Guggenheim New York Announces 2026 Poet-in-Residence Patrick Rosal’s Public Program Series The Water Listeners

• First public reading of Patrick Rosal’s poem “Brooklyn Antediluvian” with poet Ross Gay
• Participatory Café Rebay installation transforms visitor contributions into a living archive of poetry, memory, and ancestral offering
• Season includes program featuring aracelis girmay and a public ceremony of remembrance and renewal

Guggenheim New York announces The Water Listeners, a series of public programs created by 2026 Guggenheim Poet-in-Residence Patrick Rosal as part of the annual Poet-in-Residence initiative. Unfolding from July through December, Rosal’s residency presents poetry as a living, communal practice through readings, participatory gestures, and public ceremonies that invite visitors to gather in reflection, conversation, and shared experience at the Guggenheim.

Structured as a contemporary poetic liturgy, The Water Listeners explores poetry as both artistic practice and social architecture, centering on themes of water, memory, ancestry, heritage, and cultural exchange. Throughout the season, the museum’s Café Rebay will serve as an ongoing site for writing, storytelling, and artistic engagement, transforming over time into a collective archive shaped by the public.

Programming begins on July 28 with the first public reading of Rosal’s poem “Brooklyn Antediluvian,” followed by a conversation with acclaimed poet Ross Gay. Throughout the fall, audiences are invited to gather for a reading with poet aracelis girmay exploring the legacy of Lucille Clifton, and a final public ceremony in December that brings together the collective offerings from Rosal’s year-long residency into a shared act of remembrance and renewal.

The Poet-in-Residence at the Guggenheim New York is an annual position dedicated to developing poetry-centered programs that enrich the public experience of the museum. Guided by the belief that there is a poet in everyone, the selected Poet-in-Residence collaborates with the Guggenheim to develop opportunities that bring poetry beyond the page and invite visitors to engage with it in both their creative and everyday lives.

Patrick Rosal was appointed the fifth annual Poet-in-Residence in April 2026, with his residency culminating in a public ceremony in December.

Programming highlights include:

An Evening of Poetry with Patrick Rosal and Ross Gay
Tuesday, July 28, 6:30–8:30 pm
Reserve Tickets
General $20, Member $15, Students $10

2026 Guggenheim Poet-in-Residence Patrick Rosal performs the first-ever live reading of his long-form poem “Brooklyn Antediluvian” from his award-winning 2016 eponymous collection. Following the performance, poet and essayist Ross Gay joins Rosal in a conversation about the relationship between poetry and other artistic practices. The program concludes with a book sale and signing on the Rotunda Floor.

Serving as a conceptual foundation for Rosal’s residency projects, the program introduces central themes of ritual, water, naming, memory, and communal exchange. Moving between reading and dialogue, the evening explores how poetry can preserve spaces of stewardship across histories and communities.

“blessing the boats”: Poet aracelis girmay on Lucille Clifton
Tuesday, September 15, 6:30–8:30 pm
Reserve Tickets
General $20, Member $15, Students $10

Patrick Rosal invites the community to gather for a special reading with aracelis girmay, whose work as editor of How to Carry Water: Selected Poems of Lucille Clifton (2020) illuminates poetry’s capacity to accompany us through journeys both personal and uncertain. Titled after Clifton’s poem “blessing the boats,” the program reflects on courage, resilience, and the unseen currents that carry us toward one another. Through the words of Clifton and girmay, the evening offers a shared meditation on the ability of language to guide us through the unknown.

A Ceremony for Water
Tuesday, December 8, 6:30–8:30 pm
Reserve Tickets
General $20, Member $15, Students $10

The closing ceremony for poet Patrick Rosal’s Guggenheim residency brings together the accumulated offerings, memories, and gestures gathered over the course of his year-long project, The Water Listeners. Blending poetry, ritual, and collective reflection, the public is invited to take part in this group gesture that marks both an ending and a continuation—a communal act of release, remembrance, and renewal.

Café Rebay
Through December 31

Café Rebay is a welcoming social hub where food, drink, creativity, and community come together—inviting visitors to gather, make, and linger while enjoying panoramic views of Central Park. In an ongoing participatory project designed by Rosal, various prompts and hands-on activities will encourage deeper interpersonal connection and emphasize the value of assembly, inviting visitors to experience poetry as a communal experience—something created through conversation, shared reflection, and collective meaning-making. Through this combination of dialogue, poetry, and making, the project foregrounds creativity as a social act and transforms individual reflections into a shared experience.

Support

The Guggenheim Poet-in-Residence is made possible by Van Cleef & Arpels.

About Patrick Rosal

Based in New Jersey, Rosal is the author of several poetry collections, most recently The Last Thing: New and Selected Poems. He has received numerous honors, including the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, the William Carlos Williams Award, and the Association for Asian American Studies Book Award, as well as fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fulbright Research Program, and the Civitella Ranieri Foundation. A distinguished professor of English at Rutgers University–Camden, he designed and coordinated the international eco-poetics initiative Quilting Water and is currently working on a book-length collection of free verse prayers, as well as a prose book on the sacred.

About the Guggenheim New York

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation was established in 1937 and is dedicated to promoting the understanding and appreciation of modern and contemporary art through exhibitions, education programs, research initiatives, and publications. The international constellation of museums includes the Guggenheim New York; the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice; Guggenheim Bilbao; and the future Guggenheim Abu Dhabi. An architectural icon and “temple of spirit” where radical art and architecture meet, the Guggenheim New York is now among a group of eight Frank Lloyd Wright structures in the United States recently designated as a UNESCO World Heritage site. To learn more about the museum and the Guggenheim’s activities around the world, visit guggenheim.org.

About Van Cleef & Arpels

Van Cleef & Arpels was born in Paris, at 22 Place Vendôme in 1906. Its founding resulted from the 1895 marriage of Alfred Van Cleef and Esther (known as Estelle) Arpels, both from families of jewelry merchants. The Maison’s sources of inspiration—including love, nature, couture, and dance—open the gate to an enchanting universe. Guided by excellence, Van Cleef & Arpels is distinguished for its gemstones selected according to the most stringent criteria, its expert savoir-faire, and its taste for innovation, expressed throughout its High Jewelry, Jewelry, and Watchmaking collections. Today, its style, embodied in numerous signatures such as the Mystery Set technique, the Minaudière, the Zip necklace, and the Alhambra motif, continues to blend inventiveness and poetry.

Throughout its history, Van Cleef & Arpels has continuously expressed its attachment to the values of creation, transmission, and education. Today, the Maison promotes the outreach of savoir-faire through L’ÉCOLE, School of Jewelry Arts, which has shared the culture of jewelry with the public since 2012. Meanwhile, the “de Mains en mains” event seeks to raise awareness of the jewelry professions among young people and adults in career transition. Further actions echo the Maison’s major sources of inspiration. Since 2020, the Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels program has supported contemporary choreographic art, while the Maison’s affinity for nature is reflected in its support for garden restoration and preservation.

@Guggenheim

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