NEW YORK, NY.- Times Square Arts and For Freedoms partnered once more to present Messages for the City: Dreaming Forward, a new iteration of the collaborative public art campaign, Messages for the City, that has been on view in Times Square and throughout NYC since April. Beginning today, the public art campaign will appear on Big Belly receptasigns in over 120 locations across the Times Square district.
As a year full of unprecedented challenges comes to a close and a new one begins, Messages for the City continues its promise of amplifying artist voices and broadcasting them directly to the public. In Messages for the City: Dreaming Forward, eight artists reflect on our collective futures. United in Times Square, these works are meditative declarations and interrogations that remind us to pause, reflect, and ready ourselves for work that lies ahead. All messages speak to the respective artist’s desires and intentions for the future — they consider love, freedom, coexistence, and inclusive representation, and serve as prompts for the continued responsibility we share in shaping our world together.
“We believe in the legacy of Times Square as a space for creative expression, civic engagement, and the communication of big ideas. Throughout 2020, we’ve worked with For Freedoms to amplify artists’ voices across all of the public platforms we have access to. Messages for the City has become an ongoing means for channeling gratitude, solidarity, and urgent calls to action out to hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers that come through this district each day,” said Times Square Arts Director Jean Cooney. “As the year comes to an end, this campaign proposes a moment of reflection and looks towards our future as a collective whole.”
Artists include Sadie Barnette, Brandan B-Mike Odums, Jun Mabuchi, Sofía Gallisá Muriente, Jon Santos, Hank Willis Thomas, Alisha B. Wormsley, and Amelia Winger-Bearskin.
“It’s been an honor to collaborate with Times Square Arts on Messages for the City throughout 2020. Our previous iterations of this campaign spoke directly to essential workers, recognizing them for their tireless work as the rest of us remained quarantined inside our homes. This series of images, all part of the For Freedoms billboards campaigns, broadens the audience. We hope that these messages of love, self-care, coexistence, and representation will guide each of us as we imagine and create where we go from here,” said For Freedoms Creative Producer Taylor Brock.
This ongoing public art campaign — which began at the initial peak of the COVID-19 pandemic as a partnership between Times Square Arts, For Freedoms, Poster House and Print Magazine — has invited over 40 artists including Jenny Holzer, Carrie Mae Weems, Christine Wong Yap, Duke Riley, Mel Chin, Pedro Reyes, and Milton Glaser, to create public service announcements and messages of solidarity and gratitude to New Yorkers across the city. At the time, images of an empty Times Square had become emblematic of how swiftly public life shifted. Now months later, amidst concurrent crises struck by racial injustices and a historic U.S. presidential election, Times Square and other organizations have returned to public spaces as sites of protest, political action, and creative expression. Dreaming Forward speaks directly to the needs of such a moment and invites us to see ourselves through the eyes of these artists.
