Located on the western shore of Governors Island, the site offers an unobstructed view of New York Harbor and the Statue of Liberty. This vantage point that reframes familiar national symbols through the lens of Indigenous presence and ecological loss. Michelson’s sculpture bridges pre-colonial history and contemporary environmental practice, positioning the island itself as a site of both reckoning and possibility.

Using the building blocks of oyster habitat restoration, including salvaged shells and gabions of steel mesh, Michelson transforms Governors Island into a meeting ground between Indigenous knowledge, environmental justice, and collective action.

Surrounding the sculpture, a large-scale textual installation featuring reflections on oyster ecology sourced from the Governors Island community is painted directly onto the ground in purple and white, the colors of wampum, the shell beads long used by the Lenape as a medium of exchange, diplomacy, and memory.

Throughout the year, The Oyster will serve as a living stage for public programming, including boat tours, walking performances, conversations with leading thinkers in the field of more-than-human rights, and curated and commissioned performances that activate the sculpture as a gathering place.

About Governors Island Arts
Gov­er­nors Island Arts, the pub­lic arts and cul­tur­al pro­gram pre­sent­ed by the Trust for Gov­er­nors Island, cre­ates trans­for­ma­tive encoun­ters with art for all New York­ers, invit­ing artists and researchers to engage with the issues of our time in the con­text of the Island’s lay­ered his­to­ries, envi­ron­ments, and archi­tec­ture. Gov­er­nors Island Arts achieves this mis­sion through tem­po­rary and long-term pub­lic art instal­la­tions and exhi­bi­tions, an annu­al Orga­ni­za­tions in Res­i­dence pro­gram in the Island’s his­toric hous­es, and the curat­ed mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary INTER­VEN­TIONS per­for­mance series. Learn more at www.govisland.org/arts.

About The Billion Oyster Project
The Billion Oyster Project is a New York City-based nonprofit organization with the goal of engaging one million people in the effort to restore one billion oysters to New York Harbor by 2035. Learn more at www.billionoysterproject.org