City Hall Galleries

• Location: Emerging Gallery, 8th Floor
• Dates: March 4th - April 12th, 2024

This collection explores her fascination with the connections between people of the African Diaspora [including Africa, the Caribbean, and the Americas] and how we pull inspiration from each other. This collection explores our different traditions such as how we style/wear our hair, the garments we choose to wear, and how we live different experiences but share similar trials and tribulations. These pieces also include an element or reference to nature and how we as humans connect with all living organisms. In this collection, she plays with different mediums and textures to convey messages about the Black experience.

To learn more about her art, visit youvelinescreations.com or email Youveline at jyouveline@gmail.com.

• Location: The Mayor’s Office Gallery, 5th Floor
• Dates: March 4th - April 12th, 2024

To the wonderfully Modern structure of City Hall, I offer some of the Victorian sensibility of Boston Public Garden.

The diversity of trees, flowers, and people, the friendly squirrels and birds, the winding paths, and the gentle quiet at the heart of the bustling city astonished me on my first visit to the Garden. What charming Wonderland is this? How is such a beautiful place created and maintained? How is it protected while also remaining so openly accessible to all?

Then I met the citizens advocacy group The Friends of the Public Garden. I learned about the turbulent history of the garden and the current alliance between The Friends and The City of Boston. This dedicated partnership and the hard work of many individuals makes the magic happen.

In this exhibit you can find artworks inspired by features in the Garden, such as the Boy & Bird fountain, swan boats, tropical plant displays, and Ducklings sculpture. You may also sense themes of climate change, imagination, and whimsy.

I made the artworks by drawing or painting directly onto the surface of antique photographs. The larger images were faint solar enlargements filled in with charcoal and ink by 19th century artisans. The portraits date back to the early years of the Garden. As the Garden is both preserved and reinvented by additional plantings and new visitors, I reimagined the old photographs.

To inquire about Laura’s art, email laura.chrstnsn@gmail.com

• Location: The Mayor’s Neighborhood Gallery, 2nd Floor
• Dates: March 4th  - April 12th, 2024
• Artist Reception: March 7th at 6:00-7:30pm   

My art is always intentional in the connectedness of people. There’s a thread of familiarity, a reminder that we are more alike, than we are different. 

In the exhibition “Celebrating Her Story” I wanted to show women up close and moving forward, with a fluidity, that much like glass, moves so slowly, that at times it appears to have not moved at all. Being a woman can be like that, taking one step forward and having to take two steps back. As in the overturning of Roe vs. Wade, a law that worked for 50 years, that gave women the right to make health decisions over her own body, which has since been snatched away. 

My paintings are a contemporary narrative, that use texture for depth and detail, expressive of the complexity and vast combinations that are the human condition of womanhood. The color red is symbolic of her boldness, the dangers, and the obstacles she faces every day, from genderism to sexism. What does it look like when she moves from generation to generation, leaping over hurdles and hitting glass ceilings? What does hard work, dedication, and perseverance look like? What happens, when a woman is given an opportunity? She arrives.

In Boston, she’s a daughter, a wife, a mother and the Mayor.

To learn more or inquire to purchase her art, contact: technygal@comcast.net 

• Location: Scollay Square Gallery, 3rd Floor
• Dates: March 4th - April 12th, 2024 
• Artist Reception: March 7th at 6:00-7:30pm

“Mine is a quiet exploration—a quest for new meanings in color, texture, and design. Even though I sometimes portray scenes of poor and struggling people, it is a great joy to paint.”  - Lois Mailou Jones. 

This exhibition showcases art inspired by Boston's history, geography, and social diversity. The Atlantic shoreline, rocky terrains, federalists, brutalists, colonial architecture, the public gardens, the changing seasons, Symphony Hall, and art and design districts describe Boston. The Boston Women’s Heritage Trail discourages disparities by highlighting the outstanding accomplishments of a diverse range of women throughout history. Boston Muse: Womxn’s Art acknowledges the atrocities committed against native Americans, racial tensions, and gender discrimination. The exhibiting artists draw from the extraordinary power and rebellious spirit embedded in the nature and culture of this city and the immigrant experience. They embark upon new journeys in the physical, societal, and personal landscapes to create work that questions, challenges, and celebrates diversity and acceptance of self and others. 

To learn more or inquire to purchase any of the art, contact: president.nawama@gmail.com

• Location: 3rd Floor Mezzanine, Boston City Hall
• Dates: Ongoing

We Belong is a light-based public art installation with the intent to promote ideas of belonging and inclusion among communities in Boston. In LED neon, the work forms the text “We Belong – here – together – guided by the same stars” in a circular format, with a constellation that maps and connects Boston’s neighborhoods.

With the support of a City of Boston Transformative Public Art grant, the installation will travel to multiple Boston neighborhoods in 2022-2023, beginning with the East Boston Social Centers from July-September 2022. Local residents are invited to participate in the project by sharing what the concept of “belonging” means to them.

Yu-Wen Wu is an interdisciplinary artist living and working in Boston. Born in Taipei, Taiwan, Wu’s subjectivity as an immigrant is central to her artwork. Arriving in the United States at an early age, her experiences have shaped her work in areas of migration—examining issues of displacement, arrival, assimilation, and the shape of identity in a new country. Passionate about data, mapping, and its storytelling, Wu’s work lies at the crossroads of art, science, politics, and social issues. Her wide range of projects include large-scale drawings, sculpture, site- specific video installations, community-engaged practices, and public art. Wu has been awarded numerous grants, exhibited nationally and internationally. Her work is included in several private and public collections.

The Mayor's Poetry Program is an annual program in which Boston residents are invited to submit poems to be displayed throughout City Hall and in an online gallery for one year. The theme for 2023, selected by Poet Laureate Porsha Olayiwola, was "Love".

Read the 2023 Poems