Few corners of public art generate friction as reliably as the unauthorized monument. Sergio Furnari, a New York-based sculptor originally from Caltagirone, Sicily, is now at the center of that friction with plans to display a memorial to Charlie Kirk in Times Square on September 10.
The sculpture depicts Kirk seated, holding a microphone, wearing a crewneck emblazoned with the word "FREEDOM." Furnari intends to unveil it at 2:23 p.m., exactly one year after Kirk was fatally shot during an event at Utah Valley University. Kirk, co-founder of conservative youth organization Turning Point USA, was assassinated in Orem, Utah, while speaking at an outdoor campus debate.
Regarding permits, Furnari is decidedly unconcerned. "Permit from who?" he asked Hyperallergic rhetorically. "Who's gotta give me a permit if today I wanna write a song, or sculpt a rose?" He has not coordinated with the Times Square Alliance for any type of event or display permit. This is not new territory for him. In 2021, the city removed his Heart Monument, a ten-foot red heart honoring pandemic healthcare workers, from Central Park for the same reason.
Furnari was born in a Sicilian town with a 2,500-year tradition of ceramic art. He moved to New York in 1991 and built a career around figurative public sculpture. His best-known work, Lunchtime on a Skyscraper, is a life-sized rendering of the famous 1932 photograph of construction workers eating lunch on a steel beam. After September 11, he brought that piece to Ground Zero, where it remained on display for five months. Earlier in 2025, he unveiled a twelve-foot sculpture of Cristiano Ronaldo in Times Square.
Crowdfunding for the Kirk memorial has been sluggish. As of mid-July, Furnari had raised only $1,567 toward a $150,000 goal, having allegedly sold his apartment to keep working. He also recently broke his foot after tripping over a roll of tape in his studio.
Online reaction has been predictably brutal. Thousands have flooded the sculptor's Instagram comments with threats and crude jokes riffing on Kirk's politics and the manner of his killing. "Now what happens is that the more they threaten me, the more I want to make multiple statues," Furnari told Hyperallergic. He has acknowledged not sharing many of Kirk's views. "Actually, I didn't agree with many of his things, but it's about freedom of speech," he told the New York Post.
Shortly after Kirk's assassination, New College of Florida announced it would commission its own public sculpture of the activist, though that piece has yet to materialize. A Tennessee bill mandating Kirk plazas at every public university was also shelved after costs became clear. Furnari's project, self-funded and permissionless, may be the first physical memorial to actually reach completion.
Whether it lasts a single afternoon in Midtown is another question entirely.
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