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New York City's Department of Cultural Affairs names two finalists for a Queens public sculpture honoring the jazz singer.
Tuesday. The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs released its shortlist for the Billie Holiday monument, planned for Queens Plaza in Long Island City. Two names: Thomas J. Price, a British sculptor known for life-sized bronze figures, and Tavares Strachan, a Bahamian conceptual artist whose work tends toward scale and light.
The commission follows a 2022 announcement that the city would honor Holiday with a permanent public work. Holiday, who died in 1959, spent parts of her life in New York and recorded some of her most recognized material here. The site selection took two years. Queens Plaza, a transit hub with pedestrian flow, was chosen over more obvious Manhattan locations.
Price's work leans portraiture. His sculptures, often placed in public parks or city centers, depict anonymous figures in contemporary dress. The bronze surfaces are polished to near-black, and the figures stand at or above average human height. Strachan's practice is broader: neon installations, orbital launches, large-scale text pieces. His 2013 work The Distance Between What We Have and What We Want involved launching a piece of meteorite into space. A monument commission would be a narrower frame than his usual output.
The shortlist narrows from an initial pool of over 60 submissions. The city's selection panel included representatives from the Department of Cultural Affairs, the Queens Museum, and the Percent for Art program. Public comment on the finalists runs through June 15. A final selection is expected by late summer, with construction slated for 2027.
The project budget is $2.5 million, funded through the city's Percent for Art allocation. That's mid-range for a New York public monument. The Holiday work will be the first major city-commissioned sculpture honoring a Black woman in Queens. Previous monuments to Black cultural figures in the borough have been privately funded or smaller in scale.
Two finalists, two approaches. One builds portraits. The other builds ideas. The choice will say something about what the city thinks a monument should do.
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