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In celebration of the Friends of the Public Garden’s 50th anniversary in Boston, famed public artist Janet Zweig will unveil a large, participatory public sculpture – a hand-crafted, double-sided, wooden cabinet with removable illuminated markers that invite discussion about ownership for an installation called “What Do We Have In Common?” beginning September 22 on historic Boston Common.
The Boston Common is a powerful backdrop for this experience. Prior to the arrival of Europeans, the land that became the Common was occupied by the Massachusett tribe that considered all land to be held in common. As America’s first public park, it has 387 years of history. It has witnessed executions, sermons, protests, and celebrations. It has hosted famous visitors and everyday gatherings of friends and family. The earliest townspeople grazed their cows and beat their rugs on the Common. The arrival of Boston’s public water system in 1848 was heralded by a Water Celebration at the Common’s Frog Pond attended by thousands. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke from Parkman Bandstand on April 23, 1965 after a mile-long freedom march through the streets of Boston. On October 1, 1979, Pope John Paul II celebrated the first papal mass in North America to 400,000 people.
“What Do We Have In Common?” is curated by Now + There, a non-profit public art organization bringing temporary, site-specific artworks to all neighborhoods of Boston, and the installation will also be part performance. Boston-based Guides will pull out blue illuminated markers from the cabinet each day and engage passersby in conversation around questions printed on the markers such as: “Who Owns the Moon?” “Who Owns the Shadows?” and “Who Owns Happiness?” “Who Owns the Trees?”
At night, the cabinet and markers will glow, lighting up the park as a reminder of the care needed to protect the beauty and dynamism of public spaces that we own in common. “What Do We Have In Common?” will be on view for 30 days.
“What Janet Zweig has so poetically brought to light is the crux of this work of being stewards of common resources: bringing people together to take care of something we all deeply value. Our partnership over these past 50 years has made us stronger and it makes our parks better for future generations,” Liz Vizza, Friends of the Public Garden President, said.
The cabinet will also serve as a Giving Library for the public to take texts on the theme of shared resources. There will be fiction, poetry, children’s books, and histories of Boston Common, available for all to take and book plates will be signed by Zweig. Reflective of the Common’s rich cultural diversity, 34 of the 200 markers in the cabinet will be in Spanish, Haitian Creole, Mandarin, Cantonese, Vietnamese, and Cape Verdean Creole. Many of the Guides, who will be prompting conversations with the public, will self-identify as Black, Indigenous, and People of Color.
“Participatory public art enlivens spaces and galvanizes people,” Now + There’s Executive Director Kate Gilbert said. “With Janet Zweig’s decades-long history of sparking contemplation through subtly whimsical approaches, plus the 10 Boston area citizens acting as the pulse of ‘What Do We Have In Common?,’ we’re posing provocative questions that invite reflection and discussion about commonality in a way that encourages everyone to be part of crafting alternative solutions. This is the power of public art.”
For Zweig, who lived in Boston and Cambridge in the 1980s and now resides in New York, this is her first public art commission in Boston. She has worked in the public art realm since the 1990s, consistently creating work that speaks to environmental issues. Her major projects include a kinetic installation on a pier along the Sacramento River, a performance space in a prairie on a Kansas City downtown green roof, a generative sentence wall in downtown Columbus, a light installation and memorial in Pittsburgh, a system-wide interactive project for eleven Light Rail train stations in Minneapolis, and a 1200′ frieze at the Prince Street subway in New York. While she has created public sculpture, interactive works, and performance, “What Do We Have in Common?” seamlessly brings all three elements together for the first time.
“After much research, I had more questions than answers about the idea of commons,” Zweig said. “The markers ask a lot of those questions. I am hoping the Guides, who spread the markers to the wider public around the park over the month, will facilitate many questions including an important one for us all: What do we have in common?”
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Janet Zweig is an artist based in Brooklyn, NY who works primarily in the public realm. Her sculpture and books have been exhibited widely in such places as the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Exit Art, PS1 Museum, the Walker Art Center, and Cooper Union. Awards include the Rome Prize Fellowship, NEA fellowships, and residencies at PS1 Museum and the MacDowell Colony. She currently has a year-long residency with the New York City Mayor’s Office of Sustainability and teaches at the Rhode Island School of Design and Brown University.
ABOUT NOW + THERE
Now + There (N+T) is a non-profit public art curator changing the landscape with temporary and site-specific public artworks. Through its curatorial efforts, N+T is transforming Boston into a public art city by creating a portfolio of projects that supports artistic risk-taking, community dialogue, and cultural change. Fostering artists of many diverse backgrounds and inspiring the public to create bold art experiences that open minds, conversations, and spaces across Boston is the organization’s goal, resulting in a more open, equitable, and vibrant city. (www.nowandthere.org).
ABOUT FRIENDS OF THE PUBLIC GARDEN
For 50 years, Friends of the Public Garden has been caring and advocating for these precious resources. One of our nation’s first parks advocacy groups, FOPG was formed in 1970 by a group of neighbors, to begin the work of saving the Common, Garden, and Mall, after decades of neglect. Through the decades, FOPG has brought people and partners together with the city to nurture these three historic greenspaces and the collection of public art within them, committed to ensuring the parks are welcoming spaces for all.
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