From major art prizes to local interventions, recent public works show how creative practice continues to thrive in the public realm. From Grand Rapids to San Francisco, Lexington to New York, this roundup highlights new projects shaping the landscape—ArtPrize 2025, the expanding Big Art Loop, Blessing Hancock’s Petal Drop Flutter, and Ai Weiwei’s Camouflage.
ArtPrize 2025 transformed downtown Grand Rapids into a massive open gallery, connecting artists and audiences across 155 venues throughout the city. The annual competition drew extraordinary participation this year—with over 1,100 artists from around the world and nearly 900,000 visitors exploring installations, performances, and events.
More than an exhibition, ArtPrize served as a platform for education and engagement: over 3,000 K–12 students took part through the ArtPrize edu field-trip program, and 12,000 curriculum guides reached classrooms and educators. In total, $155,000 in grants and $375,000 in awards went directly to artists, underscoring the event’s role as a true incubator for creative practice.
Award Highlights:
The Public Vote Grand Prize went to Arras by Mark Lewanski, while the Juried Grand Prize honored Scraps by Second Vibess (Camille Steverson and Kaitlynn Fitzpatrick). Full list of 2025 winners can be seen here.
Across juried and public selections alike, this year’s honorees highlight how deeply art can activate shared space—turning the streets of Grand Rapids into a collective reflection on imagination, craft, and community.
The San Francisco initiative known as Big Art Loop, backed by the Sijbrandij Foundation, is charting a new path for urban public art. The ambitious program plans to install up to 100 large-scale artworks across the city by 2028—eight already completed and another twelve targeted for the waterfront by the end of 2025.
Unlike traditional municipal art programs, Big Art Loop is privately funded and independent from city oversight, allowing rapid deployment and experimentation with form, scale, and location. The initiative has sparked both excitement and debate within the art community for its streamlined approach to placing monumental works in public space and its potential to transform San Francisco’s visual and cultural landscape.
Image top: Naga by Cjay Roughgarden, Stephanie Shipman, and Jacquelyn Scott
Blessing Hancock Transforms a Lexington Tunnel into “Petal Drop Flutter”
Transforming a downtown pedestrian tunnel into an illuminated public artwork, internationally recognized artist Blessing Hancock has completed Petal Drop Flutter in Lexington, Kentucky. Commissioned by Gatton Park, the 58-foot installation features 142 metal panels—shaped like petals, droplets, and wings—etched with words from Will Allen Dromgoole’s poem “The Bridge Builder.” Lit by shifting LED light and accompanied by ambient sound, the work merges nature, poetry, and technology, embodying Hancock’s signature approach to immersive, community-centered design.
The piece reflects Lexington’s blend of heritage and innovation, offering visitors a sensory experience that connects local history to contemporary public art. Petal Drop Flutter joins more than 70 monumental works by Hancock worldwide and marks one of several major U.S. installations the artist has completed this year.
Installed at Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms State Park in New York, Ai Weiwei Camouflage inaugurates the Art X Freedom initiative—a new program exploring the relationship between creative expression and human rights. The large-scale open framework, veiled in camouflage netting, extends across the island’s southern tip, transforming a symbol of concealment into a meditation on truth and visibility. As sunlight and weather shift through the patterned surface, the work becomes both shelter and signal—an architectural reflection on vulnerability, protection, and political resistance. Referencing histories of war, migration, and state control, Camouflage continues Ai Weiwei’s longstanding investigation into the fragility of freedom in public space.
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