08/19/2026
A few weeks ago, Grantee Precious Okoyomon’s (Precious Okoyomon) VIA-Supported Commission “Among the Flowers I Learned to Love: A Garden of Decreation” officially opened at MoMA PS1 (MoMA PS1). VIA Partners were thrilled to celebrate with the artist as the artwork was unveiled.
The artist and poet has transformed the MoMA PS1 courtyard into a living forest of plants, sculpture, and sound creating their largest outdoor installation to date and the first of its kind in New York City, featuring a wild garden that evolves with the seasons and a giant teddy bear sculpture that visitors can enter and climb through.
The installation features a landscape of grasses, flowers, weeds, sedges, pollinators, and vines, developed in collaboration with specialty nursery issima and accompanied by a sound piece composed by Oliver Leith. The garden brings together species often viewed as oppositional, but which in reality can co-exist: native and invasive plants, annuals and perennials, cultivated and wild growth. Anticipating the landscapes of the near future, in consideration of the unpredictabilities of climate changes and other instabilities, Okoyomon proposes a garden of mutation and adaptability for the city.
This installation inaugurates MoMA PS1’s Courtyard Commission series, a new biannual program inviting artists to create site-specific, large-scale works for the museum’s outdoor courtyard, reimagining how experimental art can transform public space. Organized by Chief Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs Ruba Katrib, the work will be on view for two years and accessible to the public as part of MoMA PS1’s new free admission for all program.
📷: VIA Art Fund
📷: Installation View of Courtyard Commission Precious Okoyomon, Courtesy MoMA PS1. Photos John Kim.
