the socrates annual fellowship 2025
The Socrates Annual Fellowship is an opportunity for early career artists to realize new public artworks at Socrates Sculpture Park, a public park in Long Island City, Queens. The Fellowship is a highly competitive program that reflects the Park’s commitment to artistic experimentation and nurturing artistic careers. This important training ground for early career artists allows Artist Fellows to gain experience creating ambitious public art projects. Socrates encourages artists to create proposals for new works in disciplines including sculpture, performance, social practice, ecology as well as across multiple and new disciplines.
The Fellowship culminates in The Socrates Annual, an exhibition that showcases Fellows’ completed works, from September 2025 – March 2026.
2025 THEME - UP/ROOTED
Since 1986, Socrates has served as a steward of an urban waterfront Park—the threshold between the East River’s coastal ecology and the diverse communities in our Western Queens neighborhood. This coming year, Socrates embarks on a multi-year Seawall Reconstruction Project necessitating the relocation of several plant species and pathways to make space for restoration and construction work.
In response, this year’s Fellowship will respond to the theme "Up/rooted,” which explores the complexities of uprooting species for long-term sustainability and resilience. The term "uprooted" evokes the tension between dislocation and resilience. "Up" signifies the act of lifting away, while "root" refers to the hidden systems below the ground—anchoring life and absorbing essential nutrients. This duality invites us to reflect on the implications of relocation and adaptation, exploring how when done thoughtfully it can foster new growth and understanding. In what ways can we foster regeneration while acknowledging and mitigating the losses within our ecological and social landscapes? How might we navigate the delicate balance between ecological preservation and community needs to create a more resilient future?
Recognizing the limited footprint for large-scale sculpture, we encourage proposals that take a multi-disciplinary approach to the theme and creatively engage overlooked areas of the Park, inviting an upward gaze—into the trees, and overhead. How might lifting your eyes to the canopy and sky reveal connections between the unseen, nourishing systems underground and the expansive possibilities above? “As above, so below…”
Please note that due to ongoing construction along the shoreline, the north entrance and main lawn will be fenced off. Sites for consideration may be found on this map, and include the tree grove, the south eastern areas of the Park, and CUBES.
Building on the success of 2024’s expanded Fellowship which included ecology-focused projects activated through performance, workshops, and public programs, this year’s Artist Fellows will once again have the opportunity to begin on-site work as soon as April 2025. Applicants should clearly articulate their production needs and ideal start date considering factors such as: NYC’s growing season, site research/gestation period, and structural design support. The 2025 Artist Fellows will operate as one cohort with rolling installations and programming series ongoing from May-September 2025. This cohort will include up to eight artists with a diverse range of disciplines.
Important Dates:
- Public Announcement: March 2025
- Project development phase: March – May 2025
- On-site fabrication: April 2025 – September 2025
- Installation: rolling* May 2025 – September 2025
- Public programming: May 2025 – March 2026
Exhibition dates: On view beginning June 2025; full exhibition opens in mid-September 2025