Roberto Lugo’s Giant Pottery Installation Brightens Madison Square Park
A fantasy-sized massive urn and fire hydrant invite New Yorkers to smile while celebrating Puerto Rican culture and summer in the city
The Madison Square Park Conservancy opened the summer season on Wednesday with the debut of “Roberto Lugo: Alfarero del Barrio (Village Potter),” a duo of giant works that embody summertime city culture. Enter from the southeast corner of the park, and there’s a 15-foot-tall orange fire hydrant with Lugo’s graffiti. Wander up towards 26th and Madison to see its multicolor companion, a 20-foot-tall urn illustrated with luminaries from the Puerto Rican community: Lin-Manuel Miranda, Bad Bunny, Roberto Clemente, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, playwright Quiara Alegría Hudes, and Lemon Anderson.
Lugo also added his parents to the portraits. Above and below are bright floral graphics full of motifs from his neighborhood and life experience: dominos, chickens, and of course the fire hydrants that, with a little subversive help, provide city children with welcome play and relief during heat waves. “When I look at a fire hydrant, I think of playing in it as a child, and my dad would have the monkey wrench in the neighborhood, so we were the most popular kids,” Lugo recalled, smiling.
The brightly colored urn’s shape recalls traditional pottery and porcelain that traded over colonial routes, but reflects resistance by groups that were exploited along those routes. The twist here? “If you look closely at the shape, it is based off of a Herend porcelain pot. At the time that it originally started, porcelain was considered more expensive than gold, and the people that were commissioning the objects were the wealthiest of the wealthy, and so that becomes part of the visual sort of the landscape for a lot of folks, which is when they see these objects in museums, they’re often seeing it reference royalty,” explains Lugo. So he gave eight places of prominence to people he admired.
In another historical reference, the interior of the tunnel through the urn is painted graffiti-style in the the blue-and-white shades of some of the highly prized pottery. Kids chasing each other through the urn might not know it, but it’s there. The layers of meaning go far beyond the fun standing in front of a giant fire hydrant and urn and feeling mouse-sized.
Alfarero del Barrio will be on view at Madison Square Park in New York May 20–December 6, 2026.