Jeffery Gibson; ‘Because Once You Enter My House It Becomes Our House; 2020; Courtesy the Artist; Socrates Sculpture Park; Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York; Kavi Gupta, Chicago; Roberts Projects, Los Angeles; Image by Scott Lynch.

As New York City continues to reopen in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is once again safe and possible to explore the city’s beautiful public spaces. Luckily, there are many new public art installations on display this month that you can safely view outside or in a space where you can keep a safe distance away from others. We’ve brought back our roundup so you can discover them all! These installations are spread throughout the five boroughs and touch on a number of prevalent contemporary topics such as the importance of essential workers, the Black Lives Matter Movement, and the history of voting in the United States.

Without further ado, here are the public art installations on display in New York City this August:

1. A Monumental New Piece at Socrates Sculpture Garden

A massive new piece, named Because Once You Enter My House, It Becomes Our House, is now on display at Socrates Sculpture Garden in Queens. The vibrantly colored sculpture was created Jeffery Gibson, recipient of the 2019 MacArthur Foundation “Genius Grant.” It is meant to serve as a monument to inclusion and diversity.

Because Once You Enter My House, It Becomes Our House draws inspiration from and pays visual homage to Indigenous North American peoples, pre-Columbian Mississippian architecture, and to modern-day queer camp aesthetics. The multi-tiered structure is a reference to the architecture of the ancient city of Cahokia, the largest city of the North American Indigenous Mississippi people. In addition to the sculpture, Gibson and the Socrates Sculpture Garden have curated a series of Indigenous led performances that will take at the park in the coming months.