After Viral ‘Embrace,’ Hank Willis Thomas Is Tapped for Boston’s Next Public Art Program

The city of Boston announced thirty new public art initiatives, including a slew of monuments to underrepresented episodes of local history. The initiative is funded by a $3 million grant from the Mellon Foundation, the largest of such investments ever made into Boston’s public art program.  

“This investment in public art programs is groundbreaking and will support our efforts to highlight the many cultures, talents, and histories of our residents. It is an honor to see this innovation through art,” Boston Mayor Michelle Wu said in a statement.

Seven artists and organizations have been commissioned to realize public art installations. ​​A Trike Called Funk will work with local graffiti artists for an homage to local practitioners; the Kinfolk Monuments Project is invited to create virtual monuments to under-celebrated Black historical figures; Alison Yueming Qu and Jaronzie Harris have been tapped for an homage to Boston’s Chinatown; artists Katherine Farrington, Roberto Mighty, and Ruth Henry, and LaRissa Rogers and Zalika Azim, are also set to participate, with more details forthcoming. 

However, the most prominent artist to be involved may be Hank Willis Thomas, who will present The Gun Violence Memorial Project, a commemoration of the weekly toll of gun violence in the United States.

The project will be the latest major public art commission in Boston for Thomas, who was previously commissioned to create a monument to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his wife Coretta Scott King for 1965 Freedom Plaza which honors 4 local civil rights leaders from the 1950s through the 1970s. That monument, titled The Embrace, was unveiled in January 2023.

A 20-foot tall bronze monument composed of faceless, interlocking limbs that visitors can walk beneath, the monument recieved a mixed reception from critics and quicly went viral after some social media users said that the sculpture, seen from certain angles, appeared lascivious.

“It’s important that I talk about how my practice is a conversation with the viewer,” Thomas told ARTnews. “To whatever degree there is adversity, it is also an opportunity for me to engage. How could I be upset or disappointed when a work about communal love is so well-embraced?”

The new program, titled “Un-monument | Re-monument | De-monument: Transforming Boston”, encompasses research grants for future projects, such as a monument to Ella Little Collins, Malcolm X’s older sister. Also under development is an interactive memorial reflecting on the Vietnamese diaspora experience; and a series of public interventions centered on the heroics of Crispus Attucks, a Black man and the first casualty of the American Revolution. 

“Stone and bronze have been used for centuries to show what’s important and who matters. Thankfully, those kinds of monuments are increasingly being erected to people whose accomplishments have been left out of our shared origin story,” Mighty said in a statement. “New media presents artists and commissioning bodies with exciting ways of creating monuments that are at once site-specific, instantly available worldwide, and financially within reach.”

Boston has invested considerable energy in recent years to reimagine the purpose of its public art, after historians and activists urged city officials to include more representations of its influential Black residents.