Originally exhibited at Paul Morris Gallery,
New York
All works courtesy of private collections

optimism MetroCard by Reed Seifer. Artwork commissioned by MTA Arts for Transit, 2009. Photo: Michael Valičić.

optimism, 2025, letterpress with pantone ink on 200lb (540 gsm) cotton board, edition of 150, signed and numbered, 6 x 9" / 15.2 x 22.7 cm

optimism buttons, LA edition, 2022.

optimism, 1995. Part of my senior thesis in at Clark University.

optimism buttons and magnets 1995–2019.

On the cover of the Metro section of the New York Times, November 19, 2009. Photo: Tanya Braganti.

On the homepage of the New York Times, November 19, 2009.

weathered optimism, 2015.

optimism t-shirt (2020) modeled by yours truly. Manhattan Beach, California, 2022.

As part of the exhibition Art in the Open: Fifty Years of Public Art in New York at the Museum of the City of New York admission stickers were swapped out for optimism, 2018. Photo: Julie Mente.

Gold optimism buttons, 2017. Photo: Tanya Braganti.

original optimism button, 1995.

Original optimism stickers, 1995.

Thank you to all the people who have contributed to this project. Special thanks to Clark University professors Sarah Buie, Elli Crocker, and Sarah Walker for their early support; Kaarin Lemstrom-Sheedy, who introduced the buttons at the Whitney Museum shop; Paul Moreno, who first gave one to her; Anne Pasternak and the CreativeTime team for their invaluable insights and connections; Sandra Bloodworth and MTA Arts and Design for fostering an experience of optimism that resonated with us; Amy Hausmann for overseeing the Metrocard's production; and Busy Beaver Buttons for providing complimentary buttons for special events; to my mother, who funded the first run of optimism buttons and my education, and to my father, who inspired the original story of optimism behind this project. This journey has been a profound opportunity to transform a personal experience into a global message of hope.

Photo: Paul Latham

Originally exhibited as an independent project at The Armory Show, 2011.

Courtesy of a private collection, Paris

Self-portrait on Museumplein, Amsterdam

courtesy private collections, Brooklyn and New Paltz, NY

Photo: Duncan Morimoto Brown

Photo: Duncan Morimoto Brown

Photo: Duncan Morimoto Brown

Photo: Duncan Morimoto Brown

Exhibited at Hunt Gallery, Webster University, St Louis, MO; HERE Arts Center, New York; DC Moore Gallery, New York

"Reed Seifer uses different conceptual strategies to create his enigmatic works, which illustrate the cycles of human life and the indomitable hope for transcendence inherently interwoven in a transformational journey. Seifer's work reflects upon the unusual lapis lazuli blue cobblestones he found in the courtyard of ISCP's building. These special cobblestones, also called as 'Aquinas', were most likely constructed from ships' ballast picked up in the Azores on the voyage to the New World starting in the 1600s for garden decoration. The artist further discovered that some of cobblestones have text on them, 'PA T'D JUNE 17 / 84,' inexplicably inscribed backwards. PAT'D, being an abbreviation for 'patented,' a term once used for ownership of property, leads the artist to propose these cobblestones may date from the transference of Bushwick from the Dutch to the English in 1683. Seifer personally removed one of the most beautiful cobblestones from the courtyard, placed it in the gallery and filled the hole with different sized Herkimer diamonds. Viewers are invited to take one of these diamonds if they wish." —Necmi Sönmez

Photo by Spencer Platt