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“Day’s End” is the name of the new permanent sculpture by David Hammons to be placed on the Hudson River, in the vicinity of the Whitney Museum. It references the history of the Hudson River Piers, the significance for the LGBTQ community, as well as previous site-specific work by Gordon Matta-Clark, which investigates urban development. We will explore this intriguing and complex new art, as well as other significant works by one of the most influential African American artist of our time.

David Hammons seeks to actively critique the nature of the art world and its absurd elitism by eschewing traditional modes of artmaking, dissemination, and display. Despite being an influential and highly sought-after artist, he has, throughout his career, refused to play by "the rules" - refusing interviews and requests for exhibitions, selling work himself rather than through a gallery. This iconoclastic approach, taken in part from his interest in Dadaism and Marcel Duchamp, has allowed Hammons to create work in various mediums that is as powerful as it is subversive. Hammons is best known for his work with nontraditional materials and discarded objects that reference and comment on urban African-American experience. Often referring in his work to the legacy of racism and the damaging stereotypes imposed on African-American culture, Hammons seeks to demystify and reclaim the objects and the language that gave rise to these narratives. In so doing, he imbues these "symbols" with new and transformative power.