Art captures the wonders and diversity of human life, yet gallery admission fees, geographical barriers and cultural gatekeeping often limit who gets to experience it. Public art offers a vital way of bridging these gaps. In recent years, ambitious projects across cities worldwide have demonstrated how public sculpture and installations can be innovative and socially meaningful, transforming urban spaces into sites of reflection and dialogue.
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Nekisha Durrett, Don’t Forget to Remember (Me) (Bryn Mawr, US, 2025)
In the Cloisters of Bryn Mawr College, a work of public art quietly reshapes the ground beneath visitors’ feet. Don’t Forget to Remember (Me) transforms the courtyard into a braided network of more than 9,000 hand-laid pavers that loop around the central fountain in the form of a knot. Embedded within this pattern are nearly 250 engraved stones bearing the names of Black maids, porters and domestic workers employed by the college between 1900 and 1940. Scattered among them, illuminated glass pavers mark the many people whose labour sustained the institution but whose names were never recorded.
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2. Antony Gormley, Close (Bukhara, Uzbekistan, 2025)
For Bukhara Biennial “Recipes for a Broken Heart”, Antony Gormley worked with Uzbekistani artist Temur Jumaev and local brickmakers to create Close. Using traditional techniques and 95 tonnes of unfired sun-dried earth and straw, they shaped roughly 100 ‘pixelated’ bodies arranged in a labyrinth of meditative and crouching forms. The result is a stunning encouraging visitors to actively explore the installation, connect with their roots, and consider themes of belonging and coexistence.
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3. IMAGINE, About A Living Culture (New York City, US, 2025)
Nepalese artist IMAGINE (Sneha Shrestha) works across sculpture, painting and murals, blending Sanskrit scriptures with graffiti aesthetics. For her public sculpture, About a Living Culture, installed in Jackson Heights’ Diversity Plaza, she created a six-foot golden arch composed of repeating cut-steel renderings of ‘Ka’, the first letter of the Nepali alphabet. Drawing on the arched thresholds common in Nepalese vernacular architecture, the work serves as “an homage to the Himalayan diaspora’s living traditions.”
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4. Laura Lima, An Indistinct Form (Boston, US, 2025)
Brazilian artist Laura Lima brought her ecological practice to Mass Audubon’s Boston Nature Center in 2025 with An Indistinct Form. Collaborating with local volunteers, naturalists and scientists, Lima created a series of sculptural interventions designed to serve the animals themselves — offering shelter and enrichment for birds, butterflies and other wildlife. The installation invites visitors to reconsider their relationship with the natural world, lending the spotlight to non-human inhabitants.
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5. Ai Weiwei, Roots: Palace (London, UK)
Ai Weiwei’s Roots: Palace was installed in St Botolph without Bishopsgate for Sculpture in the City’s 14th edition. Cast in iron from moulds of endangered Pequi Vinagreiro tree roots sourced in Brazil, the sculpture transforms millennia-old organic matter into weathered forms through the traditional ‘lost wax’ method. Working with Brazilian artisans, Ai Weiwei channels themes of displacement — both his own exile and the broader crises of refugee populations and indigenous communities facing forced removal from their lands.
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