Madison Square Park Conservancy is excited to commission Taos, NM-based artist Larry Bell for our Fall 2025 exhibition. Across his nearly seven-decade career, Bell is renowned for his ability to harness the qualities of glass to create distinct optical effects. Using architectural glass and color, Bell creates minimalist forms that shift with naturally evolving environmental conditions. Bell is also one of the pioneers of the Light and Space movement that emerged in Southern California in the 1960s. His work uses atmosphere as a material, which alongside the reflective and transmissive properties of glass, leads to both subtle and complex perceptual conditions.

Improvisations in the Park is Bell’s first public art commission in New York, and his largest outdoor presentation to date. The exhibition will activate six lawns across Madison Square Park with vibrantly colored cubes and nested arrangements. The works will be visible from the Park’s pathways, allowing for audience discovery as they glimpse and then encounter the works throughout the 6.2-acre site. The exhibition title is inspired by music, and draws attention to the improvisational way these artworks can be endlessly configured with each new installation. The exhibition consists of two new six- and eight-foot-tall standing wall sculptures alongside four existing works. Additionally, two never-before-exhibited works will sit alongside two existing works. 

Over the course of the exhibition, the changing conditions in the park – from the weather and light to the change of seasons – will be a key collaborator, transforming the works as the reflectivity and color of the glass reacts to its surroundings, making this a dynamic installation perfect for repeat visits. 

ARTIST

Larry Bell is one of the most influential artists to emerge from Southern California’s Light and Space movement that emerged in the Los Angeles area in the 1960s. While they worked in a range of materials and scale, the loosely connected group of artists—including James Turrell, Robert Irwin, Mary Corse, Helen Pashgian, Doug Wheeler, and others —focused on the  viewer’s perception and how everyday experience can transform through light. Bell’s first experimentation with glass was in 1959 when he worked in a framing shop and learned to cut glass. He moved from Los Angeles to Taos, New Mexico, where he continues to live and work, in 1973.

Bell’s work is well-known to New York museumgoers. The 2017 Whitney Biennial featured Pacific Red II, six red glass cubes that were displayed on a terrace at the Whitney Museum of American Art. In 2022, a long-term installation of his opened at Dia Beacon. The artist’s large- and small-scale works are in the collections of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Museum of Modern Art. His engagement with publicness – with the openness of civic space in the city, within a bustling setting – is unprecedented at Madison Square Park.

Improvisations in the Park is commissioned by Madison Square Park Conservancy. Initially curated by Brooke Kamin Rapaport, the project is being organized by Denise Markonish, Martin Friedman Chief Curator; Tom Reidy, Director of Art Operations; and Tiera Ndlovu, Assistant Curator. Holly Leicht is the Conservancy’s Executive Director.

MADISON SQUARE PARK CONSERVANCY

Since 2004, Madison Square Park Conservancy has commissioned and presented premier projects by visionary artists ranging in practice and media. The park has become a testing ground for artistic innovation, offering artists the opportunity to experiment with new techniques, materials, scale, and content, and allowing the public to experience thought-provoking exhibitions free of charge and without barriers to access. 

Madison Square Park Conservancy is responsible for raising 100 percent of the funds necessary to operate the park, including its dynamic public art program, vibrant horticulture, maintenance, sanitation, security, and free cultural programs for park visitors.