Bar None honors the Benjamin Franklin Parkway’s legacy as a site of collective assembly and action. It offers a testament to the overlapping movements and voices that have surged through this civic spine in pursuit of justice, celebration, and change. The installation is interspersed with colored acrylic panels etched with images sourced from historic archives. The manipulated images reflect moments of protest, pride, and public gathering.

The horizontal installation is a winding procession of transformed steel barricades that rise and sink into the earth like a wave. It creates a path-like structure that invites viewers to walk alongside it, not solely to observe, but to move through history itself.

Rather than a fixed monument, the artist considers Bar None a dynamic site of reflection, where the lines between protest and celebration blur and where the act of gathering itself is honored. It reaffirms the Parkway as a vital stage for collective care, memory, and civic imagination.

This sculpture was selected for Art on the Parkway, a juried commission organized by the Association for Public Art in partnership with the Parkway Council and Philadelphia Parks & Recreation. Art on the Parkway invites artists, designers, and other creatives to propose a temporary public art installation for Maja Park on Philadelphia’s Benjamin Franklin Parkway as part of the annual Parkway to Park Festival.