Camille Henrot's Dogs Take Over Central Park's Doris C. Freedman Plaza, NYC

At the entrance to Central Park, where Fifth Avenue meets 60th Street, Doris C. Freedman Plaza now holds a pack of oversized dogs. Camille Henrot: Dogs is the Paris-born artist's first public exhibition in New York City. Public Art Fund presents it, and its Senior Curator, Melanie Kress, organized it. The installation opened September 9, 2026, and stays up through August 29, 2027. Admission is free.

The show gathers twelve sculptures. It builds on an existing series of Henrot's and adds new pieces in materials suited to the outdoors: bronze, stone, steel and concrete. The dogs differ widely in shape, scale and personality. One is a negative image of a dog cut from a sheet of steel. Another is a white dog with a book on its back. A third is a white figure of concrete, epoxy and mica. Public Art Fund's own posts name two of them: "Odon," a towering seven feet tall, and "Cosima," a stretching poodle. Each work grew out of an accumulation of references, among them Saul Steinberg drawings, Tex Avery cartoons, ancient Egyptian sculpture and dog-show competitions.

Henrot, born in France in 1978, works across painting, drawing, film, installation and sculpture. Her film "Grosse Fatigue" won the Silver Lion at the 2013 Venice Biennale. Her solo shows have included the New Museum in New York and the Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery in Japan, and her work is held by MoMA, the Guggenheim and the Centre Pompidou. In 2026 she premiered her film "In The Veins" at the New Museum and LUMA in Arles.

Dogs gives her a way into long-running interests in attachment, dependency and domestication. The animal is highly social and a loyal human companion. The exhibition is also framed as a celebration of sculptural craft and style, and of Henrot's love for New York as a place of insistent individual expression. Public Art Fund says the pack reflects the city's individuality and diversity.

The plaza sits at the threshold between city and park, so the dogs stand amid ordinary street life along Fifth Avenue. The plaza has hosted Public Art Fund projects before, including Louise Nevelson's 1980–81 "Frozen Laces I." Leadership support for Dogs comes from Hauser & Wirth, the Abrams Foundation and others, with Kenneth C. Griffin and Griffin Catalyst as presenting sponsors.