Public Art's Cultural Evolution

Public art is something that was easily defined as recently as the 1960s — what I refer to as the four M's: Murals, Monuments, Memorials and Mimes. Today it's almost anything and everything artists can think up, a broad spectrum of activities encompassing almost every aspect of our lives.

Growth in the field over the last 30 years is impressive by any standard. In addition to corporate, liturgical and individually supported efforts, federally funded public art continues to increase. The proliferation of percent-for-art programs in the U.S. that began in Philadelphia in 1959 now includes 30 states, 300 cities and dozens of counties. Most of these use a simple commissioning or purchasing system, following the European tradition of patronage. The NEA's Art in Public Places program emerged in the mid-'70s, and immediately — but not surprisingly — became embroiled in controversy.

Seminal works are plentiful: Alexander Calder's mobiles or Isamo Noguchi's sculptural work in the '50s; Eero Saarinen's "Gateway Arch" for St. Louis and Alan Kaprow's "Happenings" in the '60s; and Christo's "Running Fence" and Robert Smithson's "Spiral Jetty" in the '70s. In the '80s, two projects had a profound impact on the field: Maya Lin's "Vietnam Veterans Memorial" in Washington, D.C., and Richard Serra's "Tilted Arc" in New York City. An unknown graduate student at Yale, Lin was selected from 1,200 entries for the memorial, and though her struggle to complete the project was monumental, it stands today as a groundbreaking masterpiece. Serra, on the other hand, was an internationally renowned artist whose works are in most major museum collections. His 112-foot curved steel arc on the Federal Plaza, however, was not well received by the users of the site, and was removed eight years later at great expense. Lin's project liberated memorials from the monolith or personage and demonstrated powerful and expressive placemaking. In contrast, the removal of Serra's sculpture proved that the public is the final arbiter of public space; if enough people want a work of publicly funded art removed, the artist — no matter how revered — must comply.

Innovative collaborations and independent initiatives in the '70s and '80s paved the way for a large number and diverse array of artists to move out of the studio and into a much larger arena with expanded options for delivering their creative expressions (not to mention the opportunity to directly connect with audiences on their own turf). From the '90s through today, the public-art field encompasses placemaking, environmental activism, cause-related art, interdisciplinary performance events, a wide variety of community-based initiatives, and much more. Pioneers include Suzanne Lacy, Mel Chin, Judy Baca, Siah Armajani and many more.

Many artists — like myself — were introduced to the field as employees of President Carter's one-year Comprehensive Employment Training Act (CETA) jobs program in the late '70s, in which artists were put to work in the community on a grand scale similar to that of the WPA era of the '30s. My CETA job was Gallery Director at the Minneapolis Arts Commission, with a desk and phone at City Hall. The only catch was there was no gallery; I was charged with organizing displays of artists' work in publicly accessible locations throughout the city (such as the library, the Government Center, parks and plazas). With the whole city as a gallery, and 60 CETA artists engaged in the program, it is not surprising that this was a watershed year for the emerging community-arts movement in Minneapolis.

The evolution of public art took a quantum leaps in the early '70s with the notion of "site-specific" art: works designed for a particular place, taking into account the site's physical surroundings as well as other environmental or social factors. In addition to removing themselves from the isolation of their studios, artists began to get acquainted with the world around them. They began considering alternative venues for expression, and they began considering the context for their work. Why not incorporate the wind, the arc of the sun, the change of the seasons? Why not consider audience demographics, the history of the site, current events or the many social forces that can shape a place? Work in the field resembled a living laboratory, with mixing and matching of ideas, talents, sites and audiences. There were no rules of the road; you could pretty much draw your own map or write your own job description.

I tend to divide artists like doctors: There are specialists and general practitioners. GPs are into process and working laterally across many disciplines. Specialists are typically product makers, focusing on one thing and doing it expertly (a trompe l'oiel muralist, for instance). Those engaged in producing different types of public art find it useful to know something about lighting, engineering, architecture, landscape design, conservation, and perhaps even urban planning or community development. In addition, public art as a business may require budgeting, insurance, copyright laws, digital design or model making, grant writing, public relations, fabrication and much more.

For the most part, public artists have to learn on their own through trial and error; educational institutions have only in the past few years begun to address the multifaceted aspects of public art and the skills needed to become "professionals" and compete in this field. The lack of educational opportunities and limited support for emerging public artists are perhaps the two greatest problems facing the growth and development of professionals in the field. If you've never done a sculpture commission, how are you going to get one? How do you get your foot in the door? The third greatest problem is the lack of critical writing and intelligent media coverage. Most public art is reduced to a photo op or a human-interest story in the metro section.

As a combination of the artist's vision and the community's values, public art should resonate in some way. It is as much about the dialogue that occurs among those engaged in a process as it is about any finished product. The process often resembles theater, in which individuals assume roles and responsibilities with a common goal in mind. Planning, negotiating and navigating bureaucracy is critical; indeed, bureaucracy is an art form — like found-object sculpture — in which people, places and things are all raw materials. While these complexities can confound and discourage newcomers, public art efforts offer many rewards and give meaning to art that reaches the hearts and minds of people where they live, work or play.

Communities desiring meaningful public art need to work at it, and reach out and participate in making successful projects. After all, the public is the final beneficiary of good public art. As the demographics and economies in our communities change, so too will public art; artists from diverse backgrounds, cultures and disciplines are participating in increasing numbers, including a growing number of women and minorities. As audiences mature and diversify, the question of what makes good public art and who decides what is good becomes increasingly important.

For the field to evolve beyond the traditional commissioned artwork, ask artists what they want to do to in public and how they wish to develop their public-art careers. More experimentation between and among artists and audiences will yield more effective means of delivering creative expressions or social messages with greater emotional impact and cost effectiveness. There should be more support for temporary and experimental projects that provide valuable stepping stones for artists and learning opportunities for audiences. Support more demonstration projects and research-and-development efforts by emerging artists of all disciplines. Encourage artists to work outside the studio in their own communities and forge partnerships with groups engaged in issues of concern to them. Witness the impact of the Names Project AIDS Quilt or the value of performance art to the cause of Greenpeace.

If "the customer's always right" and "everyone's a critic," then public art must continue to prove its value to the public. It is this value which for so long has remained elusive or unrecognized. As public art infiltrates almost every facet of our culture and the physical world — in myriad forms — it can help all the arts to regain a position of value and priority in our society.

We are all the audience for public art. Audience development is critical. We need artists to help us memorialize, to beautify, to address problems, to serve communities, to manifest ideas. We need artists — without the filtering systems of museums, galleries or theaters — to alert us to real-world issues, investigate phenomena, to make us smile, help us remember, let us mourn, engage our young, teach us lessons. We need public artists to give shape to our shared identity, and bring their individual, creative perspectives to the world.

Postscript

No scientific research has been done regarding the impact of public art on our daily lives or the national economy. Until such time, feel free to use my "faux statistics" to impress political leaders, funders or policy makers:

• An average of 55 million viewers experience public art firsthand every day, approximately 1,000 times the audience experiencing art galleries, museums and theaters combined. The Vietnam Memorial alone is visited by more than 10,000 people daily, and artworks in airports or subways are seen daily by over five million travelers.
  
  
• Public art receives ten times the media attention other art forms receive.
  
  
• An average public art project provides 50 times the economic impact of arts events in traditional venues, yet the cost to the public for public art is less than 50 cents per taxpayer per year, based on the amount of public funding used to fund public art. In two cases — Christo's "Wrapped Reichstag" for Berlin, which generated more than $300 million in three weeks for that city, and Chicago's "Cows on Parade," which generated more than $200 million for that city — no taxpayer's dollars were used.
  
  
• Compared to theaters and museums, public art has relatively low overhead, low staffing costs and produces less waste or environmental damage.
  
  
• Most public art is not publicly funded. Churches, schools, hospitals, corporations, individuals and private nonprofits support most of the art we see in the public realm.
  
  
• More money is spent cleaning up unwanted graffiti than is spent on all the public art in most major American cities.

Jack Becker is artistic director of Public Art Review, published by Forecast Public Artworks in Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minn.

Original CAN/API publication: February 2002