy Stage) and Everybody (Boston Conservatory), and directing for Lyric First Page Festival, TC Squared, The Boston Theatre Marathon, and Anne Eats The Beetle (From The Basement). Alex has worked as a Teaching Artist in programs with Wheelock Family Theatre, Company One, Central Square Theatre, Boston University Summer Theatre Institute, The Boch Center, Harvard’s TDM Division, and Kansas City Repertory Theatre. @leondedis. leondedis.com
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Lori Lobenstine is the Program Design Director and Co-Founder of the Design Studio for Social Intervention (DS4SI). At DS4SI she has helped design and lead public art interventions such as Public Kitchen, Dance Court, and Social Emergency Response Center (SERC), as well as civic engagement projects including GoBoston 2030, Upham’s Corner Arts & Innovation District and the speculative People’s Redevelopment Authority. Her writings include “Spatial Justice: A Frame for Reclaiming our Rights to Be, Thrive, Express and Connect” (available at http://ds4si.org), “Social / Justice / Practice: Exploring the Role of Artists in Creating a More Just and Social Public” and DS4SI's new book “Ideas—Arrangements—Effects: Systems Design and Social Justice” (Minor Compositions, 2020).
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Matthew Hinçman has been creating works for the public sphere for over 25 years. By appropriating the language of the commonplace, his interventions aim to disrupt the everyday and affect how public space is experienced. Two of his better known interventions - Jamaica Pond Bench, 2006, and STILL, 2014 - can be found in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston. His first major commissioned work for the City of Boston, Wythe & Web, opened in Fall 2021.
He has been a professor in the Massachusetts College of Art and Design’s 3D Arts program for over twenty years, and currently serves as the Dean of Faculty for the college.
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Michael J. Bobbitt is a distinguished theater artist. As the Executive Director of Mass Cultural Council, he is the highest-ranking public official in Massachusetts state government focused on arts and culture. Since 2021, he has led the Agency through several initiatives, including the development of its first Racial Equity Plan, d/Deaf & Disability Equity and Access Plan, and Native American & Indigenous Equity Plan; the launch of the nation’s first statewide Social Prescribing Initiative; the securing and distribution of $60.1 million in pandemic relief funding; and the design and implementation of a strategic plan for fiscal years 2024-2027. Recently, Bobbitt was listed as one of the Boston Business Journal’s Power 50 Movement Makers. He has been appointed by Governor Maura Healey to serve on both the Governor’s Advisory Council on Black Empowerment, the Statewide K-12 Graduation Council, and the Massachusetts Cultural Policy Development Advisory Council. He received an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts, honoris causa from Dean College, is a proud alumnus of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and recently completed his Masters of Business Administration (MBA) through the Global Leaders Institute.
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Steph Davis is a marimbist and cultural activist. Rooted in the culture and sounds of the African diaspora, Davis’ work explores themes of Black identity, historiography, and liberation.
Hailed by The Washington Post as a "crisp, controlled" performer who brings "bright humanity and expressive depth" to contemporary music, Davis has performed hundreds of concerts as a marimba soloist and chamber musician. Encompassing original arrangements of spirituals, West African gyil music, and Western classical and contemporary music, Davis’ performances push the boundaries of genre while centering African-descended people and cultures. Through their arrangements, commissions, and compositions, they have contributed over 30 works by Black composers to the marimba's solo and chamber repertoire. Davis endorses Marimba One instruments as a Marimba One Premier Artist.
As an educator, Davis is a teaching artist with Castle of our Skins and an instructor of music theory at the Boston Conservatory. They have led educational residencies at the Boston Children’s Chorus and Boston Children’s Museum and have presented performances and masterclasses on marimba and vibraphone at the University of Central Florida, University of Massachusetts Amherst, and the Center of Mallet Percussion Research at Kutztown University, and the Network for Diversity in Concert Percussion.
Davis has enjoyed residencies at Avaloch Farm Music Institute, Boston Center for the Arts, and the Goethe-Institut Boston. Their work has been supported by the New England Foundation for the Arts, Massachusetts Cultural Council, City of Boston Arts and Culture, and Cambridge Arts Council.
Davis received their Master of Music in marimba performance from Boston Conservatory at Berklee, where they studied with Nancy Zeltsman. They also hold a Bachelor of Music in percussion performance from the Conservatory.
Davis resides on unceded land of the Neponset band of the Massachusett tribe, bordertown Dorchester, Boston, MA.
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Victor "Marka27" Quiñonez is a multidisciplinary international artist who works at the intersection of contemporary art, graffiti, street art, sculpture, design, and art activism. With paintings, murals, installations, mix-media pieces, and private commissions for major brands, his robust palette blends elements of street and pop culture with Mexican and Indigenous aesthetics—a signature look the artist has coined “Neo Indigenous.” Marka27’s work has become part of graffiti and street art history, but he has flourished as a product designer, gallery artist, toy designer, and more. Marka27 has emerged as one of the most sought-after muralists in the world, mastering his craft since before “street art” was even a term. He lives and works in Brooklyn, NY where he and his wife and creative partner, Liza, run their award-winning creative agency, “Street Theory Gallery”.
Visit www.Marka27.com and www.street-theory.com to learn more.
Cannupa Hanska Luger Artist Talk
Arts on the Point and the Visiting Artist Lecture Series are proud to welcome internationally renowned artist Cannupa Hanska Luger to speak on his artwork Transmutation and his new book SURVIVA as part of the inaugural Boston Public Art Triennial. Through our partnership, we have been able to develop and install his newest public artwork on our campus, sited adjacent to University Hall. This project was made possible with participation from UMass Boston students from a variety of academic programs including History, Anthropology, Studio and Art History, as well as significant support from the Native American and Indigenous Studies program, and community members at UMass Boston’s second annual powwow.
Please join us for this free public program. No registration is required.
DS4SI Curatorial Converations | Grisha Coleman: Rehearsing & Performing the Everyday
Join DS4SI for a Curatorial Conversation on Rehearsing and Performing the Everyday. Much of DS4SI’s work is about both understanding the everyday as a political project and finding collective agency to reimagine the everyday. Many of our social interventions invite participants into rehearsing and performing otherwise. Grisha Coleman will bring their own artistic and political vision to why a critique and reimagining of the everyday is needed.
Each week, the 20 Questions curators invite guests and studio staff into a conversation centered on the themes for their respective weekends. All events are free and open to the public.
More about Grisha Coleman:
Grisha Coleman is an artist working through choreography, performance, experiential technology and sound composition. Her research explores tensions across our physiological, technological, and ecological systems; human movement, our machines, and the places we inhabit. I engage this exploration in interdisciplinary ways, centering presence and experience to counter conventional dichotomies of quantitative/qualitative thought. Working with time-based performance and technology began at the California Institute for the Arts in Music Composition and Integrated Media. As a Fellow at the STUDIO for Creative Inquiry, Carnegie Mellon University, her work forged bridges among workers in the arts, human-centered computing, robotics and natural sciences. Ms. Coleman continued to build hybrid systems across applications of health, education, and the arts with teams of engineers and computer scientists as faculty in the School of Arts, Media, and Engineering and School of Dance at Arizona State University. Previous to this, she worked full time as an artist, notably founding and composing the music performance company HOTMOUTH, as well as a dancer with the acclaimed company the Urban Bush Women. She currently holds the position of Professor of Movement, Computation, and Digital Media in the in the College of Arts, Media, and Design at Northeastern University, and an affiliation with the School of Arts, Media, and Engineering, the School for the Future of Innovation in Society, and the Center for Race and Democracy at Arizona State University.
Her work has been generously supported by The Doris Duke Foundation’s Performing Arts Technologies Lab, a Harvard-Radcliffe Fellowship, The National Endowment for the Arts in Media grants, the Rockefeller Multi-Arts Project [MAP] Fund, Creative Capital, the Jerome Foundation, the Surdna Foundation Thriving Cultures Grant, the MacDowell Arts Colony, the New York Foundation for the Arts, Carnegie Mellon University’s STUDIO for Creative Inquiry, Pioneer Works, the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center, and Stanford University’s Mohr Visiting Artist Fellowship.
Ms. Coleman is a New York City native.
Ñ Press Open Hours at Maverick Landing Community Services
Join Triennial artist Gabriel Sosa and his studio assistants at Ñ Press for risograph printing press open hours!
Unity Newspapers Workshop
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.
Remote Sensing: Artists in Conversation
Join us for an engaging discussion on place-based making, intersectional approaches to climate research, and environmental and cultural stewardship with artists Beatriz Cortez, Hannah Perrine Mode, and Sarah Kanouse moderated by curator Thea Quiray Tagle.
This event is open to the public and registration is encouraged.
This program is presented in collaboration with Northeastern’s Office of City & Community Engagement and the Boston Public Art Triennial.
Andy and Gabriel's Super Duper Sticker Party
Join us next Wednesday, October 15, 6:30 - 8:30pm for an evening of printing and snacks and stickers that are nothing but super duper! Come by Maverick Landing Community Services where you can pick up some stickers designed by ñ press, Gabriel Sosa and Andy Li, and also make some of your own!
No registration required.
Public Art and Social Change with Pedro Alonzo and Patrick Martinez
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.
Panel Discussion | The Other One: Dependency, Distortion, Displacement
Join us for a panel discussion about The Other One, a site-specific performative exhibition by HEW (House for the End of the World), featuring the work of three interdisciplinary artists and presented in October at Goethe Institut Boston and subsequently at Kwadrat Galerie in Berlin, Germany. The project confronts the topics of dependency, displacement, and distortion through live performance, AI-driven sculpture, and sound installation.
The exhibition is open from 12:00–7:00 PM between October 11–14.
In the Well: Trauma and Healing with Swoon and Dr. Judith Herman
How do we talk about trauma and healing through public art and creative work? Caledonia Curry, also known as Swoon, presents her Triennial 2025 commission In the Well: The Stories We Tell About Addiction, currently on view at the Boston Public Library’s Central Library in Copley Square. The project questions the prevailing narratives around addiction and draws inspiration from the groundbreaking research of Boston-based doctors Judith Herman and Bessel van der Kolk, who transformed how we understand the connection between trauma and addiction.
The evening begins with a reading by the artist from her novella Sibylant Sisters, a story of two sisters living with a witch bound to a noxious substance brewed in a well of toads. Through this imaginative tale of girlhood, Swoon reframes how drug addiction is perceived, explained, and often misunderstood.
Following the reading, Dr. Judith Herman will join Swoon for a conversation that deepens and challenges our perceptions of trauma and addiction, while pointing toward the possibility of healing.
This program is presented in partnership with the Boston Public Library.
The Other One | Exhibition Hours
The Other One is a site-specific performative exhibition by HEW (House for the End of the World), featuring the work of three interdisciplinary artists and presented in October at Goethe Institut Boston and subsequently at Kwadrat Galerie in Berlin, Germany. The project confronts the topics of dependency, displacement, and distortion through live performance, AI-driven sculpture, and sound installation. HEW, a nomadic contemporary art platform founded in Berlin by Elana Katz in 2020, presents its first edition outside of Germany.
Exhibition Hours: October 11 - 14, 2025, 12:00 PM - 7:00 PM
Through endurance-based performance, Katz's work activates the space and triggers Dario Srbić's AI-driven 3D printer — a non-human performer translating her ephemeral gestures into sculptural artifacts. Joshua Fineberg's spatialized sound environment immerses viewers in a visual-sonic experience that induces a sense of disorientation.
The core conceptual themes of dependency, displacement, and distortion consider and reshape the notion of perception and interaction, encouraging reflection on shifting histories, the fragility of place, and the transitory nature of belonging.
Spotlight Talk: Artist Perspective on The Knowledge Keepers
Join acclaimed artist Alan Michelson (Mohawk member of Six Nations of the Grand River and School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University alumnus) as he discusses his site-specific sculptures created for the MFA’s inaugural “Huntington Avenue Entrance Commission.” Michelson’s installation, titled The Knowledge Keepers, honors local Indigenous presence and is, in part, a challenging response to Cyrus Dallin’s Appeal to the Great Spirit (1909), a sculpture that has stood at the MFA’s entrance since 1912. Michelson works in a range of media and materials, and his work has been exhibited at the Tate Modern, MoMA PS1, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Gwangju Biennale.
The Other One | Exhibition Hours
The Other One is a site-specific performative exhibition by HEW (House for the End of the World), featuring the work of three interdisciplinary artists and presented in October at Goethe Institut Boston and subsequently at Kwadrat Galerie in Berlin, Germany. The project confronts the topics of dependency, displacement, and distortion through live performance, AI-driven sculpture, and sound installation. HEW, a nomadic contemporary art platform founded in Berlin by Elana Katz in 2020, presents its first edition outside of Germany.
Exhibition Hours: October 11 - 14, 2025, 12:00 PM - 7:00 PM
Through endurance-based performance, Katz's work activates the space and triggers Dario Srbić's AI-driven 3D printer — a non-human performer translating her ephemeral gestures into sculptural artifacts. Joshua Fineberg's spatialized sound environment immerses viewers in a visual-sonic experience that induces a sense of disorientation.
The core conceptual themes of dependency, displacement, and distortion consider and reshape the notion of perception and interaction, encouraging reflection on shifting histories, the fragility of place, and the transitory nature of belonging.