More Art

More Art More Art fosters collaborations between contemporary artists and communities to create socially-engaged public art and educational programs.

Visit The Oyster on Saturdays and Sundays this month for docent-led tours! Tours begin at 12pm + 4pm at the installation...
08/14/2026

Visit The Oyster on Saturdays and Sundays this month for docent-led tours! Tours begin at 12pm + 4pm at the installation site, on the Western Promenade of Governors Island. đŸŠȘ

Tap the link in our bio 🔗 to learn more and RSVP or just stop by!

Image: Installation view of Alan Michelson, “The Oyster” (2026). Photo by Timothy Schenck for Governors Island Arts.

Visit Alan Michelson’s The Oyster on Governors Island through November 30th! Join us on weekends in August for free publ...
08/12/2026

Visit Alan Michelson’s The Oyster on Governors Island through November 30th! Join us on weekends in August for free public tours of the project at 12pm + 4pm—tap the link in our bio for more info đŸŠȘ

Graphics by Yen (yens.world)

08/11/2026

Repost from Hyperallergic:

Editor-at-Large Hrag Vartanian (hragv) visited Mohawk artist Alan Michelson’s new installation on Governor’s Island “The Oyster,” which responds to the nation’s 250th anniversary through Indigenous perspectives and environmental histories.

Developed in partnership with Billion Oyster Project (Billion Oyster Project) and commissioned by More Art (More Art), the oyster-shaped sculpture is comprised of hundreds of the mollusks’ shells, recalling Indigenous midden practices. It also serves as an amphitheater for performances, making space for community and learning.

“The future is what will lead us to ecological restoration,” said Kendall Greene, the Curatorial Fellow at More Art. “That’s essentially the heart of the project and the purpose of the partnership with Billion Oyster Project, because the installation is eventually going to be returned to the waters to support rebuilding an oyster reef.”

The show, which is on view until the end of November, invites visitors to “reflect on the interwoven histories of extraction, trade, stewardship, displacement, and environmental change embedded in New York Harbor.”

Read the full review at hyperallergic.com.

Thank you to everyone who joined us last month for the culminating event of our 2025/26 Fellowship! The Fellows shared t...
08/10/2026

Thank you to everyone who joined us last month for the culminating event of our 2025/26 Fellowship! The Fellows shared their ongoing projects & reflected on the practices they’ve been cultivating with us for the past year through monthly artist talks, group conversations, and mentorship sessions.

Explore our page to learn more about their practices 🔗 and follow along with their work beyond More Art.

Thank you to allycaple for guiding us through the year, and thank you to Magnum Foundation for hosting us!

Images by Avery J. Savage (ajs).

➕Alan Michelson’s The Oyster in Hyperallergic➕“Middens, long seen as disposable markers of history by Europeans, have ta...
08/08/2026

➕Alan Michelson’s The Oyster in Hyperallergic➕

“Middens, long seen as disposable markers of history by Europeans, have taken on a new meaning in an age of forensic archaeology, one that may help restore history long erased and forgotten. In these cases, ancient oyster shells serve as material proof that Native people not only occupied but also shaped and sustained the coastal waters. The shells become forces of insurgency, counter-experts that quietly refute settler innocence and its alibi that ‘nothing was here’ before extraction.” -Hrag Vartanian,

Tap the link in our bio to read the full article 📰 and join us for tours of The Oyster on August weekends at 12pm + 4pm đŸŠȘ

➕The Oyster in the Press!➕Tap the link in our bio to read two new articles from FAMILY STYLE & ARTnews about Alan Michel...
08/04/2026

➕The Oyster in the Press!➕

Tap the link in our bio to read two new articles from FAMILY STYLE & ARTnews about Alan Michelson’s The Oyster, on view through November 30th on Governors Island.

“The oyster has been a subject of fascination for the artist, surfacing again and again in storylines of the past. For eons, it served crucial environmental purposes in filtration in the waterways around what was once called Lenapehoking (a single oyster can filter 50 gallons of water per day). In pre-colonial times, discarded shells were tossed into heaping middens; in New York City, these massive piles of organic waste had towered in TriBeCa near Pearl Street as well as Governors Island.”
- Rachel Summer Small in Family Style

“Overlooking New York’s harbor, The Oyster will soon serve as a gathering place for those visiting the island to ‘contemplate the harbor before the ships came, before Europeans, and imagine that landscape and the abundance and the bounty that was available to the people there and the life ways that sustained it,’ Michelson said, adding that he sees it as an artwork ‘where people can think about whether or not they want this sort of extractive regime to continue.‘“
- Francesca Aton in ARTnews

➕The Oyster by Alan Michelson opens tomorrow!➕Join us tomorrow Thursday, July 30th from 7-9pm for the opening of The Oys...
07/29/2026

➕The Oyster by Alan Michelson opens tomorrow!➕

Join us tomorrow Thursday, July 30th from 7-9pm for the opening of The Oyster, with a special performance by the YoungBlood Singers at 7:15pm*!

Tap the link in our bio to RSVP and receive location & access information 🔗

The YoungBlood Singers are an acclaimed Northern drum group founded in 1975 on the Shinnecock Reservation in Southampton, New York. Formed by a group of young men who grew up together and shared a love of singing, the group emerged from a commitment to carry forward the traditions their elders had entrusted to them while inspiring the next generation. Since 1984, YoungBlood has served as a central presence at the Shinnecock Powwow, where many of its members first learned to sing as children. Their repertoire includes songs in the Shinnecock and Cherokee languages, alongside original compositions and songs passed down through generations. Over more than four decades, the group has performed at major powwows across North America—including Crow Fair, Cherokee, Schemitzun, and Narragansett—and has toured internationally, earning recognition for preserving and celebrating Indigenous musical traditions while fostering community, cultural continuity, and intergenerational connection.

*To arrive to the installation in time for the performance, plan to take the 6:45pm ferry to Governors Island.

Image slide 1: Alan Michelson, The Oyster, 2026. (Install progress detail). Commissioned by More Art in partnership with Billion Oyster Project and Governors Island Arts. Photo courtesy Alan Michelson.

➕In the Press: Alan Michelson’s The Oyster➕“‘The Oyster acknowledges an unsettling past that through collective effort c...
07/29/2026

➕In the Press: Alan Michelson’s The Oyster➕

“‘The Oyster acknowledges an unsettling past that through collective effort can alchemise into a better and more just future for all the interdependent beings of Turtle Island,’ Michelson says.“

Tap the link in our bio to read the full article 📰 and join us tomorrow, July 30th from 7-9pm for the opening of The Oyster on Governors Island đŸŠȘ

➕Alan Michelson’s The Oyster opens this Thursday on Governors Island➕Join us on Governors Island this Thursday, July 30t...
07/27/2026

➕Alan Michelson’s The Oyster opens this Thursday on Governors Island➕

Join us on Governors Island this Thursday, July 30th from 7-9pm to celebrate the opening of The Oyster, with a special performance by the YoungBlood Singers at 7:30pm. Tap the link in our bio to RSVP & learn more about this project! 🔗

Alan Michelson, The Oyster, 2026 (Install detail). Commissioned by More Art in partnership with Billion Oyster Project and Governors Island Arts. Photo Credit: Yen (yencetera).

➕Fellow Spotlight: Intelligent Mischief➕Join us this Saturday, July 25th for Up/Rooted: a presentation of work & convers...
07/23/2026

➕Fellow Spotlight: Intelligent Mischief➕

Join us this Saturday, July 25th for Up/Rooted: a presentation of work & conversations from the 2025/26 Engaging Artists Fellows, including Intelligent Mischief! RSVP at the link in our bio 🔗

INTELLIGENT MISCHIEF—Terry Marshall (he/him) and Aisha Shillingford (she/her)—is a creative studio and cultural futures lab that creates public art and social dream spaces that offer the necessary space and time needed to unleash Black imagination to shape the future. Our purpose is to boost invention and imagination, realign action logic and experiment with new forms of culture and civil society to create atmospheres of change.

We are cultivating a global archipelago of Black utopias, an autonomous, interdependence, speculative, real & surrealist constellation of places and spaces where Black folks are thriving, sovereign, and free.

Learn more & follow their work at intelligentmischief.com and Intelligent Mischief.

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