Welcome to Public Art Dialogue (PAD), an organization devoted to public art.
PAD was founded on the premise that dialogue is the essential element in all effective public art endeavors. Our goal is to provide platforms for dialogue among public art professionals and students across disciplines. Learn More
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Edra Soto, Casa-Isla | House-Island, 2022. Chicago Botanic Garden. Flourish: The Garden at 50.
Photo credit James Prinz.
Hamza Walker, Kara Walker & Bennett Simpson
2025 PAD Founders Awardees
The officers of Public Art Dialogue are pleased to announce that Hamza Walker, Kara Walker, and Bennett Simpson have been awarded the 2025 Public Art Dialogue Founders Award for Achievement in the Field of Public Art for their exhibition Monuments presented jointly at the Geffen Contemporary, Museum of Contemporary Art, and The Brick in Los Angeles.
Installation shot of MONUMENTS on view at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA October 23, 2025 - May 3, 2026. Photo courtesy the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA.
Monuments marks a new boldness in our national reckoning with post-Civil War monuments. This exhibition truly was a monumental undertaking, necessitating honesty, creativity, courage, persistence, and community. Over a period of many years, curators brought together decommissioned monuments from numerous cities, newly commissioned works by celebrated contemporary artists, as well as additional works borrowed from private collectors and institutions. The centerpiece of the exhibition is Kara Walker’s sculpture Unmanned Drone, which she fashioned from dismembered parts of an equestrian statue of the Confederate General Stonewall Jackson. Critic Jason Farago wrote that Monuments was “destined-to-be-disputed,” thereby perfectly answering the intent of PAD’s founders to amplify ‘cross-disciplinary and cross-community dialogue.’
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m i c c a’ performance on and around Maren Hassinger ‘VesselNine’ at New Agora: Queer Cafeteria; 2022. Socrates Sculpture Park. Image by Scott Lynch.
