THE ART NEWSPAPER: Artist Scott Burton honoured in new sculpture at New York’s Aids memorial

As the New York City Aids Memorial celebrates its tenth anniversary this year, the nonprofit established to honour those lost to the Aids epidemic is unveiling its latest public commission: Eternal Flame for Scott Burton (2026) by the American sculptor Oscar Tuazon. Installed at the memorial’s site in St Vincent’s Triangle in Manhattan’s West Village, the commission being unveiled on 20 June revisits the final public work of Scott Burton, the influential artist who died of Aids-related illness in 1989.

Tuazon, whose practice melds elements of architecture, social engagement and conceptual sculpture, first became interested in Burton’s work as an art student in New York in the 1990s. “The dual nature of his sculptures––at once publicly visible and deeply private––seemed like a secret hidden in plain sight,” Tuazon says. His commission for the Aids Memorial reimagines Burton’s landmark installation for the Sheepshead Bay fishing piers in Brooklyn, a work originally commissioned in 1987 and completed posthumously in 1994.