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09.04.2025 Press release

Hyundai Motor and Whitney Museum Present Work by Marina Zurkow as the Second Hyundai Terrace Commission

  • Hyundai Terrace Commission: Marina Zurkow: The River is a Circle to open on Whitney’s fifth-floor terrace from April 9 through early 2026
  • Marina Zurkow to unveil a site-specific animation and installation, exploring the complexities of ecosystems around the Hudson River in a poetic way
  • The annual Hyundai Terrace Commission offers an innovative platform for artists to experiment and showcase their work to the world

Press material

Hyundai Motor Company and the Whitney Museum of American Art today announced the opening of Hyundai Terrace Commission: Marina Zurkow: The River is a Circle. The second exhibition in this series is presented on the Whitney’s fifth-floor terrace as part of a 10-year partnership between Hyundai Motor and the Whitney, and will be on view from April 9, 2025, through early 2026.

Created in collaboration with James Schmitz and Blake Goble, this innovative work by Marina Zurkow comprises an animation and accompanying installation. (Hyundai Terrace Commission: Marina Zurkow: The River is a Circle, 2025. Photo: Filip Wolak)
"The River is a Circle" builds on the artist’s previous pieces, "Hudson Follies" (2022) and "Does the River Flow Both Ways?" (2022), which offer a split view of the Hudson River, allowing visitors to simultaneously observe the world above and below the water. (Hyundai Terrace Commission: Marina Zurkow: The River is a Circle, 2025. Photo: Filip Wolak)
The River is a Circle is an animation based on custom software that depicts a complex river ecosystem of fluctuating social and biological groups, such as references to hyperlocal community history, barges with historical scenes traveling along the water, schools of fish and oyster reefs. The dynamic elements of this ecosystem are driven by algorithmic probability. Responding to real-time weather, the software system continuously reflects New York City’s current conditions and seasons. (Hyundai Terrace Commission: Marina Zurkow: The River is a Circle, 2025. Photo: Filip Wolak)

Focusing on the Meatpacking District surrounding the Whitney Museum, The River is a Circle explores a combination of local history and river ecology, researched with the help of Hudson River Park Trust. This site-specific work alludes to significant moments that have impacted the Manhattan neighborhood’s evolution, such as the Lenape trading post located nearby, the meatpacking industry, the illicit nightlife of the 1970s, gentrification, and the adjacent installations by artists Gordon Matta-Clark and David Hammons. The artist intends to speculate on a circular economy and a potentially positive return to more modest strategies of maintaining ecosystems.

Marina’s work has consistently engaged with the complexities of ecosystems in a poetic way, and the Whitney Museum’s fifth-floor terrace is a prime location for her site-specific exploration of local waterways and history. Her installation will invite visitors to see the Museum in the multilayered context of its environment.

Christiane Paul Whitney Curator of Digital Art

We are at a crucial moment in which we must devise an integrated approach to exploring sustainable futures in the environmental, economic, and social domains. Hyundai Terrace Commission: Marina Zurkow: The River is a Circle will introduce us to an ever-changing ecosystem that our interconnected surroundings generate in real time, triggering us to take collective action for a shared future.

DooEun Choi Art Director of Hyundai Motor Company

The Hyundai Terrace Commission enables annual site-specific installations on the Whitney Museum’s largest outdoor gallery, offering an innovative platform for artists to experiment, respond to the space and the neighborhood, and showcase their work to the world. The commissions will encompass installations, sculpture, performances and multimedia projects. In addition to the Hyundai Terrace Commission, Hyundai Motor also supports the Whitney Biennial, presented every other year, aligning the brand with the Whitney’s most groundbreaking and signature presentation of the leading contemporary American art of our day.

Hyundai Terrace Commission at whitney.org

The Hyundai Terrace Commission gives artists and curators the opportunity to push boundaries, expand their practices, and dream big. With the support of Hyundai Motor, the Whitney presents annual site-specific commissions – including installations and performances – on the Museum's outdoor terraces.

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Hyundai Terrace Commission: Marina Zurkow: The River is a Circle is organized by Christiane Paul, Curator of Digital Art, with David Lisbon, Curatorial Assistant.

These images are approved only for publication in conjunction with the promotion of Hyundai Terrace Commission: Marina Zurkow: The River is a Circle. Each image must not be cropped, bled off the page, colorized, solarized, overlaid with other elements (e.g., tone, text, another image, etc.), or otherwise altered, except in terms of overall size. Reproductions must include the full caption information adjacent to the image. Use of images for front covers may incur a fee and will require prior authorization from the owner and copyright holder of the work. Please contact the Whitney Press Office for such use at pressoffice@whitney.org.

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