Danh Võ: Rebuilding Liberty at the Vilcek Foundation, Upper East Side, NYC

The Vilcek Foundation, on East 70th Street in the Upper East Side, is showing "Danh Võ: Rebuilding Liberty" from June 22, 2026, through June 25, 2027. Võ, born in Vietnam in 1975, is a Danish conceptual artist. The show opens in the year of the 250th anniversary of the United States and the foundation's own 25th anniversary, and it takes up democracy, migration, national identity and belonging.

The works are three sculptures from Võ's We the People series (2011–2016) and Live Free or Die (2026), a piece commissioned for the foundation's gallery. Together they look at the Statue of Liberty and the American flag, asking how the meaning of each shifts once its form is broken up and its material changed.

In We the People, Võ rebuilds pieces of a full-scale replica of the Statue of Liberty as separate sculptures. Each matches a particular section of the monument, yet alone they are often hard to recognize. The work was made in Shanghai with repoussé, the metalworking technique used for the original statue, and split into hundreds of fragments sent to institutions and collections around the world. Võ designed it to stay fragmented for good, so it can never be a single sculpture again. Made after a concept developed in Germany, produced in China and circulated globally, it also reflects networks of labor, exchange and migration. Võ grew up in Denmark after his family fled Vietnam following the war, and was drawn to the statue because of the entwined histories of Vietnam, France and the United States. He has said he was fascinated that its surface is only two millimeters thick, and that the image of the monument is stronger than its physical substance.

Live Free or Die builds a flag from stacked firewood, with steel stars holding up the structure above. The title is the motto of New Hampshire, one of the original 13 colonies. The rough, irregular wood stands against the geometric order we expect from a flag, and the piece can change form between installations, following the artist's instructions. It also echoes Jasper Johns's Flag (1954–55).

A booklet accompanies the show, with a foreword by foundation president Rick Kinsel and essays by Joshua Chambers-Letson and Suzanne Mettler. Admission is free with advance registration, and timed entry can be reserved on the foundation's website. A free digital guide and audio experience are offered through Bloomberg Connects.