A Monument for the Anxious and Hopeful

Anxiety and hope are often defined by a moment that has yet to arrive. How often do we memorialize our hopes and anxieties and consider their relationship to the future? A Monument for the Anxious and Hopeful is an opportunity to express your apprehensions and expectations for tomorrow, contemplate your sense of the future, and engage with the viewpoints of others.

Inspired by Tibetan prayer flags and the anonymity of public spaces, artist Candy Chang and writer James A. Reeves ask Rubin visitors to engage with their community by sharing their anxieties or hopes on a card. At a glance, passersby in our Spiral Lobby will be able to glean the prevailing mood of respondents and, drawing closer, explore hundreds of individual meditations that range from personal, local, and specific statements to political, theoretical, and spiritual reflections.

“We live in a uniquely unsettled moment of technological, political, and social flux. Awash in endless currents of information delivered by glowing screens, each new headline, discovery, and development brings a fresh opportunity for hope or anxiety, depending upon our individual attitudes and philosophies. By definition, anxiety and hope are determined by a moment that has yet to arrive—but how often do we pause to fully consider our relationship with the future? Are we optimists or pessimists? And how do our private sensibilities square with the current collective mood?”

—Candy Chang and James A. Reeves

The Future is made possible by Bob and Lois Baylis, Rasika and Girish Reddy, Shelley and Donald Rubin, Ann and Matthew Nimetz, and The Ellen Bayard Weedon Foundation.