David Hammons: Day’s End
Fri, May 30
|Whitney Museum of American Art
A ghost pier reimagined—David Hammons’ Day’s End is a monumental memory traced in steel, hovering over the Hudson’s edge with spectral grace.
Time & Location
May 30, 2025, 7:00 AM – May 30, 2031, 11:00 PM
Whitney Museum of American Art, 99 Gansevoort St, New York, NY 10014, USA
About the event
On view permanently – Hudson River Park (Gansevoort Peninsula)
Directly across from the Whitney Museum of American Art
Spanning sculpture, architecture, memory, and social commentary, David Hammons’ Day’s End (2014–2021) is a landmark in public art. Installed on the southern edge of Gansevoort Peninsula, this sweeping, skeletal structure silently outlines the now-absent Pier 52 shed, once a haven for artistic experimentation, LGBTQ+ expression, and urban transformation.
The piece directly references Gordon Matta-Clark’s 1975 intervention, where five dramatic cuts into the original shed reshaped the way artists saw space and decay. Hammons’ version is non-invasive yet deeply powerful—a luminous, steel-traced memory that floats just above the water, framing sky, light, and movement. No walls. No doors. Just an outline. A meditation on presence through absence.
Commissioned by the Whitney Museum in collaboration with Hudson River Park, the installation is both art and architecture—a destination for reflection, a tribute to experimental history, and…