Kutztown University of Pennsylvania

« Back to Recent News

KU Professor's Art Featured at Brooklyn Waterfront

Kutztown, PA (09/20/2019) — Kutztown University professor of photography Rose DeSiano's public art piece Absent Monuments is on display Sept. 11-22, in Brooklyn Bridge Park in Dumbo, beneath the Brooklyn Bridge, New York. Operating both in sculpture and photography, DeSiano created the piece as a winner of the Uniqlo 2018 Expression Grant for Public Art.

After its summer display in Rufus King Park as part of the Uniqlo grant, the piece is now featured on the lawn of the waterfront park as part of Photoville.

The second iteration of this monument series, DeSiano's photo-sculptures focus on the lost history of Brooklyn's waterfront and celebrate the unsung and underacknowledged peoples of its past. Absent Monuments is a set of four, 15-foot tall mirrored obelisks on plinth bases. The bases use blue and white Dutch Delft tiles to depict photographic-composite scenes representing the New York landscape's complex history of colonization, war, Native Americans, abolitionism, immigration, suffragist and rural urbanization.

"My photography regularly deals with the marking of cultural history in our landscapes and the way in which we choose to present our culture in visual constructs such as landmarks, reenactments, monuments and museums and of course photographs," DeSiano said.

Full Interview with professor Rose DeSiano.

DeSiano's work has been exhibited internationally, from local galleries to the Orange Changsha Photo Festival in China. She earned a Master of Fine Arts from the ArtCenter College of Design, Los Angeles, and received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from New York University's Tisch School of Arts, Photography and Imagining Department.

For more information or to contact the artist, visit www.desiano.com/.

Media Attachments

Brooklyn waterfront

Copyright © 2026 Merit Pages, Inc. • All Rights Reserved. • Terms of Service • Privacy Policy • Opt Out