Beverly Pepper Powers Latest Public Art Push Downtown

Downtown’s daily drive gets a dramatic detour this summer as the New York Avenue Sculpture Corridor unveils Beverly Pepper: Ten Monumental Sculptures, a sweeping solo showcase of the late Beverly Pepper. Stretching from 9th to 13th Streets NW, the expanded corridor transforms traffic islands into a textured tour of towering, tensile steel.

Organized by the DC New York Avenue Sculpture Committee with the DowntownDC Business Improvement District and National Museum of Women in the Arts, the installation runs June 18, 2026, through June 1, 2027, continuing a lineage of landmark, large-scale works by women artists that have defined the avenue since 2010.

Pepper’s pieces — cut, curved, and composed in weathering steel — channel both industrial intensity and sculptural subtlety. Known for pioneering the material’s artistic use, she bends its brute strength into sweeping forms that feel at once grounded and kinetic.

Come fall, the museum deepens the dialogue with Beverly Pepper: Earthworks (Oct. 24–Apr. 25), pairing film and smaller works to frame her global, genre-defying practice.