Artist Cannupa Hanska Luger and Paul Farber, director of Monument Lab, discuss Luger’s Public Art Fund exhibition Attrition, currently on view at City Hall Park in Lower Manhattan. Together, they will examine Luger’s socially engaged practice and its meaning for art in the public sphere. 

Attrition is a 10-foot-long, larger-than-life skeletal sculpture made from steel with an ash-black patina. The arresting form emerges from the soil beneath, visible through grasses indigenous to this region. The work highlights the profound interdependence between animals, humans, and the land. It draws attention to the loss, trauma, and violence that can result from a single disruption in an ecosystem. Placed on the pathway to City Hall, Attrition symbolically engages with New York City’s heart of policy-making, bringing to light the history of the bison’s survival. 

Attend in person at The Cooper Union. Registration is required, and capacity is limited. Register here. Seating is first come, first served, so please arrive early. Your registration does not guarantee a seat. Doors will close at 6:45pm. 

Accessibility: Email glopez@publicartfund.org with questions and requests for accessibility. Please send any needs for services or accommodations to support your participation in this program, including ASL interpretations, by October 20, 2024.

Cannupa Hanska Luger (b. 1979, Standing Rock Reservation, North Dakota) is an enrolled member of the Three Affiliated Tribes of Fort Berthold and is Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara, and Lakota – an identity that deeply informs his works in sculpture, installation, performance, and video. His bold style of visual storytelling presents new ways of seeing our humanity while foregrounding an Indigenous worldview. Luger holds a B.F.A. in studio arts from the Institute of American Indian Arts and is represented by Garth Greenan Gallery in New York. Luger’s work was on view in the 2024 Whitney Biennial; he was a 2023 Soros Award Fellow, 2022 Guggenheim Fellow, 2020 Creative Capital Fellow, a 2020 Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow, and the recipient of the Museum of Arts and Design’s 2018 inaugural Burke Prize, among others. He was also the recipient of a 2021 United States Artists Fellowship Award for Craft, and was named a 2021 GRIST Fixer. Luger has exhibited nationally and internationally including at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gardiner Museum, Kunsthal KAdE, Washington Project for the Arts, Art Mûr, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, and the National Center for Civil and Human Rights. 

Paul Farber is the director and co-founder of Monument Lab. He is among the nation’s thought leaders on monuments, memory, and public space. Farber is the author and co-editor of several publications, including A Wall of Our Own: An American History of the Berlin Wall (2020), Monument Lab: Creative Speculations on Philadelphia (2020), and the National Monument Audit (2021). His forthcoming book, After Permanence: The Future of Monuments, will be published with the University of North Carolina Press. Farber’s curatorial and collaborative work includes Beyond Granite: Pulling Together with Salamishah Tillet, the first curated multi-artist public art exhibition on the National Mall in Washington D.C. (2023), and Declaration House in Philadelphia’s Independence National Historical Park (2024) with Anna Arabindan-Kesson and Yolanda Wisher. Farber is the host and creator of The Statue, a podcast series from WHYY/NPR. Farber is a Senior Research Scholar at the Center for Public Art & Space at the University of Pennsylvania and holds a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in American Culture. He currently serves on the Board of Trustees of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Board of Directors of A Long Walk Home.

Public Art Fund Talks, organized in collaboration with The Cooper Union, connect compelling contemporary artists to a broad public by establishing a dialogue about artistic practices and public art. The Talks series features internationally renowned artists who offer insights into artmaking and its personal, social, and cultural contexts. The core values of creative expression and democratic access to culture and learning shared by both Public Art Fund and The Cooper Union are embodied in this ongoing collaboration. In the spirit of accessibility to the broadest and most diverse public, the Talks are offered free of charge.