The Association for Public Art is proud to announce that it has received a generous $360,000 grant, which includes $60,000 in general operating support, from The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage to bring artist Paul Ramírez Jonas’ work Let Freedom Ring to Philadelphia in 2026 as part of the city-wide semiquincentennial celebration.
The aPA, partnering with the Independence National Historical Park, will install Paul Ramírez Jonas’ sculpture near the Liberty Bell on Independence Mall in the heart of historic Philadelphia. The artist’s monumental bell tower artwork will play the familiar patriotic song “My Country ‘Tis of Thee” in its entirety – all but the final note. Participants must pull a lever to ring the last note on a 600-pound bell at the base of the sculpture to complete the song, a poignant metaphor and model for how we can work together as a society to fulfill the unfinished promises of our nation’s founding.
More to come on this exciting project!
PAUL RAMÍREZ JONAS was born in Pomona, California in 1965 and raised in Honduras. Educated at Brown University (BA, 1987) and Rhode Island School of Design (MFA, 1989). Over the past 30 years Paul Ramírez Jonas has sought to challenge the definitions of art and the public and to engineer active audience participation and exchange. He has been made public in galleries, institutions and urban spaces around the world. He is the Art Department Chair at the College of Architecture, Art, and Planning at Cornell. His most recent project a large-scale, participatory monument was installed in the National Mall in Washington DC in the summer of 2023.
Let Freedom Ring has been supported by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage.
The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage is a multidisciplinary grantmaker and hub for knowledge-sharing, funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts, dedicated to fostering a vibrant cultural community in Greater Philadelphia. The Center invests in ambitious, imaginative, and catalytic work that showcases the region’s cultural vitality and enhances public life, and engages in an exchange of ideas concerning artistic and interpretive practice with a broad network of cultural practitioners and leaders.
