Oscar Tuazon: Eternal Flame for Scott Burton
Eternal Flame for Scott Burton is a major new public commission by celebrated contemporary sculptor Oscar Tuazon (b. 1975, Seattle, WA), commissioned as a centerpiece of the New York City AIDS Memorial’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.
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.
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. More info.
Role: Commissioner
Date: June 20, 2026—May 2027
Location: New York City AIDS Memorial, New York, NY
Artist: Oscar Tuazon
