This month, urban centers around the world are hosting a massive public art project helmed by Nōvo Collective. uncommissioned has tapped 54 artists for a global initiative that sees the city as a playground, inviting participants "to slip playful, overlooked, or quietly defiant gestures into the cracks of everyday life." In Stellenbosch, South Africa, Strijdom van der Merwe installed sun-activated text works displaying heady phrases like "the visible is a shadow cast by the invisible."
The bronze statue of Margaret Thatcher by the sculptor Douglas Jennings has a rating of 2.8 out of five on Google Maps. Although curiously, none of the reviewers seems to have overly preoccupied themselves with the quality of the craftsmanship or the fidelity of the likeness. One of the most important PMs this country ever had, writes one. It's a public toilet but there's nowhere to wash your hands, writes another.
The monumental green figure of Kermit the Frog is set to soon take flight above the stately facades of Place Vendôme as part of the Art Basel Paris Public Program. From October 20th to 26th, 2025, Alex Da Corte's artwork will occupy the sky, transforming the historic square into an unlikely stage for a scene of comic melancholy. Presented by Sadie Coles HQ, the project takes the form of an enormous helium-filled inflatable, a towering, 19.75-meter-long effigy of the beloved Muppet icon.
Canterbury Cathedral has drawn the attention of some unexpected critics for its unconventional new art installation. Featuring graffiti-style stickers answering the question "What would you ask God?", the display intends to creatively broadcast earnest questions of faith, but some think the installation is in poor taste. While graffiti fonts will always be divisive thanks to their historical connection with vandalism, views have shifted over the decades as street art has become a legitimised genre of contemporary design.
For more than two decades, French street artist Invader-born Franck Slama-has turned city streets into digital landscapes, reimagining the urban environment as a living arcade. His iconic 8-bit mosaics have quietly infiltrated skylines and alleyways in over 79 cities across 20 countries, transforming the familiar into something playful, subversive, and undeniably his. Now, in an unexpected yet fitting next move, Invader is bringing his unmistakable pixel art to the heart of Music City with his first-ever Nashville "invasion."
On Saturday, as visitors walk through the display, motion sensors will trigger a piece of city furniture to speak, Wong said. 'We See You,' an independent multimedia installation, reimagines park landscapes as talking, thinking characters. (Submitted by Eunice Wong) "There's kind of a pleasant surprise element," they said. "You don't expect a tree to talk to you." We See You is among the more than 85 works on display by local, Canadian and international artists.
We are partnering with Capture Photography Festival -the largest lens-based art festival in Western Canada-for the seventh time! We are in charge of selecting a public art installation which will be mounted at the Olympic Village Canada Line Station in Vancouver from April-August 2026. We are currently accepting applications from photographers and lens-based artists around the world. The deadline for submissions is October 20th, 2025.
The UK artist Michael Landy has this week unveiled his memorial to humanitarian aid workers, which has been in development for over a decade. The new public art piece, which is located at Gunnersbury Park Museum in west London, is intended to commemorate all humanitarians who have been killed in service, of whatever nationality. Landy's work is comprised of a circle of 15 human-scale figures, grouped in fives, with spaces allowing visitors to complete the circle.
Heartwood Preserve doesn't look like typical stormwater infrastructure. Instead of a primarily utilitarian design, this project in Omaha doubles as public art. Meyer Studio Land Architects created a series of 14 sculptural water retention basins across 500 acres of land that sit in a watershed at risk of flooding. The project is meant to be enjoyed by the public and even has features that educate about climate change.
Another piece of public art has come to the Embarcadero this week, with the official unveiling Tuesday of , a larger-than-life-size mermaid made of metal and other materials, by artist Dana Albany. makes her debut today at Pier 1/2, next to the Ferry Building, with KRON4 grabbing a couple snaps. Below you can see the sculpture in another recent installation at Mare Island, and prior to that, at the Chatsworth Estate in England.
The MIT Museum presents Remembering the Future, a monumental installation by artist Janet Echelman created in collaboration with architect, engineer, and MIT Associate Professor Caitlin Mueller. Suspended above the museum's grand lobby and open to the public from September 18th, 2025, through Fall 2027, the work transforms climate data into a three-dimensional form that invites visitors to engage both visually and conceptually.
At the time, they said that the pigeon was chosen because it had been around for over a millennium in London. It wasn't a universally well-received logo, and for many people, the pigeon is more a sign of being in an urban landscape than of being in London in particular. That New York was unveiling a giant statue of a pigeon as a local symbol of that city at the same time that the London Museum was pitching the pigeon as a distinctly London symbol
Sean Hope, the owner of DX Arcade, said the mural was special to the business and called it the arcade's "calling card." It was unveiled in February, when the arcade threw a grand opening ceremony. The mural is 10 feet by 20 feet and depicts a futuristic cityscape featuring young people. It was meant to promote the business as a forward-looking arcade, in contrast to the nostalgia-oriented "barcades" that are growing more popular, Hope told Boston.com.
Maurizio Cattelan, contemporary art's notorious provocateur, is taking his wit from the gallery into the streets with Where is Maurizio?, a worldwide treasure hunt. To mark the release of We Are the Revolution, his latest limited-edition self-portrait sculpture, three works have been hidden across the globe, waiting to be found by the quickest and most dedicated seekers. The hunt begins in New York City on September 30th, 2025, when the first clue will be revealed on Avant Arte's dedicated website.
Ready to get LIT? Illumination NYC, New York City's premier light festival, returns for three nights only. This year, the festival will take place at the grand reopening of Wagner Park. Visitors can enjoy large scale light installations, live performances, interactive experiences and more! It is free to join the fun, and there will be food and drinks available for purchase each night.
For the 2026 installation, the artwork will be installed on the glass façade of the Olympic Village Canada Line Station that faces W 2nd Ave at Cambie St. Up to five works will be printed on 60/40 opacity vinyl and will be installed within the surface area of the five glass columns. A didactic panel with information on the work will be placed alongside the installation.
The fused bundle of weathered steel industrial pipes is eye-catchingly at odds with the grand fountains, statues and Victorian pomp of the massive bronze lions. But this sculpture is completely site-specific: press a play button and look into one of the eyepieces embedded into three of the five pipes and you see images of the surrounding city from the viewpoint of naval commander Horatio Nelson's statue 45m up in the sky.
From a distance, it looks like Melbourne sprouted a mountain range overnight. Up close, the rocks aren't rocks at all - they're air. With the Australian debut of Iwagumi Air Scape, art and technology studio ENESS turned Prahran Square into a larger-than-life rock garden you can squeeze through, touch, and hear come alive with sound. Although Melbourne-based, ENESS founder and artist Nimrod Weis drew inspiration from Japanese culture in creating Iwagumi Air Scape.
