“I was thinking a lot about how bodies would move through the space and how it’s sort of a multi-purpose, multi-event space used by students, faculty, staff and visitors,” he said. “I wanted to create something to activate the space as much as the organ activates the space.” 

Brown University Public Art Working Group Chair Kate Kraczon said Biggers’ installation, which was funded by an anonymous gift, is an excellent addition to the wide range of public art currently on view at Brown. 

“Sanford responds to specific sites and contexts in a truly multidisciplinary way,” said Kraczon, director of exhibitions and chief curator for the Brown Arts Institute. “He works in any and all materials, and he’s conceptually flexible in how he approaches public art installations.”

Biggers’ work, which incorporates elements ranging from film, video and music to fabric, sculpture and paint, is held in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, among other institutions.

The granite and brownstone Sayles Hall, built with support from a donation made in memory of William Clark Sayles, who died in 1876 while a sophomore at Brown, is also notable for its portrait collection of past University presidents, administrators, faculty, students, trustees and benefactors. The new installation invites viewers to contemplate who is represented on the walls and who isn’t, Biggers said.

He also considered how the piece would be viewed from outside of the building.

“I wanted to create something that could be experienced by passersby, who could look through the windows and maybe see glimpses of the shapes or the light that would inspire them or attract them to come through the space,” he said. 

Biggers’ commission stemmed from artist and activist Carrie Mae Weems’ campus residency with the Brown Arts Institute in 2023. With support from the institute, Weems invited Biggers to identify a space at Brown for an installation, for which he developed a proposal that was reviewed by the Public Art Working Group.

The group’s members appreciated how Biggers’ proposal engaged with the historic space without interfering with viewers’ experience of the portraits and other elements within it, Kraczon said.

“Unless it’s being used for a large event, Sayles Hall has a calming energy when you’re there alone, and certainly when music is being performed,” Kraczon said. “We appreciated that Sanford was able to create a piece that is true to his artistic point of view but also resonated with the way the space has historically been used over many decades.”