Announcing Marina Zurkow and James Schmitz, for Times Square Arts’ September 2025 Midnight Moment

Still from The River is a Circle (Times Square Edition) (2025), by Marina Zurkow and James Schmitz. 

The River is a Circle (Times Square Edition) is presented in partnership with the Whitney Museum of American Art and The Armory Show

September 1–30 | 11:57pm–12am
Times Square | Between 41st and 49th Streets

Times Square Arts, the public platform for contemporary visual arts and performance, is pleased to announce September’s Midnight Moment by artists Marina Zurkow and James Schmitz, which is co-presented with the Whitney Museum of American Art and The Armory Show. 

Midnight Moment is the world’s largest, longest-running digital art exhibition, synchronized on over 95 electronic billboards throughout Times Square nightly from 11:57pm to midnight. Zurkow’s Times Square presentation of The River is a Circle (Times Square Edition) is a special edit of the longer piece titled The River is a Circle, 2025, made in collaboration with James Schmitz and Blake Goble, shown at the Whitney as the second Hyundai Terrace Commission, part of the artist’s solo exhibition Parting Worlds, on view through January 11, 2026. Further information about Marina Zurkow: Hyundai Terrace Commission can be found here. 

This is the fifth collaboration between Times Square Arts and The Armory Show, which takes place from September 5–7 at the Javits Center. 

Known for her genre-defying explorations into the intersection of nature and culture, Zurkow uses code, software, and animation to reflect on the complexity of ecological and social systems. In creating intimate connections between the natural world, public life, and technology, the New York-based artist invites viewers to experience nature-culture tensions and environmental chaos.

The River is a Circle is Zurkow’s large-scale animation based on custom software that depicts a complex river ecosystem of fluctuating social and biological groups, including traveling vessels, schools of fish, and oyster reefs. Driven by algorithmic probability and real-time weather, the software system continuously reflects New York City’s current meteorological conditions and seasons. The multi-channel Midnight Moment offers a split-screen view of the Hudson River, revealing the world above and below the water. Researched with the help of Hudson River Park Trust, Zurkow choreographs a mix of river ecology and historical narratives that spans centuries, referencing the Meatpacking District’s past and speculating on its future.

ABOUT MARINA ZURKOW

Marina Zurkow (b. 1962) invites people to explore ways of knowing and feeling nature-culture tensions and environmental messes. By engaging research, speculation, and technologies, she fosters intimate multispecies and geophysical connections. Zurkow works as a founding member of the collaborative initiatives More&More (Investing in Futures), Dear Climate, and Climoji. Recent exhibitions include WHAT IF? at MoMA’s Creativity Lab (New York); Antroposcenes, Lo Pati Centre d’Art (Amposta); The Breath Eaters, Wolfsonian Museum (Miami); Underfoot/Overhead, Wasserman Projects (Detroit); and Can the Substrate Speak? at Festival Art Souterrain (Montreal). Her work has also been shown at SFMOMA; Walker Art Center; Smithsonian American Art Museum; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and the National Museum for Women in the Arts. Zurkow was a 2022 fellow at the Environmental Media Lab, Princeton University; and received grants from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, Rice University, NYFA, NYSCA, the Rockefeller Foundation, and Creative Capital. She resides in the Hudson Valley, New York, is represented by bitforms gallery, and teaches at NYU.

ABOUT THE ARMORY SHOW

A cornerstone of New York’s cultural landscape since 1994, The Armory Show opens New York’s fall art season by bringing the world’s leading international contemporary and modern art galleries to the Javits Center each year. The fair emphasizes thoughtful programming, elevated presentations, curatorial excellence, meaningful institutional partnerships, and engaging public art activations. In 2023, The Armory Show was acquired by Frieze, one of the world’s leading organizations for modern and contemporary art. 

For more information on The Armory Show, visit thearmoryshow.com.

ABOUT THE WHITNEY

The Whitney Museum of American Art, founded in 1930 by the artist and philanthropist Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–1942), houses the foremost collection of American art from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Mrs. Whitney, an early and ardent supporter of modern American art, nurtured groundbreaking artists when audiences were still largely preoccupied with the Old Masters. From her vision arose the Whitney Museum of American Art, which has been championing the most innovative art of the United States for ninety years. The core of the Whitney’s mission is to collect, preserve, interpret, and exhibit American art of our time and serve a wide variety of audiences in celebration of the complexity and diversity of art and culture in the United States. Through this mission and a steadfast commitment to artists, the Whitney has long been a powerful force in support of modern and contemporary art and continues to help define what is innovative and influential in American art today.

ABOUT TIMES SQUARE ARTS

Times Square Arts, the public art program of the Times Square Alliance, collaborates with contemporary artists and cultural institutions to experiment and engage with one of the world’s most iconic urban places. Through the Square’s electronic billboards, public plazas, vacant areas and popular venues, and the Alliance’s own online landscape, Times Square Arts invites leading contemporary creators, such as Charles Gaines, Joan Jonas, Jeffrey Gibson, Pamela Council, Mel Chin and Kehinde Wiley, to help the public see Times Square in new ways. Times Square has always been a cultural district and place of risk, innovation and creativity, and the arts program ensures these qualities remain central to the district’s unique identity.