Oscar Tuazon: Eternal Flame for Scott Burton
Overview
As the centerpiece for the New York City AIDS Memorial’s 10th-anniversary programming, Eternal Flame for Scott Burton is a major public installation by celebrated sculptor Oscar Tuazon. The project reimagines and creatively readapts the final public artwork of groundbreaking sculptor and performance artist Scott Burton (1939–1989), created for the Sheepshead Bay fishing piers in Brooklyn. By bringing Burton's salvaged work into dialogue with Tuazon's architectural interventions, the installation positions public art as an ongoing conduit for communal care, collective memory, and civic sanctuary.
Project Context & Curatorial Role
As Commissioner, I directed the project's conceptual framework, institutional development, and production strategy, bringing together Tuazon’s contemporary practice with Burton’s enduring legacy to create a transformative installation in the heart of Greenwich Village.
Preservation, Salvage, & Recontextualization
In 1987, Scott Burton was commissioned to design a site-specific installation for the newly refurbished Sheepshead Bay piers. Completed in 1994, five years after Burton died of AIDS-related complications, the project earned an Award of Excellence in Design from the Art Commission of the City of New York. Decades of exposure to a harsh marine environment and severe submersion during Superstorm Sandy ultimately caused irreparable damage, leading to its formal decommissioning in 2022. Working with Olney Gleason, the work's elements were meticulously salvaged, allowing us to preserve Burton's final civic gesture and reframe it for contemporary audiences.
Social Architecture & Queer History
Burton’s practice fundamentally expanded the possibilities of public sculpture. By designing functional benches, chairs, and tables, he blurred the boundaries between high art, functional design, and daily life—subtly embedding opportunities for intimacy, queer gathering, and quiet connection within ordinary municipal spaces. Operating in a shared lineage of conceptual architecture and public utility, Oscar Tuazon reinterprets these salvaged granite pieces to honor their original materiality while introducing new structural, landscape, and design elements.
The resulting installation asks how we actively sustain the people, physical objects, and radical histories that shape our shared cultural landscape, offering a vital space for reflection, dialogue, and community.
Role: Commissioner
Date: June 20, 2026—May 2027
Location: New York City AIDS Memorial, New York, NY
Artist: Oscar Tuazon
Photography: Nicholas Knight
