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.
