Happening Type: Installation

Only one person at a time can sit in this lavender gazebo at the Thomas Cole National Historic Site, but the birds are always welcome. The Pollinator Pavilion by artists Mark Dion and Dana Sherwood is a space as much for people as birds—specifically the ruby-throated hummingbird, which is an essential New York pollinator. Living flora and paintings adorn the wooden structure, which was informed by the fantastic depictions of nature by nineteenth-century artist Martin Johnson Heade and now anticipates Cross Pollination: Heade, Cole, Church and our Contemporary Moment, an exhibition that was rescheduled to spring 2021 due to the pandemic.

In her more than four decades of sculpture, performance, and video art, Maren Hassinger has examined the relationship between the organic and industrial. On the Roof Deck Sculpture Garden, the bends of her wire and concrete works contrast with the nearby curves of Aspen Mountain. One piece has swayed strands of thick wire twisted into waves so they appear warped by the wind; another in the planters has furled metal like strange foliage. Each asks the viewer to consider their surroundings and how both natural and human forces have shaped this land.

Artist Steven Frost was inspired by his aunt Helen and her partner Alice to drape the brick building that houses the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art in a colossal green and white woven grid. Frost frequently employs the tactile nature of fiber art to explore queer history and family connections. This huge piece, recalling a lawn chair with its plastic webbing, remembers a loving relationship that was challenged for acceptance by making something domestic into something monumental. After the work’s yearlong installation, Frost plans to turn the material into tote bags to carry on the story of Helen and Alice.

On breezy evenings the hillside behind the Ent Center for the Arts at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs illuminates with 2,000 lights, each on an eight-foot-tall windmill with LEDs visualizing the movement of the air. The large-scale installation is by Patrick Marold, who often makes public sculptures designed to create experiences with light; his Shadow Array at Denver International Airport works with the shifting shadows of more than 200 spruce logs. The Windmill Project is part of the ongoing interactive art initiative Art WithOut Limits and The Space(s) Between, a collaboration with the University of Denver's Vicki Myhren Gallery siting outdoor artworks between Colorado Springs and Denver.

A forty-foot-tall concrete water tank is now an aperture to the sky. James Turrell has transformed an abandoned factory relic into his latest, and largest, freestanding circular observatory named C.A.V.U. MASS MoCA, located in a former textile complex, now has a work from each of the American artist's six decades exploring his preferred medium: light. He began his Skyspace series in 1974 to focus perception on the sky and its minute-by-minute changes of color. Complementing this new immersive experience, MASS MoCA exhibits Turrell's ceramic work in Lapsed Quaker Ware to examine how his upbringing as a Quaker has shaped his contemplative art.

The first permanent art installation from nomadic Denver-based art museum Black Cube is a sculpture, skatepark, and flood-mitigation landscape with undulating concrete where skaters can soar and rain can be guided away from areas where it may stagnate. Created by artist Matt Barton, Community Forms is situated on the public campus of the TAXI development that includes both residential and work spaces. It’s a fresh way to think about public art that fosters community and encourages environmental consciousness while offering a dynamic statement through curvy contours that are perfect for getting air.

What if we treated the flourishing of a tree like a sporting event? Artist Amanda Lovelee is expanding on her previous pep rallies for the planet and pennant flags made to cheer on common weeds with this outdoor exhibition. Two “trees-in-residence” are the stars of the celebratory programming staged at the museum’s bleachers. This project engages with deeper ideas of how plants are migrating due to climate change, and how we can welcome them to ensure that our local biodiversity continues to thrive.

Over two decades, LACMA has undergone an ambitious revamp. Additions like Michael Heizer’s Levitated Mass boulder and Chris Burden’s Urban Light street lamps have made the largest museum in the western U.S. a landmark. This new expansion caps off that growth with a massive, free-form concrete building by architect Peter Zumthor. In its 10,000 square feet, more than 2,500 works from the permanent collection are planned to be on view. And in a radical break from museum tradition, the inaugural installation organizes them not by time or culture, but by oceanic regions.

Kites soaring through the formidable West Texas wind contribute to the sonic experience of this multimedia work by musician Roberto Carlos Lange and artist Kristi Sword. Involving film, sound, and sculpture, Kite Symphony meditates on the environment around Marfa, with ephemeral instruments made from native materials and crowd-sourced audio adding to the mix, encouraging a new approach to how music can relate to and be created by the unpredictable elements of a landscape.

The immersive Oklahoma City art hub Factory Obscura transports its explorable experiences to the University of Oklahoma’s art museum to engage visitors in expanding their senses. Drawing on the permanent collection and its colors—in particular the work of artist and designer Olinka Hrdy, who experimented with expressing music through vibrant shapes—Synesthesia questions what a color could sound like, smell like, or feel like.

In parks, along hiking trails, outside community centers, and in the zoo, favorites from the Gilcrease are being shared while the museum is closed for a reconstruction. Three artworks were selected through a public vote with the chosen pieces reproduced for display at thirty-one local sites for three months. The initiative launched in the fall with Pop Chalee’s Forest Scene in which blue deer bound through an otherworldly forest. Each selection is accompanied by workshops, events, and digital content, like augmented reality, for an in-depth examination of the art. Through September 2023.

Buoyantly hued and accented with the iconography of her hometown, Los Angeles, Lauren Halsey’s art has garnered attention in recent years for its flair and maximalist spirit. Now she takes on one of her biggest venues yet with an architectural structure called The Eastside of South Central Los Angeles Hieroglyph Prototype Architecture (I) on the roof of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Visitors will be able to explore the space adorned with imagery borrowed from sources as diverse as 1960s utopian architecture, graffiti tagging, and ancient Egypt. Through October 22, 2023.