The Triforium is a controversial piece of public art created by local artist Joseph Young. Its home is in downtown Los Angeles, where it attracts very little attention from passersby and park-goers. Young intended for the monumental sculpture to be a “polyphonic” vision complete with futuristic technologies like sounds and lights. However, the Triforium was never able to live up to its expectations: limited by budget, bureaucratic enthusiasm, and more, the sculpture was marred by technological problems including the failure of its music. Now, it lives in a state of silent limbo, though recent efforts have been made to restore the Triforium to its initial vision’s full glory.

 

The Triforium uncovers and unsettles the temporal facades of a contested public monument: at different stages of its life, it holds different ideals and images of what it is meant to be and what it could be. In the past, it was lauded as a vision of the future; in the present, a symbol of governmental waste and lost potential. What will it be seen as in the future?