Dan Graham

When it first opened in 1939, the Sculpture Garden was conceived as an outdoor gallery for changing installations. True to its goal, the Garden has since seen countless exhibitions, as well as performances, concerts, and protests. Today, artworks from across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries inhabit its marble platforms, interspersed among the pools and greenery.

The centerpiece of the current installation is Child’s Play by Dan Graham (1942–2022). “The location of the sculpture garden is great because you can see all the glass office buildings,” Graham remarked. His pavilions, which he began making in the late 1970s, reference such buildings and the capitalist economy of which they are a part. Child’s Play is made of glass, mirrored glass, and steel. Its gleaming surfaces create layers of reflections, confounding our understanding of the surroundings and our place within them. And just as we, the viewers, are mirrored in Graham’s pavilion, so too are the other artworks in this garden, which become entangled in the system of relations it sets in motion.