A new Triennial wants to make Boston a public art city

On a bustling weekday afternoon at the main branch of the Boston Public Library, passersby stopped to snap pictures of a ramshackle house that had recently materialized in the middle of Deferrari Hall. Caledonia Curry, also known as the street artist Swoon, was putting finishing touches on the whimsical installation, which stood 16 feet tall and was decorated with junkyard scraps: tin cans, old keys, a hubcap. Life-sized wooden puppets peeked out from inside the house. A passing child spotted the dolls and made a beeline for the sculpture.

“Oh no, no climbing inside,” Curry said, and laughed. “That’s definitely going to be a thing. The kids are going to want to climb in, so we’re going to have to put some signs out.”

Curry’s installation is part of a slew of site-specific works coming to Boston’s public spaces as part of the first Boston Public Art Triennial. The event officially kicks off May 22 and runs through October. Twenty commissioned artworks will be on view in eight neighborhoods, inviting the public to look, ponder and make judgements of their own. (And, perhaps, ignore the signage and try to climb inside.)

“What we’ve been trying to do this whole time is make Boston a public art city. And it’s been challenging,” Triennial director Kate Gilbert said last month during an interview at the organization’s Boston offices.

In 2015, Gilbert founded a nonprofit called Now + There, which commissioned temporary public art works in greater Boston. The organization mounted a number of site-specific public artworks, including an ambitious project by the renowned sculptor Nick Cave. But Gilbert felt Now + There’s efforts weren’t paying off.

“The impact of our work, at a financial level, is a lot of money. You know, these projects have been like 200,000 [dollars] each,” Gilbert said. “And they would be up for a period of time, and then come down, and not everyone was seeing them.”

When the pandemic hit, the organization was forced to take stock.

“ It was this moment of, ‘Is Now + There going to be a project?’ ” Gilbert said. “Or can we somehow be an institution?’”

That’s how Now + There became the Boston Public Art Triennial. Instead of mounting a handful of installations every year, the nonprofit plans to present a newsworthy amount of art every three years. By creating something like a festival, Gilbert hopes to generate buzz.

“ I would love for someone in LA to be like, ‘Did you hear what’s happening in Boston?’” she said.

The first Triennial will cost $8 million. But the organization plans to raise a total of at least $14 million to continue its Lot Lab and public art accelerator program and provide some working capital. The number was calculated based on a feasibility study of similar events, like Prospect New Orleans, a contemporary art triennial, and the biennial Desert X in Coachella Valley.

For the debut event, the Boston Public Art Triennial commissioned 16 site-specific works from artists hailing from Brazil, Mexico, Germany, and the United States. Boston-based artists Alison Croney Moses, Andy Li, Evelyn Rydz, Gabriel Sosa and Stephen Hamilton are among those presenting work. Four local museums are also mounting site-specific commissions, bringing the total number of commissioned works to 20. The Triennial is planning more than 100 free events around the installations.

The majority of the work will appear in centrally located neighborhoods. But a number of pieces will appear in less touristy – and less wealthy – locales, like East Boston, Mattapan and Roxbury. The hope is to instill in Bostonians a sense of ownership over the art, and perhaps draw visitors beyond the typical tourist sites.

Notably for a public art festival, there will be no murals.

“Murals are known, and they’re expected, when we talk about public art,” Gilbert said.

Instead, Triennial artists will present sculptures, flags, signs – even trees. There are plans for a replica of a colonial ship, by the Mexican artist Adela Goldbard, to be burned in effigy on City Hall Plaza – provided the right permits can be secured – and a 24-hour video livestream from a rainforest in South America, by the Berlin-based artist Julian Charrière.

The theme of the Triennial is the Exchange, a riff on Boston’s reputation as an intellectual powerhouse. Artists consulted with local experts as they developed their projects, and many of the pieces tackle pressing issues of the day. Curry’s installation, for example, is a fairytale exploration of childhood trauma, drawing on the artist’s experience with her mother’s mental illness and addiction. Curry hopes to curate conversations with local intellectuals, like Bessel van der Kolk, author of the seminal work on trauma “The Body Keeps the Score.”

Other installations explore issues like youth homelessness, climate change, Black lives lost to Covid-19 and the appropriation of Indigenous identity.

“We’re really interested in this idea of Trojan Horse art-making,  where there’s something that looks like [one] thing, and then embedded within it [are] all these radical political potentials,” said Adam Khalil, an Ojibway artist, filmmaker and member of New Red Order.

New Red Order, which describes itself as a public secret society, is planning an eye-catching monument downtown. “Material Monument to Thomas Morton (Playing Indian)” mashes up racist Indigenous caricatures with other charged symbols familiar to Boston: a Puritan collar, the Celtics mascot, a Thanksgiving gourd. The statue and its accompanying plaque prompt viewers to reconsider mainstream narratives about America’s founding.

“Making the audience question ‘what is this,’ and ‘why is it here,’ and ‘what is it doing’ hopefully can lead to larger questions  that … we should grapple with collectively and try to figure out,” Khalil said.

It’s not the only provocative work. A series of neon signs drawing attention to the experiences of unhoused teens, by Los Angeles artist Patrick Martinez, posed a challenge to Triennial organizers, who struggled to find sites to display the pieces.

“A lot of people aren’t comfortable having a sign that says ‘No jobs, no home’ on the side of their building,” said Triennial co-curator Pedro Alonzo.

But Gilbert believes audiences are up to the challenge of art that asks difficult questions. All of the work, she said, was visually strong enough to stand on its own.

“We underestimate how intelligent the general public is,” Gilbert said. “We don’t need to put out … teddy bears and roses to make people happy in public space. We can put out things that [make] you scratch your head. But you know what? You remember that moment.”