Nine Women by Alex Katz (b. 1927, New York City, NY) is a 240’ billboard painting in the heart of Times Square, the center of New York’s Theater District. Doris C. Freedman, Chairman of the Public Arts Council, commented that Katz’s work “is an excellent example of how public spaces can be enlivened and enhanced through the integration of art into the urban environment. Alex Katz’s design—a procession of 24 women’s faces—adds a flowing, light, and spacious sense to the usually congested environment of 42nd Street and Broadway.” The work consists of 23 female heads—each 20’ high—that perch on the 240’ billboard and the 60’ tower looming behind, lending the distinctive vision of one of the nation’s leading contemporary artists to America’s most commercial thoroughfare.

Messages to the Public formed a key part of the Public Art Fund’s long-term commitment to media-based artworks. Running from 1982 to 1990, the show featured a series of artists’ projects created specifically for the Spectacolor board at Times Square.

As Russell Miller from Ohio newspaper The Toledo Blade explained in his article on February 19, 1984, “every month, a different artist presents a 30-second animation on the Spectacolor light board—an 800-square-foot array of 8,000 red, white, blue, and green 60-watt bulbs that dominates the Times Square vista. The spot is repeated more than 50 times a day for two weeks, wedged into a 20-minute loop of computer-animated commercials.

Spiders by Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010, b. Paris, France) was on view in Rockefeller Center during the summer of 2001. The work features a 30-foot-tall spider, Maman—meaning “mama” in Bourgeois’ native French—carrying a basket of eggs and flanked by two smaller spiders. Brian D. Leitch from The New York Times Magazine stated, “Louise Bourgeois, like the giant mother-spider sculpture she created several years ago, has been spinning a web of weirdly magnificent work for more than six decades—and finally, at 90, she’s getting her full due.”

Tatzu Nishi (b. 1960, Nagoya, Japan) is known internationally for his temporary works of art that transform our experience of monuments, statues, and architectural details. His installations give the public intimate access to aspects of our urban environment and at the same time radically alter our perceptions. For his first public project in the United States, Nishi has chosen to focus on the historic statue of Christopher Columbus.

The marble statue, which rises to more than 75 feet atop a granite column, was designed by the Italian sculptor Gaetano Russo. It was unveiled in 1892 to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s first voyage to the Americas. Despite its prominent public location, the statue itself is little known, visible only as a silhouette against the sky or at a distance from surrounding buildings.

Nishi’s project reimagines the colossal 13-foot-tall statue of Columbus standing in a fully furnished, modern living room. Featuring tables, chairs, couch, rug, and flat-screen television, the decor reflects the artist’s interpretation of contemporary New York style. He even designed wallpaper inspired by memories of American popular culture, having watched Hollywood movies and television as a child in Japan. Discovering Columbus offers both a unique perspective on a historical monument and a surreal experience of the sculpture in a new context. Allowing us to take a journey up six flights of stairs to a fictional living room, Tatzu Nishi invites us to discover for ourselves where the imagination may lead.

Flow Separation is a commission by New York–based artist Tauba Auerbach (b. 1981, San Francisco, CA), which transforms the historic Fireboat John J. Harvey into a contemporary “dazzle ship.” Invented by British painter Norman Wilkinson during World War I, the original dazzle patterns were painted onto ships to optically distort their forms, confusing enemy submarines tracking their distance, direction, and speed. With their geometric shapes, the dazzle designs were heavily indebted to both animal camouflage and avant-garde movements like Cubism, Futurism, and Vorticism. Thousands of vessels were dazzled in the UK and US, including in New York City at the Brooklyn Navy Yards.

Conquest is a compelling new collective performance conceived by acclaimed artist Pope.L (1955–2023, b. Newark, NJ). It is inspired by his iconic solo crawls, where the artist dragged himself across a number of different urban landscapes. Navigating the streets and parks of Downtown Manhattan, Conquest extends this irreverent and provocative 40-year tradition of public performance with an ambitious group crawl involving over 140 volunteers.

The artist selected participants who reflect the cultural and demographic diversity of New York City to crawl in relay a 1.5 mile-long route from the West Village’s John A. Seravalli Playground to Union Square via Washington Square Park’s triumphal arch. Crawling together, strangers experience the struggle and vulnerability of giving up their physical privilege, satirizing their own social and political advantage. As the course of Pope.L’s Conquest unfolded, we are all offered an insight into the power and contradictions of collective action.

Born in Ethiopia and currently based in Côte d’Ivoire, Aïda Muluneh creates vibrant photographs that highlight her national, political, and cultural identity. Through the use of metaphor, she creates vignettes that poetically portray facets of her experiences as an Ethiopian woman and immigrant. Muluneh left Ethiopia at a young age and grew up between Yemen and England, later spending time in Cyprus and Canada before attending college in the United States. Her work reflects her investment in sharing complex, distinctly African perspectives, as well as her own journeys across the globe. This is where I am is an exhibition of 12 new artworks by Muluneh (b. 1974, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia) presented in over 330 JCDecaux bus shelters across New York, Boston, and Chicago in the United States, and Abidjan in Côte d’Ivoire.