ETERNAL
FLAME
FOR
BURTON
SCOTT
OSCAR TUAZON
A Transformative Sculptural Commission Engaging the Legacy of artist Scott Burton (1939—1989)
ON VIEW BEGINNING
MAY 2026
FREE & PUBLIC
About:
The New York City AIDS Memorial will unveil Eternal Flame for Scott Burton, a major new public commission by celebrated contemporary sculptor Oscar Tuazon (b. 1975, Seattle, WA), as a centerpiece of the organization’s 10th-anniversary programming. The project reimagines and creatively readapts the final public installation of sculptor and performance artist Scott Burton (b.1939, Greensboro, AL, d. 1989, New York, NY), created for the Sheepshead Bay fishing piers. The work will be installed at the New York City AIDS Memorial at St. Vincent’s Triangle.
“As we prepare to mark the New York City AIDS Memorial’s first decade, Eternal Flame for Scott Burton reflects our commitment to preserving the history of the AIDS crisis by keeping its memory alive in the present,” shared Dave Harper, Executive Director, New York City AIDS Memorial. “Oscar Tuazon’s reinterpretation of Burton’s final public installation honors a pioneering artist lost to AIDS, restores an essential chapter of New York’s cultural legacy, and bridges generations, affirming the Memorial as a living site where art and remembrance converge.”
In 1987, Burton was commissioned to create a site-specific work on the newly refurbished piers of Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. Completed in 1994, five years after Burton’s death from AIDS-related illness, the work earned an Award of Excellence in Design from the Art Commission of the City of New York. However, constant exposure to a harsh marine environment and its submergence during Superstorm Sandy caused irreparable harm. Following its formal decommissioning in 2022, the work’s core elements were meticulously salvaged by Olney Gleason, ensuring Burton’s final public artwork could be preserved and recontextualized for a new generation.
Rendering of Oscar Tuazon: Eternal Flame for Scott Burton, created by Powerhouse Arts, courtesy of the artist.
“We are pleased to collaborate with the New York City AIDS Memorial and Olney Gleason to ensure that salvaged elements of Scott Burton’s Sheepshead Bay installation have an afterlife at a place of healing and reinvention,” said Jonathan Kuhn, Director of NYC Parks Art & Antiquities. “Oscar Tuazon’s creative adaptation is part of the Art in the Parks tradition to give voice to a diverse range of contemporary artists.”
As art historian David Getsy observes, Burton’s public works offered “a quiet, enduring model of resilience, intimacy, and contact” at a moment when physical presence itself carried risk. His furniture-like sculptures, including benches, chairs, and tables, blurred the boundaries between art, architecture, and everyday life, embedding subtle queer experience and social connection within ordinary urban space. Tuazon, whose practice likewise operates at the intersection of conceptual sculpture and public architecture, underscores the ongoing vitality of Burton’s practice with his reimagining of the Sheepshead Bay commission. By transforming the salvaged elements of the original work, Tuazon honors its materiality and functionalist roots while introducing new gestures in design, landscape, and civic engagement. Eternal Flame for Scott Burton positions public art as a conduit for communal care. Through this reinterpretation, the Memorial invites the public to reflect on how we sustain the people, objects, and histories that shape our lives—and how art and public space can intersect to preserve cultural legacies.
Scott Burton Commission for Sheepshead Bay Fishing Piers, 1987—94. Photograph by Christopher Wesnofske Collection of the Public Design Commission of the City of New York
About the Artists:
Oscar Tuazon (b. 1975, Seattle) lives and works in Los Angeles. Recent exhibitions include Words for Water at FJK-3 Contemporary Art Space, Vienna; Fire Worship at the Aspen Art Museum; and Water School at the MSU Broad Museum. In 2025, MAXXI, Rome, presented Something in the Water, an expansive exhibition curated by the artist. In 2023, a major mid-career retrospective, Building, was presented at Kunst Museum Winterthur, Switzerland, concurrently with Water School at Bergen Kunsthall, Norway, and All We Need at Kunsthalle Bielefeld, Germany. A comprehensive monograph, Oscar Tuazon: Building, was jointly published by DoPe Press to accompany the three exhibitions. Tuazon was included in the 2021 Bienal de São Paulo, the 2019 Chicago Architecture Biennial, the 2012 Whitney Biennial, and the 2011 Venice Biennale. In 2012, Tuazon curated the exhibition Scott Burton at the Fondazione Giuliani, Rome. He has completed numerous public commissions, including Un pont sans fin for Nouveaux Commanditaires, Belfort, France (2016); Une colonne d’eau in the Place Vendôme, Paris (2017); Burn the Formwork for Skulptur Projekte Münster, Germany (2017); Growth Rings for Central Wharf Park, Boston (2019); and To Our Teachers, a major public artwork for the City of Seattle (2025).
Scott Burton (1939–1989) was an American sculptor, performance artist, critic, and curator whose work collapsed conventional distinctions between sculpture, design, and public space. Born in Greensboro, Alabama, and educated at Columbia University and New York University, Burton began his career as a poet and art critic before focusing on performance art and three-dimensional work in the 1970s. His sculptures, often conceived as furniture that invites use and interaction, bridge object and environment, integrating minimalist form with civic engagement.
Recent institutional attention has foregrounded his legacy. Scott Burton: Shape Shift, the most comprehensive retrospective of his work in the United States, was presented at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation, St. Louis (2024–25) and Wrightwood 659, Chicago (2025). Earlier institutional exhibitions have included Artist’s Choice: Burton on Brâncuși at The Museum of Modern Art (1989) and a presentation at the Whitney Museum of American Art (1991). Burton’s work appears in museum collections including MoMA, the National Gallery of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, LACMA, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Princeton University Art Museum, Tate, and the Walker Art Center. Additionally, Burton completed numerous public art commissions that realize his belief in sculpture as social architecture, including Six-Part Seating (fabricated 1998) in the National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C., and site-specific works for the Des Moines Art Center (Des Moines, IA), Princeton University (Princeton, NJ), and the Waterfront Plaza at Battery Park City (New York, NY).
Burton died of AIDS-related illness in 1989. Burton’s work continues to inform contemporary discussions of relational aesthetics, public art, and the intersection of sculpture and everyday life.
Press:
Location:
The installation will be on view at the New York City AIDS Memorial Park at St. Vincent’s Triangle, 76 Greenwich Avenue, New York, NY
Support:
Leadership support for Eternal Flame for Scott Burton has been provided by the Ford Foundation.
Eternal Flame for Scott Burton is exhibited through NYC Parks’ Art in the Parks program and has been supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and the New York State Council on the Arts.
Additional support for Eternal Flame for Scott Burton has been provided by the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, the Teiger Foundation, the Alphawood Foundation, and the Kors LePere Foundation.
Eternal Flame for Scott Burton was created by Oscar Tuazon, commissioned by the New York City AIDS Memorial, and fabricated by Powerhouse Arts: Sheyda Azar, Brenna Board, Kelsey Breen, Tommy Coleman, Brittni Collins, Cuba, Jeremy Gender, Vivian Pullan, Alec Reed, and Rich Watts.
With special gratitude to Doozer, Jerry Garcia, Olney Gleason, Eric Weil of Oso Industries, and Powerhouse Arts for their extraordinary generosity of time, expertise, and support. Additional thanks to Stephanie Cristello, David J. Getsy, Jeremy Johnston, and Jess Wilcox.