Moving Chains Will Hibernate for Winter, Starting December 19, 2022, Reopening to the Public Spring 2023

December 16th, 2022

Creative Time, Governors Island Arts, and Times Square Arts announce the planned seasonal pause of Charles Gaines’s Moving Chains, starting December 19, 2022. The monumental sculpture will reopen on a to-be-announced date, depending on weather conditions, in Spring 2023 and will be on view through early Summer 2023, before traveling to Cincinnati, Ohio for the final chapter of the multi-site public art commission.

Moving Chains is the second chapter of Charles Gaines’s The American Manifest. The 110-foot kinetic sculpture activated by colossal chains rotating overhead anchors a public art project that addresses the reality of systemic racism in the United States of America through embodied and visual experience, and provides critical historical context on our extraordinary political division today. The American Manifest is the first major public art commission by Charles Gaines, a lauded conceptual artist recognized for his nearly 50-year career examining the nature of perception, social systems, and abstraction.

Individual tours for press may be scheduled during the winter hiatus, weather permitting, by email to Kathryn McKinney at Creative Time, kathrynm@creativetime.org or Sarah Krautheim at The Trust for Governors Island, skrautheim@govisland.org.

The spring reopening will be accompanied by a weekend conference and community programming, examining the current contexts for abolition, with event dates, keynote and featured speakers to be announced in early 2023. Real time updates to the programming schedule, occasionally impacted by weather conditions at the site of the outdoor sculpture, will be posted to www.creativetime.org.