Nina Chanel Abney: San Juan Heal at Lincoln Center

Nina Chanel Abney’s monumental work of art for the facade of David Geffen Hall, entitled San Juan Heal, pays homage to San Juan Hill. In the 1940s and ’50s, this predominantly Black and Brown neighborhood was forcibly displaced to make way for redevelopment, including what would become Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. Abney’s constellation of figures, words, shapes, and symbols reflects the thriving community that lived here. Featured residents include pioneering health care workers Edith Carter and Elizabeth Tyler. Also pictured are James P. Johnson, whose music gave rise to the Charleston dance craze, and Thelonious Monk, a pioneer of bebop and other jazz styles. Reclaiming this important history in her bold and vibrant style, Abney aims to spark curiosity and inspire a more inclusive future.

Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts is one of the world’s premiere performing arts organizations. On October 8, 2022, David Geffen Hall reopened as a welcoming cultural anchor for New York City, some 60 years after it was first inaugurated as the home of the New York Philharmonic. The new Hall reimagines the concert-going experience by providing more inclusive public spaces for diverse cultural performances and community uses. This initiative includes an annual program of art commissions, where all members of the public are invited to engage with the work of leading contemporary artists free of charge. The democratic approach instills a sense of welcome both indoors and out, beckoning those who may never have interacted with Lincoln Center or the New York Philharmonic, and encouraging those long familiar with the campus to see it afresh.

Public Art Fund partnered with The Studio Museum in Harlem to advise Lincoln Center on the selection of artists for this first iteration of the art program. The Hall’s 65th Street facade was identified as a prominent site for a site-specific commissions, which Nina Chanel Abney has transformed into a captivating tribute to the vibrant history and culture of San Juan Hill.

The artwork is commissioned by Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in collaboration with The Studio Museum in Harlem and Public Art Fund.

Nina Chanel Abney is known for combining representation and abstraction. Her paintings capture the frenetic pace of contemporary culture. Broaching subjects as diverse as race, celebrity, religion, politics, sex, and art history, her works eschew linear storytelling in lieu of disjointed narratives. The effect is information overload, balanced with a kind of spontaneous order, where time and space are compressed and identity is interchangeable. Her distinctively bold style harnesses the flux and simultaneity that have come to define life in the 21st century. Through a bracing use of color and unapologetic scale, Abney’s canvases propose a new type of history painting, one grounded in the barrage of everyday events and funneled through the velocity of the internet.

Abney’s work is included in collections around the world, including the Brooklyn Museum, The Rubell Family Collection, Bronx Museum, and the Burger Collection, Hong Kong. Her first solo museum exhibition, Nina Chanel Abney: Royal Flush, curated by Marshall Price, was presented in 2017 at the Nasher Museum of Art, North Carolina. It traveled to the Chicago Cultural Center and then to Los Angeles, where it was jointly presented by the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and the California African American Museum. The final venue for the exhibition was the Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase College, State University of New York.

Extending our core mission to present dynamic exhibitions by the world’s most compelling artists and make culture accessible to all, Public Art Fund: Creative Partnerships brings strategic planning, curatorial, project management, and communications expertise to leading cultural institutions, corporations, and civic organizations across the globe. Through these collaborations, Public Art Fund commissions permanent installations and temporary exhibitions in line with the unique vision of our partners and the specific parameters of each site, resulting in new artworks that activate public spaces, create engaged constituencies, and amplify the impact of our partners’ own initiatives through the power of public art.