There is a particular kind of magic that happens in a mountain town in September. The summer crowds have thinned, the cottonwoods along the Snake River are just beginning to think about turning gold, and the light has that long, slanting quality that makes everything look like a painting. On the fourteenth of September at noon, the Town of Jackson is inviting anyone who cares to show up at Town Hall for something genuinely simple and genuinely rare: an hour-long walking tour of the town's public art, led by local government, with no agenda other than conversation.
The event, called "Walk & Talk with Town," is part of a broader initiative the town calls Talks with Town — informal gatherings where community members are encouraged to engage in dialogue with local government about specific topics, though residents can bring any subject to the table. The format is deliberately loose. There are no podiums, no PowerPoint slides, no public comment periods governed by Robert's Rules. Just people walking together through their own streets, looking at the art around them, and talking about what they see. For a town that has become synonymous with the extremes of wealth and tourism, it is a strikingly democratic gesture: an invitation to share an hour with the people who manage the place, free of charge, no reservation required.
That the walk focuses on public art is itself telling. Jackson has quietly become one of the most interesting small towns in America when it comes to art in public spaces. The Jackson Hole Public Art organization, which partners with the town on many of these projects, maintains a map of more than forty public artworks scattered across Jackson, Wilson, and Teton Village. The pieces range from the monumental to the whimsical, from the permanent to the deliberately temporary, and together they transform a town known primarily for its landscape into a place where the constructed environment is just as worthy of attention.
Perhaps the most famous of these works is the giant troll that rests on a sloping bank above a pond at Rendezvous Park. The piece, called Mama Mimi, was created by Danish recycling artist Thomas Dambo, who has built a global collection of troll figures from reclaimed wood and other materials. Dambo's trolls have appeared in forests and parks around the world, each one part of a larger fairytale he calls The Great Story of the Little People. Mama Mimi took years to complete, and the sculpture has become a beloved landmark, drawing families who clamber around its enormous form and photograph themselves in its presence. The troll's presence in Jackson is a sign of how seriously the community takes its public art — and how willing it is to embrace work that is playful, accessible, and environmentally conscious.
Equally striking, though in a different register, is Finders Keepers, a site-specific installation by American environmental artist Patrick Dougherty that was constructed in 2022 on the lawn adjacent to the Center for the Arts. Dougherty, who was born in Oklahoma in 1945 and grew up in North Carolina, has spent decades building monumental-scale sculptures from tree saplings and sticks. He has constructed more than 320 of these works around the world, from Scotland to Japan to Australia. Finders Keepers was built over the course of three weeks with the help of many local volunteers, using saplings sourced entirely from Teton and Sublette Counties. The resulting structure — a series of ethereal, teepee-like forms rising from the landscape — is by design temporary, meant to be enjoyed throughout the seasons for as long as the materials hold up. The sculpture is a testament to the community effort behind its creation, and a reminder that public art need not be permanent to be profound.
The town's public art program also extends to murals, sculptures, and community-driven installations that reflect the valley's cultural diversity. One of the most recent additions is ArtSpot, a rotating installation space on the Karns Hillside along Broadway, a site where more than 30,000 drivers pass daily. The current ArtSpot installation, titled Abre Tus Alas — "Open Your Wings" — was created by students from Jackson Hole High School's Spanish and Culture class, taught by Gabriel Lopez, with production support from South Park Metalworks. Installed in December 2025, the piece features a flock of sculpted geese inspired by alebrijes, the traditional Mexican folk-art sculptures known for their vibrant colors and fantastical forms. Each goose is uniquely designed, and together they symbolize the journey of graduating students as they prepare to move beyond the classroom and toward new destinations — while acknowledging that, like geese, many will one day return home carrying new experiences and hard-earned wisdom.
The ArtSpot program is a project of Jackson Hole Public Art, an organization whose mission is to forge partnerships for the integration of art into any environment, to inspire lasting cultural, educational, and economic benefits. The organization places temporary and permanent artworks and produces community-minded, artist-driven projects for public spaces, always beginning with inclusive conversations with residents. Their approach has earned national attention: the Diné artist Nani Chacon, whose mural Damma Newadaygwapgay Nasoowazeet (Never Forget Our Language) anchors the east wall of the Jackson Hole History Museum, was recently invited to participate in the 2026 Whitney Biennial, the longest-running survey of contemporary art in the United States. Chacon's mural, commissioned through a collaboration between Jackson Hole Public Art and History Jackson Hole, functions as a conceptual billboard reclaiming public space for the Eastern Shoshone people. For Jackson Hole Public Art, the Whitney invitation affirms a long-held belief: that ambitious, values-driven public art created with care, collaboration, and community trust belongs in the national conversation.
The Walk & Talk with Town is an opportunity to engage with this growing collection on a human scale. Starting at Town Hall at noon, the hour-long walking tour will wind through Jackson's streets and parks, pausing at installations and opening them up for informal discussion. It is an unusual invitation — not to a reception or a ribbon-cutting, but to a conversation conducted at walking pace, among neighbors, with the people who help shape the town's civic life. For anyone who has ever looked at a public sculpture and wondered how it got there, or who has questions about the future of art in the valley, it is a chance to ask them directly. And for a town that has long been known for its stunning natural beauty, it is a reminder that the best public art doesn't compete with the landscape — it helps us see it, and each other, more clearly.