Lincoln Center’s New Mural Turns Construction Fencing Into Public Art
A stretch of construction fencing on Amsterdam Avenue has become the latest canvas at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. Earlier this week, the institution unveiled The Future We Create, a mural installed along the western edge of its Upper West Side campus as work continues on the Lincoln Center West Initiative.
The mural was designed by Spanish artist Vanesa Álvarez (b. 1980s, exact birth year not provided), who is based in Brooklyn. She worked with Derval Fairweather, a local artist who grew up in public housing on Amsterdam near Lincoln Center. The project was developed in collaboration with ArtBridge, the nonprofit founded in 2008 to transform scaffolding, fencing, and other temporary urban surfaces into sites for public art.
The mural now covers fencing at Damrosch Park, near Amsterdam Ave. at 62nd St. The location sits beside the Guggenheim Bandshell and in a part of the campus that has long served as a public-facing threshold for the institution. Lincoln Center’s broader redevelopment effort has been in the works since summer 2023 and officially got underway this spring. When complete, it is expected to improve the approach from the Amsterdam side and add a community garden and outdoor performance spaces. The project is slated for completion in summer 2028.
Álvarez began developing the work through brainstorming workshops with the public, NYCHA residents, and high school students in late 2023. That process shaped a mural intended not simply to decorate a barrier, but to acknowledge the social life around it. As Álvarez said when the work was presented, “Behind this mural is a history of community: of joy, of color, of people spending time together, creating together, believing in the arts, and being part of making it.”
In a city where construction often reads as interruption, The Future We Create offers a more deliberate gesture: a temporary surface used to signal continuity, participation, and the possibility of a more open campus ahead.
