In New York City, every inch has a history. Sometimes that history is clearly visible in the present and sometimes it\u2019s lost. There are also those moments when history lingers in a space through decay or neglect, nature creeps in, and a landscape that was once recognizable transforms into something foreign. How long does it take to merge a new landscape into something familiar? And what does it mean to construct that new space?<\/p>\n
These are the questions that Tamara Johnson raises with her installation A Public Pool at Socrates Sculpture Park. The vast public pools built during the city\u2019s Robert Moses era, and specifically the 1936 pool in Astoria Park – a short walk from Socrates, has inspired this sunken pool.<\/p>\n
With this installation, Johnson is also recalling a memory of a pool in the front yard of her childhood home in Waco, TX. In attempting to connect two places, past and present, she elicits a range of emotions, from a humorous prank to the tragic reality of a forgotten space. While on the one hand the pool summons memories of summer, tan lines, and sunscreen, it also exudes a sense of non-function buried underneath the overgrown grass. Perhaps we also feel the sadness of the artist\u2019s attempt to construct one space to conjure the comforting memory of another.<\/p>","protected":false},"featured_media":4616,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"exhibition-theme":[],"class_list":["post-4615","artwork","type-artwork","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/socratessculpturepark-2026.kudos.nyc\/el\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artwork\/4615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/socratessculpturepark-2026.kudos.nyc\/el\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artwork"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/socratessculpturepark-2026.kudos.nyc\/el\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/artwork"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/socratessculpturepark-2026.kudos.nyc\/el\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/socratessculpturepark-2026.kudos.nyc\/el\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"exhibition-theme","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/socratessculpturepark-2026.kudos.nyc\/el\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/exhibition-theme?post=4615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}