Times Square's Hot Dog Reopens Today

TODAY, Wednesday, July 22 in Times Square

Unveiling: 5:30pm

The Most American Pageant Ever!: 6:30pm

(NEW YORK, NY — July 22, 2026) — Today, Times Square Arts unveils Hot Dog: The Second Serving, a restaging of Hot Dog in the City by Brooklyn-based artists Jen Catron and Paul Outlaw.

The 65-foot-long sculpture debuts in a reimagined form, offering a renewed portrait of America on the occasion of the nation’s Semiquincentennial. In addition to many of the work’s original elements, new  interventions—including a novel take on the hot dog’s signature confetti blasts—deepen its engagement with patriotism, monumentality, power, and national mythology. To learn more about Hot Dog: The Second Serving, visit the Times Square Arts project page here.

Join us for the unveiling at 5:30pm, followed by The Most American Pageant Ever!, a tongue-in-cheek patriotic showcase inviting artists and performers to stake their claim on what “American-ness” really means today.

The Most American Pageant Ever! is hosted by Jen Catron, Paul Outlaw, and Abby Lloyd and features a panel of judges including Curtis Sliwa, Waris Ahluwalia, Lily Marotta, and Jean Cooney with performances by Spike Einbinder, Ellery Neon, Kenneth Youngblood, Kiki Ball-Change, Celine Abdallah, Relish the Entertainer, Peter BD, Jordan Coley and Claywoman

To RSVP or discuss press opportunities, email timessquarearts@culturalcounsel.com.

ABOUT JEN CATRON AND PAUL OUTLAW
Jen Catron & Paul Outlaw are an artist duo whose large-scale sculptures and performances examine spectacle, excess, and the construction of national myth. Working across public and institutional contexts, they transform vernacular symbols into civic-scale monuments that engage broad audiences, using humor and scale to draw viewers into critical encounters with systems of consumption, celebration, and collective belief. Their work foregrounds how power is performed and sustained in shared space.

Their practice moves between extremes of scale—monumental public works that activate civic environments and intimate miniatures that compress grand narratives into precise, uncanny forms. This oscillation invites close looking and wide participation, destabilizing hierarchies between the epic and the everyday while revealing how cultural meaning is constructed, circulated, and contested.

Catron & Outlaw have presented projects with institutions including the Brooklyn Museum, Times Square Arts, the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD), and Creative Time. Their work has received national and international press coverage and is held in collections including the Brooklyn Museum and Beth Rudin DeWoody. They live and work in Brooklyn, New York.

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.

PRESS INQUIRIES
timessquarearts@culturalcounsel.com