Boston Public Art Triennial Hopes to Offer a New Image of the City

Based on a knockoff of an Indigenous totem pole produced for tourists that the artist chopped like firewood and cast in bronze, the stooped figurative piece appears in the process of reassembling itself from pieces on the ground as an act of self-determination. “This work references the idea of picking yourself up in a world that has discarded you and having to navigate that,” Galanin said.

The piece received $100,000 in funding from the “Un-monument” initiative led by the Mayor’s Office of Arts and Culture to create temporary projects that expand the range of who and what is commemorated in public space. The multiyear program, funded by a $3 million grant from the Mellon Foundation, awarded money for research and development to more than 30 projects last year, according to Karin Goodfellow, who oversees the initiative in the Mayor’s Office and considers the Triennial a curatorial partner.

“We’ve been doing this work somewhat quietly, as a city,” but are now getting to a place where those efforts can be shared, Goodfellow said. An augmented reality project by Roberto Mighty that seeks to revive lost African American stories tied to Copp’s Hill Burying Grounds in Boston’s North End will be started by “Un-monument” in tandem with the Triennial in May.

“It’s been a multiyear journey to make sure we can tell the fuller story of who we have been and who we are today,” said Mayor Michelle Wu, whose office has supported the Triennial with an additional $500,000. The goal of “The Exchange,” she said, “is to create an experience that cuts across barriers in the city — geographic, generational, cultural — to really draw everyone in.”

Leading the charge for contemporary art in the city for the last 27 years has been Jill Medvedow, who stepped down last month as director of the ICA Boston. “I recognize, having both done public art here and built two buildings now, that building visibility, building critical mass, building audiences takes time,” she said.

“Whether the whole is greater than the sum of its parts,” she added, “both in terms of what the artists and the Triennial produce separately and together, it’s a great wait-and-see moment.”