From Richard McCoy
Columbus
As the 2024-25 Cycle of Exhibit Columbus draws to a close, the Landmark Columbus Foundation is deeply grateful to the people and organizations who make this work possible: our partners, designers, educators, volunteers, donors, students, civic leaders, and everyone who visited and participated.
Our theme, Yes And, invited us to imagine together. That phrase, borrowed from improvisational theater, became a way of practicing generosity, collaboration, and optimism in public life. Culminating in the 2025 exhibition, which featured 13 installations, design was used as a tool for memory, joy, equity, and reflection. Each project sparked questions about how we gather, teach, care for each other, and plan for the future. And the response was extraordinary.
Thousands of people from across the country to experience the 2025 Exhibition. The national media coverage—ranging from Architectural Record and Metropolis to Bloomberg City Lab and the Chicago Tribune—positioned this city, once again, as a model for how design can activate civic life in places of all sizes. But what moved me most was what happened with the students: six graders designing their own version of a future Columbus. High school students building an installation alongside university students. Community members leading tours, performing music, and transforming our public spaces into sites of learning and connection.
Since 2016, Exhibit Columbus has grown into a nationally recognized art and design experience rooted in this place. And with five cycles now complete, we’re beginning to see the lasting value of this work: the memories created and the physical legacy that remains.
At the end of the last cycle, we announced two installations would remain: InterOculus at 4th and Washington Street, and PLOT Project near the Mill Race Center. And this week, we announced that three of the installations created during this cycle will remain. These pieces, so carefully crafted in collaboration with community partners, will continue to serve as gathering spaces, landmarks, and sources of inspiration long after the official exhibition ends. They are a testament to what happens when great art and design are grounded in civic trust and shared purpose.
This work is not easy, and it is never finished. We are living in a time when small cities like ours face serious challenges: infrastructure, education, housing, and economic change. But design, done together, in public, can help us face those challenges with imagination and care.
Columbus, you’ve shown the world what it looks like when a community makes working together a shared act of stewardship and creativity. As we close the exhibition, I hope you’ll continue to see your reflection in this work and imagine where it can take us next.
