The first museum survey dedicated to the work of Deana Lawson (b. 1979, Rochester, NY), this exhibition presents the work of a singular voice in photography today. For more than 15 years, Lawson has been exploring and challenging conventional representations of Black life through photography, drawing on a wide spectrum of photographic languages, including the family album, studio portraiture, staged tableaux, documentary pictures, and appropriated images.

Courtyard Coalition is a process-focused program emphasizing PS1’s Courtyard as a cultural and spatial asset for critical questions at the intersection of the institution, the neighborhood, and the community. In its inaugural presentation in Homeroom visitors are invited to draw, write, and remember experiences in the Courtyard, and imagine future activations of the space.

The second year of a collaboration between jackie sumell, the Lower Eastside Girls Club, and MoMA PS1, Growing Abolition is a multipart project investigating connections between ecology and prison abolition. Developing gradually from spring to winter, Growing Abolition unfolds around a greenhouse designed by sumell and installed in the side Courtyard of PS1.

Using photography, archival research, memorabilia, and oral histories, the Queensbridge Photo Collective reflects on the lives of their members, who grew up in the neighborhoods around PS1.

Inspired by the history of community gardens in New York City, Life Between Buildings explores how artists have engaged the city’s interstitial spaces—“vacant” lots, sidewalk cracks, traffic islands, and parks, among others—to consider the politics of public space through an ecological lens.

Conjuring the spirit of a weed bursting through cracks in the pavement, Poncili Creacion’s sculptural installation No gods only flowers takes up residence in MoMA PS1’s double-height Duplex gallery. Comprising a towering, anthropomorphic flower growing from out of a shrunken cityscape, the installation is the second life of this massive blossom. It once danced as a puppet, suspended by boom cranes, over the museum’s Courtyard as part of a performance of the same name in July 2022.