New York City Center to Showcase Art Installations by Angel Abreu and Mark Seliger

New York City Center has unveiled two new visual art installations commissioned for its 2025–2026 Season. The installations—Wonderful Town by Angel Abreu with students from The Brotherhood Sister Sol, and Mark Seliger, Personal Work 1992–2024 by Mark Seliger—are now on view in City Center’s public lobby spaces and are free to experience with a performance ticket.

Abreu’s installation is displayed in the Orchestra lobbies on house left and right, while Seliger’s photographs are presented in the Shuman Lounge. These new works join Sol LeWitt’s Wall Drawing #357 and Stephen Antonakos’s Terrain #1, Terrain #4, and Terrain #5, currently on view in the Grand Tier lobby.

WONDERFUL TOWN

Angel Abreu with Students from The Brotherhood Sister Sol (BroSis)

Wonderful Town is a collaborative visual art project created by Angel Abreu in partnership with students from BroSis, inspired by City Center’s May 2025 Encores! production of Wonderful Town. Working across painting, literature, and education, Abreu led workshops that invited students to explore themes of home, movement, reinvention, and community through listening, discussion, and artmaking.

The resulting installation incorporates ink, mulberry paper, giclée prints, and collage layered onto pages from Leonard Bernstein’s Wonderful Town score. Presented as three canvases (house right) and fifteen works on paper (house left), the project treats the musical score as both material and metaphor—mapping shared movement and collective identity within New York City.

Drawing inspiration from W.E.B. Du Bois’s Credo, students composed personal statements of belief and identity, integrating text and imagery onto the score pages. Abreu then wove these individual contributions into a unified visual language that reflects the rhythms of the city, echoing the collaborative legacy of artists such as Merce Cunningham, Robert Rauschenberg, and John Cage, whose interdisciplinary work intersected at City Center in the mid-20th century.

Printed music from Wonderful Town is used by permission of Boosey & Hawkes and the Leonard Bernstein Music Publishing Company.

MARK SELIGER, PERSONAL WORK 1992–2024

Photographs in the Shuman Lounge

Mark Seliger’s installation presents a selection of portraits and city images spanning more than three decades of his career. Known for his work at Rolling Stone, where he served as chief photographer and created over 185 covers, Seliger is recognized for portraits that balance theatricality with intimacy, revealing both public image and private presence.

The photographs on view feature dancers, choreographers, musicians, actors, and performers who have appeared at City Center, alongside images of New York City itself. Together, the works form a visual portrait of City Center’s artistic legacy and the city as a site of performance, invention, and ambition.

In recent years, Seliger has returned to traditional darkroom practices, producing large-scale platinum-palladium prints that emphasize craft and tonal depth. His work is held in major collections including the Smithsonian Institution and the National Portrait Gallery, London.

ADDITIONAL SEASON INFORMATION

Support for visual art at New York City Center is provided by Deborah Goodman Davis and Gerald R. Davis.

New York City Center’s 2025–2026 Season continues through July 26. Upcoming productions include the 2026 Encores! series—High Spirits (Feb 4–15), The Wild Party (Mar 18–29), and La Cage Aux Folles (Jun 17–28)—as well as performances by Lyon Opera Ballet (Feb 19–21), the 25th Flamenco Festival (Feb 26–Mar 8), Graham100: The Centennial Celebration (Apr 8–12), Dance Theatre of Harlem (Apr 16–19), Ballet Hispánico (Apr 23–26), and Paris Opera Ballet’s Hugo Marchand | Artists at the Center (Jul 23–26).