Jenny Holzer’s For the City continued the series of light projections Holzer present with Creative Time in fall 2004. The moving projections, akin to credits scrolling at the end of a film, were installed at the Rockefeller Center and The New York Public Library, where poems by Wisława Szymborska, Yehuda Amichai, Henri Cole, Mahmoud Darwish, and other celebrated writers moved across the nighttime facades of landmark buildings, encompassing the reader with the power of language to educate and console.

Additionally, at New York University’s Bobst Library, Holzer projected declassified government documents, which were released under the Freedom of Information Act. Holzer’s presentation of these documents suggested America’s struggle to achieve an equitable balance between transparency and secrecy, public and private.

Photograph by Charlie Samuel

Jenny Holzer

For The City

Manhattan

2005