Brooke Kamin Rapaport, a leader in public art who has steered the program in Madison Square Park in New York for the last 11 years, is stepping down at the end of December as artistic director and chief curator of the Madison Square Park Conservancy, the organization announced Wednesday. It also said its board has formed a committee to conduct an open call for her successor.
Rapaport, 62, said in an interview last week that she would be heading to the American Academy in Rome as a visiting scholar to advance independent research for a book investigating democracy, public art and civic space.
“It feels like the right time for me to pursue this research and writing,” she said. “Whenever I’ve presented the program in Madison Square Park, I’ve always talked about a democratic context. That’s become dire and urgent.”
The announcement comes at the culmination of a busy 20th-anniversary year for the park’s program, with the unveiling last week of Nicole Eisenman’s “Fixed Crane” — the fourth commission this year — followed by the convening of the conservancy’s annual public art symposium and a party celebrating alumni.
“Brooke has really pushed the boundary on what we consider public art for a park,” Holly Leicht, the conservancy’s executive director, said, pointing to the caliber and diversity of artists. Leicht also credited Rapaport for a global consortium of 50 curators that she established in 2017 who meet monthly to examine “public art in a very rigorous way.”
Since 2013, Rapaport has tapped 22 artists, including Maya Lin, Teresita Fernández, Erwin Redl, Abigail DeVille and Rose B. Simpson, to create ambitious projects in the 6.2-acre oasis rung by skyscrapers and traversed by some 60,000 visitors a day. Martin Puryear’s 40-foot-high sculpture “Big Bling,” presented in 2016, was the springboard to the artist’s solo exhibition in 2019 at the Venice Biennale for the U.S. Pavilion. That Pavilion, organized by Rapaport, brought international prominence to the conservancy as the commissioning institution.
Max Hollein, the Metropolitan Museum’s chief executive and director, who participated in a conservancy symposium, emphasized working in gallery versus outdoor public spaces. “Not only is Brooke someone who has a really good eye in selecting artists but she is also someone who can make things happen, especially important in the context of public art,” he said in an interview. “You have to overcome all sorts of hurdles — financial, logistical — and mediate between artistic vision and the realities of a site.”
Many artists chosen by Rapaport had never worked outdoors, including Diana Al-Hadid, Leonardo Drew, Josiah McElheney, Sheila Pepe and Arlene Shechet. For Shahzia Sikander, best known for two-dimensional works adapting the language of Indo-Persian miniatures to explore gender and identity, that leap of faith was a game-changer.
“I hadn’t had anyone take a chance on me,” Sikander said.
She scaled up a feminine form into a pair of fierce allegorical figures projecting female autonomy and bridging race and culture. In 2023, one 18-foot figure, “Witness,” sat on the park’s lawn. The other sculpture, “NOW,” is still on view on the rooftop of a nearby New York State Courthouse.
“Witness,” co-commissioned with the Public Art University of Houston System, traveled to Texas, where it incited protests by an anti-abortion group in February. In July, someone beheaded the figure.
“We forget sometimes the power of a sculpture to bring forth vociferous perspective in people,” Rapaport said. “It’s essential to ensure that ongoing generations can also participate in public expression and creativity. Public art is at the forefront of that.”
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