Floating Museum is a Chicago-based nonprofit art collective that creates public art with communities, asking a simple question: what can a museum be when it moves beyond the walls of a building and into the city itself?
Co-directed by multidisciplinary artists avery r. young, Andrew Schachman, Faheem Majeed, and Jeremiah Hulsebos-Spofford, Floating Museum develops site-responsive art, design, exhibitions, and programming that connect people with the histories, architecture, and cultural life of their communities. Its projects take shape in streets, parks, and shared spaces, making art part of everyday public life.
Among these projects is Floating Monuments, an ongoing series of large-scale public artworks begun in 2017. The series reimagines monuments, moving away from permanent fixtures toward mobile works that gather people and bring visibility to overlooked histories, communities, and cultural figures.
The newest work, DIGNIDAD, was developed through a two-year collaboration with Colombian artist Iván Argote, Puerto Rican curator Carla Acevedo-Yates, and Humboldt Park community members. The mobile sculpture spells “DIGNIDAD” in monumental letters and travels on a flatbed truck.
DIGNIDAD debuted in Humboldt Park during the June 2026 Puerto Rican People’s Day Parade. As the series’ fourth work, it explores how monuments move through public space to reflect the communities they encounter.
That message carries deep meaning in Humboldt Park, where Puerto Rican residents have protected a cultural home amid displacement and political struggle. DIGNIDAD honors that history with a direct message: dignity belongs to everyone.
Through art made in relationship with people and place, Floating Museum celebrates public space as a site for memory, visibility, joy, resistance, and collective possibility.
