At the Harlem River Houses, a public-housing complex in northern Manhattan, Sheryl Jones grimaced lightly as she watched a puppy relieve itself on a flagpole. “Now, that’s just disrespectful,” Jones, a sixty-one-year-old teacher who has lived in the complex for more than three decades, said. Next to her, Kim Dacres, a thirty-nine-year-old sculptor, scoffed. “If Winky was here,” she said, referring to her French bulldog, “he’d be tearing these skinny dogs up.”

Dacres, a Bronx native, had come to the houses to check in on her latest project, four abstract bronze busts—each five feet tall, depicting a Black woman—which were being installed around a central wading pool. ArtBridge, a local nonprofit, had tapped her for the project, and she planned around exhibitions in Paris and at Art Basel M

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