What Is Public Art For?

The definitions, stakes, forms, practices, and funding of public art have shifted radically since the establishment of the Federal Art-in-Architecture program in 1962 and the National Endowment for the Arts first public art commission in 1967. The decade-long controversy surrounding Richard Serra’s Tilted Arc catalyzed a populist turn, sparking an ongoing debate about public art’s responsibility to the communities that inhabit public space. It was out of this same ethos in the late 1980s that Patricia Phillips announced the professionalization of public art, a phenomenon that has only grown as the lines between public art, architecture, design, and advertising have progressively eroded. More recently, artists, urban planners, and bureaucrats have grappled with how to center historically marginalized voices in public space, while public space itself has increasingly broached the virtual realm, inciting new questions about what roles art in public spaces can or should perform. In tune with the discursive nature of public art—a field that evades clearcut objectives and definitions— we invite papers that address the broad question: what is public art for? What purposes and audiences can or should public art serve? What forms can or should art in public spaces take? We seek proposals from art historians, artists, designers, architects, curators, fabricators, administrators, etc. whose work aims to interrogate the underlying motivations, goals, and values that inform the creation and reception of art in public space from the 1960s to the present day.