Reclaimed Futures: Socrates & Materials for the Arts

Reclaimed Futures: Socrates & Materials for the Arts
On View: August 2026-April 2027

Materials for the Arts is New York City’s premier creative reuse center, which provides NYC arts nonprofits, public schools and City agencies with access to free materials. The organization strives to keep these valuable items from entering the landfill and put them into the hands of arts professionals, educators, and students across the five boroughs.

Since the earliest days of the Park, MFTA has served as a close partner, providing crucial materials for our artists’ projects and community-based programming. For its 40th Anniversary, 

Socrates honors this deep relationship with a new series of co-commissions, offering MFTA artists-in-residence the opportunity to extend their studio practices out into the public realm. The first of these collaboratively supported projects is by artist sTo Len. 

During his residency at Materials for the Arts, sTo Len will respond to the objects he encounters by creating a new series of works that engage with their past uses, production histories, and reimagined potential futures. Using this experience as a catalyst, Len will reflect on Socrates’ 40 years of history through archival research and an activation on the grounds that explores the collaborative aspects of reclamation as the site continues to evolve amidst shoreline restoration. Embodying an in-the-field approach, sTo Len will embed in both locations and consider the intersections between MFTA ’s diversion of materials from the landfill and Socrates’ transformation of the landfill itself.