Palo Alto's recent Code:ART, a free, biennial interactive media art festival, reminds us of the breadth, depth and impact of public art in cities across our county. Code:ART transformed downtown Palo Alto into a vibrant playground of light, sound and imagination, reimagining the city's downtown streets, plazas and alleyways into a luminous landscape.
As global temperatures increase annually, communities across the world are facing the troubling fact that their infrastructure was built for a climate that no longer exists. Offering a glimpse of the potential issues to comae, residents of Phoenix, Arizona-the hottest city in the US, and fifth-largest-are grappling with life-threatening conditions, including recent reports of heatstroke and burns affecting its community of unhoused individuals.
"I'm not so interested in the expression of something. I'm more interested in what the material can do. So that's why I keep exploring," said artist, educator, and civic leader Ruth Asawa, reflecting on a six-decade-long career. Featuring some 300 artworks, Ruth Asawa: A Retrospective charts the artist's lifelong explorations of materials and forms in a variety of mediums, including wire sculpture, bronze casts, drawings, paintings, prints, and public works.
Seven major artists will transform JFK's new $9.5 billion terminal into a soaring showcase of New York creativity. The journey through JFK's new Terminal One will be more gallery walk than security slog. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and New Terminal One just unveiled an ambitious public art and cultural program that turns the $9.5 billion international terminal, set to open in phases beginning 2026, into a full-on love letter to New York.
Open to the public since May 10, 2025, the 19th Venice Architecture Biennale has entered its final month before closing on November 23. Curated by Italian architect Carlo Ratti, this edition, titled "Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective." has brought together over 750 participants across 65 national pavilions and 11 collateral events, making it one of the most expansive editions in the Biennale's history.
This is Greenwich's famous Painted Hall, and at the moment it's also home to a light display by the artist Peter Walker. It's surprisingly calming, helped along by soft ambient music that fills the space. Tall pillars of coloured light rise and fade, creating a gentle effect that you can simply settle into and enjoy. There's something of the "sensory room" about it - soothing visuals scaled up to cathedral-like proportions.
Momotaro, named for the popular Japanese folklore hero who is also often translated as "Peach Boy," was a gift from San Jose's oldest sister city, Okayama, Japan. The relationship between the cities was established in 1957, and the replica of the bronze statue that guards Okayama Station has stood in Guadalupe River Park near the Center for the Performing Arts since 1993. The statue depicts the boy and his dog, monkey and pheasant companions who go on a quest to defeat a band of ogres,
In a city filled with buses, subways, cabs and pedicabs, there's a new kind of transit in town-but you can't ride this one, just admire it. A 30-foot pink carriage drawn by white plastic horses carrying Hello Kitty backpacks now sits in the middle of Times Square as part of an art installation by Yvette Mayorga called Magic Grasshopper. The striking piece-decked out with smiley face designs, pink suitcases and lowrider gold rims-also includes painterly scenes of migration as a way to challenge European art historical tropes.
For 2025, the landmark's Christmas illuminations will be inspired by paintings by Gustavo Zuluaga Villegas, a Colombian-born amateur artist and a member of the Shard's housekeeping team. The 65-year-old amateur painter has worked at the Shard for eight years, but in his spare time creates vibrant abstract impressionist paintings, depicting everything from horses, to still life to abstract shapes.
The high-profile street artist KAWS will take centre stage in a major Abu Dhabi public art initiative launching next month. KAWS'S work-which shows the artist's signature Companian figure reclining on its back while lifting a lit moon in its hands-will feature in the second edition of Manar Abu Dhabi. The exhibition of light works takes its name from the Arabic for "light" or "guiding light".
and I demonstrate how art can gently tip the scales back toward harmony. Think of visual art as a toolkit to soothe the mind and spirit. Every day, we are inundated with imagery urging us to work harder, buy more ... and never stop. Art offers the exact opposite. It slows and calms us down, sharpens our critical thinking, nurtures happiness, and helps us resist the endless cycle of consumption.
This month, urban centers around the world are hosting a massive public art project helmed by Nōvo Collective. uncommissioned has tapped 54 artists for a global initiative that sees the city as a playground, inviting participants "to slip playful, overlooked, or quietly defiant gestures into the cracks of everyday life." In Stellenbosch, South Africa, Strijdom van der Merwe installed sun-activated text works displaying heady phrases like "the visible is a shadow cast by the invisible."
The bronze statue of Margaret Thatcher by the sculptor Douglas Jennings has a rating of 2.8 out of five on Google Maps. Although curiously, none of the reviewers seems to have overly preoccupied themselves with the quality of the craftsmanship or the fidelity of the likeness. One of the most important PMs this country ever had, writes one. It's a public toilet but there's nowhere to wash your hands, writes another.
The monumental green figure of Kermit the Frog is set to soon take flight above the stately facades of Place Vendôme as part of the Art Basel Paris Public Program. From October 20th to 26th, 2025, Alex Da Corte's artwork will occupy the sky, transforming the historic square into an unlikely stage for a scene of comic melancholy. Presented by Sadie Coles HQ, the project takes the form of an enormous helium-filled inflatable, a towering, 19.75-meter-long effigy of the beloved Muppet icon.
Canterbury Cathedral has drawn the attention of some unexpected critics for its unconventional new art installation. Featuring graffiti-style stickers answering the question "What would you ask God?", the display intends to creatively broadcast earnest questions of faith, but some think the installation is in poor taste. While graffiti fonts will always be divisive thanks to their historical connection with vandalism, views have shifted over the decades as street art has become a legitimised genre of contemporary design.
For more than two decades, French street artist Invader-born Franck Slama-has turned city streets into digital landscapes, reimagining the urban environment as a living arcade. His iconic 8-bit mosaics have quietly infiltrated skylines and alleyways in over 79 cities across 20 countries, transforming the familiar into something playful, subversive, and undeniably his. Now, in an unexpected yet fitting next move, Invader is bringing his unmistakable pixel art to the heart of Music City with his first-ever Nashville "invasion."
Absolut Vodka has unveiled the latest in its iconic artist collaboration series with a striking homage to Pop Art legend, Keith Haring. With a custom bottle and immersive gallery experience taking over Charing Cross tube station (aptly renamed 'Haring Cross'), the brand champions Haring's mission to make art accessible for all. After a triumphant Warhol collaboration back in 2024, Absolut was left questioning how it could top its previous project.
On Saturday, as visitors walk through the display, motion sensors will trigger a piece of city furniture to speak, Wong said. 'We See You,' an independent multimedia installation, reimagines park landscapes as talking, thinking characters. (Submitted by Eunice Wong) "There's kind of a pleasant surprise element," they said. "You don't expect a tree to talk to you." We See You is among the more than 85 works on display by local, Canadian and international artists.
We are partnering with Capture Photography Festival -the largest lens-based art festival in Western Canada-for the seventh time! We are in charge of selecting a public art installation which will be mounted at the Olympic Village Canada Line Station in Vancouver from April-August 2026. We are currently accepting applications from photographers and lens-based artists around the world. The deadline for submissions is October 20th, 2025.
The UK artist Michael Landy has this week unveiled his memorial to humanitarian aid workers, which has been in development for over a decade. The new public art piece, which is located at Gunnersbury Park Museum in west London, is intended to commemorate all humanitarians who have been killed in service, of whatever nationality. Landy's work is comprised of a circle of 15 human-scale figures, grouped in fives, with spaces allowing visitors to complete the circle.
Heartwood Preserve doesn't look like typical stormwater infrastructure. Instead of a primarily utilitarian design, this project in Omaha doubles as public art. Meyer Studio Land Architects created a series of 14 sculptural water retention basins across 500 acres of land that sit in a watershed at risk of flooding. The project is meant to be enjoyed by the public and even has features that educate about climate change.
Another piece of public art has come to the Embarcadero this week, with the official unveiling Tuesday of , a larger-than-life-size mermaid made of metal and other materials, by artist Dana Albany. makes her debut today at Pier 1/2, next to the Ferry Building, with KRON4 grabbing a couple snaps. Below you can see the sculpture in another recent installation at Mare Island, and prior to that, at the Chatsworth Estate in England.
My grandfather realized you could draw a figure in a wire - like, a two-dimensional drawing but expanded in three dimensions. Make a volumetric drawing of a person, a portrait, or an acrobat, or an animal, or some scene, and creating something that was experienced by people in a very different way than you would a solid mass.
The MIT Museum presents Remembering the Future, a monumental installation by artist Janet Echelman created in collaboration with architect, engineer, and MIT Associate Professor Caitlin Mueller. Suspended above the museum's grand lobby and open to the public from September 18th, 2025, through Fall 2027, the work transforms climate data into a three-dimensional form that invites visitors to engage both visually and conceptually.
At the time, they said that the pigeon was chosen because it had been around for over a millennium in London. It wasn't a universally well-received logo, and for many people, the pigeon is more a sign of being in an urban landscape than of being in London in particular. That New York was unveiling a giant statue of a pigeon as a local symbol of that city at the same time that the London Museum was pitching the pigeon as a distinctly London symbol
Sean Hope, the owner of DX Arcade, said the mural was special to the business and called it the arcade's "calling card." It was unveiled in February, when the arcade threw a grand opening ceremony. The mural is 10 feet by 20 feet and depicts a futuristic cityscape featuring young people. It was meant to promote the business as a forward-looking arcade, in contrast to the nostalgia-oriented "barcades" that are growing more popular, Hope told Boston.com.
