New Voice in Hallowed Places: Contemporary Art Taps Vitality of Boston’s Historic Sites

Visitors to history-rich Boston have noticed a change in the red brick and cobblestone milieu of the republic’s tumultuous early days. Enigmatic shapes at the Paul Revere house. Playful objects on Boston Common. Sculpture in Charlestown Navy Yard. They are part of an ongoing project that’s using art to bring a living interpretation to the city’s landmarks.

A joint initiative between Boston National Historical Park and the Institute of Contemporary Art invites New England artists to introduce their vision to the city’s historic fabric. Using sculpture and interactive displays, the artists have responded to the eternal ideas behind the revolution.

The city witnessed some of the most stirring and remarkable events in the American struggle for independence. Clever and provocative, the temporary exhibits remind visitors of the ideals that moved New Englanders to extreme acts over 200 years ago, ideals that are just as powerful today.

Given the city's history, it seems fitting that the first project's setting was a place enshrined as a symbol of resistance to oppression. Artist Krzysztof Wodiczko interviewed the mothers of murder victims in Charlestown, which at the time had a high rate of unsolved homicides. The neighborhood’s code of silence had practically ensured no one would be held accountable.

By night, Wodiczko projected a film of the interviews on Bunker Hill Monument. While art critics from the Boston Globe and the New York Times raved, some in Charlestown, a tough place with a fierce sense of pride, were not pleased. But according to Marty Blatt, chief of cultural resources at Boston National Historical Park, Wodiczko’s message was, “Let the monument speak.”

Says Blatt, “What could be more symbolic of freedom than these women who have lost their loved ones? It was the ultimate denial of freedom to have no one come forward. This was the most extraordinary moment I’ve ever seen in public art.”

More projects followed, and the venues expanded to some of the city’s private and locally managed historic sites. Inspired to explore how famous places became synonymous with high ideals, artists Laura Baring-Gould and Michael Dowling created Conspire, an exhibit with components at the African Meeting House, the Old South Meeting House, the Paul Revere House, and Copp’s Hill Burying Ground.

The artists wanted to commemorate these places as sanctuaries, as sites of assembly, dissent, worship, debate, and remembrance. For each site they created house-shaped sculptures, or “vessels,” of copper, silver, slate, and alabaster. Each vessel reflected the architecture of its associated structure, with details to evoke the place’s history.

Abolitionist writings were etched on the vessel at the African Meeting House. Among the pews of the Old South Meeting House–which hosted gatherings that led to the Boston Tea Party–sat a luminous object surrounded by tea-colored water, at the bottom of which was a scattering of pamphlets on freedom.

The house of patriot and craftsman Paul Revere was the setting of a sculptural meditation on colonial style and architectural ornamentation by ICA artist-in-residence Niho Kozuru. Displayed in the courtyard, her cast forms of brightly colored translucent rubber gave viewers a fresh perspective on the colonial aesthetic. Staid urns, finials, spirals, and pendants suddenly took on a feel of fantasy and exuberance.

The collaboration with Boston National Historical Park grew out of the ICA’s Vita Brevis program, which commissions artists to create