Billie Holiday Monument: Artist Proposals

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As part of an ongoing initiative to more fully tell the stories of those who have shaped New York City, the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs (DCLA) is advancing plans for a permanent public artwork honoring the legendary jazz artist Billie Holiday. The installation will be located in Queens—where Holiday both lived and performed—on the grounds of the Jamaica Performing Arts Center.

Billie Holiday (1915–1959)

Born Eleanora Fagan Gough, “Billie” Holiday is among the most celebrated and influential jazz vocalists of all time. Rising to fame in the 1930s, she would go on transform American music, performing and recording iconic versions of now-classic songs and collaborating with leading musicians including Count Basie and Artie Shaw. She also broke racial barriers as one of the first Black women to perform with integrated white bands.

Her recording of “Strange Fruit,” a haunting protest against lynching, was named by Time magazine as “the song of the century.” Holiday’s legacy has been recognized with numerous honors, including multiple Grammy Awards and induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

The monument will be situated at the Jamaica Performing Arts Center, near historic Jamaica Avenue venues where Holiday performed and the neighborhood she once called home.


About the Commission

Following an open call for artists, an initial Percent for Art panel convened in late 2025 and invited six artists to develop proposals. Finalists participated in an orientation, site visit, a Q&A session with Billie Holiday scholars and family members, and received ongoing support from DCLA staff as they refined their concepts.

These proposals are now being released for public review and feedback. Each submission includes an image and an artist statement outlining the proposed vision and approach.

The final design will be selected by a Percent for Art panel composed of representatives from City agencies, local leaders, community members, public art professionals, and stakeholders dedicated to preserving Billie Holiday’s legacy, including family members and scholars. The selection will be announced in Summer 2026. DCLA will then work closely with the chosen artist to further develop the design as it advances through required milestones, including public review by the Public Design Commission and final approvals for fabrication and installation.

Public Feedback

Members of the public are invited to share feedback on the finalist proposals. This process is not a vote, but an opportunity to gather community perspectives – which artist proposals speak to you, and why. Responses will be compiled and shared with the panel to help inform the final artist selection.

After reviewing the proposals, please feel free to provide feedback via the Billie Holiday Monument Feedback Form.

 

Billie Holiday Monument: Artist Proposals

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La Vaughn Belle

Artist rendering of a proposed monument to Billie Holiday featuring a large bronze sculptural portrait of the singer resting her head in her hands beside a circular reflecting pool. The monument is set on a grassy lawn with trees and a cathedral-like building in the background. A visitor is rendered standing beside the sculpture.

Billie Holiday: Still, at the Crossing (working title)
 
Billie Holiday: Still, at the Crossing presents Billie Holiday in a moment of self-possession. Emerging from the ground at the edge of a reflective pool, the figure occupies a threshold between her public and private self, memory and presence, stillness and becoming. Celebrated for her singing and performance, the work shifts attention toward a pre-stage moment with Holiday elegantly dressed for a public appearance but wrapped in a private garment. At this threshold, the work honors the interior life, self-fashioning, and emotional authority that shaped her voice and artistic legacy. She is a figure held within herself. 

Nikesha Breeze

Rendering of a proposed monument to Billie Holiday featuring a tall dark sculpture of the singer standing with her hands crossed over her chest and a flower in her hair. The monument includes the inscription ‘Sing the Truth’ and stands beside a circular reflecting pool with floating white flowers, set on a grassy lawn in front of a brick cathedral-like building.

Lady Sings the Truth: A Monument to Billie Holiday (working title)

Carved in Nero Marquina marble, this monument honors Billie Holiday: world-class voice, icon of elegance, song stylist, fighter for racial justice, and Queens own. Black marble is intentional, worthy of her legacy and power. She stands mid-song, face radiant, gown cascading around the integrated seat that acts as a stone amphitheater and resonance chamber. An invitation to gather, amplifying the voice like a perpetual microphone, as she amplified generations. White marble gardenias rest in her hair and float as offerings in the reflecting pool. Engraved: "Sing the Truth." A mandate to honor her truth. A voice for all time

Nekisha Durrett

Evening rendering of a proposed monument to Billie Holiday featuring an abstract sculptural profile of the singer formed from flowing white and bronze shapes. A small white marble dog sculpture sits at the base looking upward toward the face. The monument stands beside a reflecting pool, with an illuminated cathedral-like building in the background.

Bending the Note (working title)

Bending the Note reimagines Billie Holiday as a white marble gardenia petal rising on a slender stem, its gentle bend revealing a luminous gold underside that catches and casts light. Subtle ripples across the surface resolve into her profile. Below, a circular granite plinth turns her life into concentric revolutions of memory, sound, and story, etched in gold and silver and shaped in collaboration with her family to “set the record straight.” At the base, her beloved Pepe gazes upward, standing in for generations captivated by her voice—held in the glow of her beauty, presence, and enduring myth. 

Tanda Francis

Artist rendering of a proposed monument to Billie Holiday featuring a large bronze portrait bust rising behind a circular reflecting pool. The sculpture shows Holiday in profile with stylized flowers in her hair and cascading petals flowing down her neck. Red mosaic tiles line the base of the reflecting pool and extend upward along the lower half of the figure’s neck. The monument is set on a grassy lawn in front of a brick cathedral-like building.

Blood at the Root (working title)

This monument honors Billie Holiday’s spiritual godmother role to those who suffered as she did. Gardenia petals spiral from her crown above a healing pond where water cleanses and bears witness. Blood red tiles ground the base, honoring the pain at the root. Community members inscribe their tribulations and triumphs on the petals in workshops, speaking truth to power through their words. Technology integrates seamlessly, allowing social media to amplify these voices beyond the site, creating a living record of resilience, witness, and collective voice.  

Thomas J. Price

Artist rendering of a proposed Billie Holiday monument featuring a polished gold abstract sculpture composed of a large and smaller organic rounded form. The monument is situated beside a circular reflecting pool within a landscaped lawn shaded by trees and framed by a cathedral-like building.

Held Within (working title)

This sculpture takes its starting point not from the icon, but from the woman: a private photograph of Billie Holiday pressing her face into that of a small dog she loved, wholly unguarded, entirely herself. Two radically simplified bronze forms mirror that gesture, stripped of likeness, costume, and era. The smaller form is deliberately ambiguous; dog, child, beloved person. Against decades of projection and mythologizing, what remains when everything superfluous is removed is warmth, intimacy, and complete mutual trust. Not a monument to legend. A portrait of authentic joy in its purest form.  

Tavares Strachan

Artist rendering of a proposed monument to Billie Holiday taking the form of a large white sculptural pedestal with two cutout silhouettes of Holiday’s side profile facing one another. The monument sits beside a circular reflecting pool, on a grassy lawn in front of a brick cathedral-like building. Visitors are rendered observing the sculpture and sitting on the lawn.

The Very Thought of You (working title)

The Very Thought of You is a stone sculpture inspired by Billie Holiday. Based on a historic photographic profile, the work transforms her silhouette into an infinite vessel-like form where mirrored profiles face one another across a central void. Part vessel and part architecture, the sculpture acts as a container for memory, sound, and presence. Named after Holiday’s recording The Very Thought of You, the work proposes a monument rooted not only in permanence, but in the enduring transmission of emotion, history, and human connection across generations.