Garry Apgar, "Public Art"

Syllabus from a graduate seminar. Description: The central problematic of this course is the public domain as a zone of contestation, transformation, exchange, and participation. We will begin by examining the relationship between public art and the elusive concepts of " the public " and the public sphere. We will consider the role of public art as a prism through which to understand wider cultural, societal, and political issues and trends. Public implies more than moving outside the gallery, and entails new forms of interaction between artists, audiences, and communities. Some themes we will address include art in virtual and physical space; site-specificity, and expanded notions of site; monumentality and ephemerality; performance, intervention, and activism; and interactive strategies such as dialogue, relationality, and participation. The semester is organized broadly into three parts: examining conceptions of the public(s), interrogating ideas of place and site, and considering select curatorial and artistic strategies. The course will engage with examples of artistic projects, exhibitions, and events, and include screenings of documentaries as well as guest speakers. Students will contribute to a class blog and develop a curatorial proposal as a final project.

Social & Cultural Geography, 2012

Journal of arts management, law and society, 1986

R ecent controversies about the commissioning, installation, and maintenance of public art-especially sculpture-have raised a number of issues, but resolved few of these. In some cases, public outcry has prevented a work from being installed or has contributed to its redesign. In other cases, opposition has rapidly quieted as the once-offended public has come to accept, even to enthusiastically champion, the previously detested work. Each instance has been seen as essentially idiosyncratic, hence few commonalities have been discerned to provide guidelines for future commissions and installations, although commissioning agencies have adjusted their procedures in response to "mistakes" and controversies. This article attempts to identify and examine the major legal (state and federal), political, sociological, and aesthetic issues involved in the commissioning of public art, and to suggest ways of accommodating the various interests so as to manage those controversies that may occur. Our analysis centers upon the interactions of three "parties," each with its own interests to be served: 1) the artists, who desire artistic freedom, recognition, and security for their work; 2) the commissioning public agency, which is responsible for the promotion of the long-term aesthetic welfare of society, while confronting immediate political and procedural constraints upon its actions; and 3) the public, which must assent to the funding and give community acceptance to the particular works installed in its midst.

International Journal of Education Through Art, 2010

This article presents the results of a trans-disciplinary study focusing on public art and art education. It poses questions about public art as an educational resource, and acknowledges the need to clarify its educational role. The study investigated whether or not urban environments with numerous works of public art contribute positively to the development of visual literacy. A survey was conducted of fifth and sixth grade students in three schools located in urban spaces with a lot of public art and three schools in places with very little. A finding was that students who attended schools in environments with many public works were more skilled in the perception of urban space and more visually literate. This was due not only to their daily contact with them, but also to socio-cultural factors. Based on the results, the author produced an educational resource for teachers and parents interested in developing children's visual literacy.

2012

The public realm is a space of paradoxes. While on one hand it seems to be shrinking due to commercialization and to be losing its position as a forum where different agendas can meet, it can also ...

In this dissertation, I provide a philosophical analysis of public art. I focus on its “publicness,” and draw implications at the level of public art’s ontology, appreciation, and value. I uphold the view that an artwork is public when received within a public sphere rather than within artworld institutions. I further argue that, as a consequence of the peculiar nature of its reception, public art possesses an essential value that is distinctively non-aesthetic: to promote political participation and to encourage tolerance. By examining how public art and its value(s) relate to the public domain in the context of pluralistic democracies, this dissertation also contributes to a fuller understanding of an important aspect of our social world.

Art of nearly any style or medium can evoke at once a deeply personal, subjective experience, yet also unite disparate and diverse sentiment within individuals based on the common experiences, values, and ideology found within nearly any given cultural context. Due to the diversity inherent in human experience it would however be difficult to account for a representation of all individuals’ subjective taste and opinion within a singular definition of public; indeed, there are many publics. Yet I would contend it is the very nature of the subjective individual experiences of human emotion--however nuanced in the context of their intensity, duration, or origin--which allows a framework for a common perception of art. Thus, Hilde Hein, in her essay entitled What is Public Art? Time Place and Meaning, grossly misstates her characterization of public art as an “oxymoron” (Niell and Ridley 406).

Artlink, 2010

Until recently, there have been two prevailing paradigms of art in the public arena. One is exemplified in the thinking of design theorists such as Kevin Lynch in The Image of the City (1960), when he inadvertently provided urban designers and planners with a ready reckoner for understanding the role of public art in the city.1 His chapter on the The City Image and its Elements, introduced concepts of paths, edges, districts, nodes, landmarks and various interrelationships of these. All were niftily diagramised, photographed and articulated in words readily communicable to urban designers and planners. Using such a lexicon, public art could be written up for civic authorities in instrumentalist policies that put a special value on integrated art and design. Eye-catching pathways, arty seats, colourful murals, identity and place-inspired gateways, and landmark sculptures could now be readily incorporated in new master plans. Public art, it was believed, could help make public spaces memorable.

2020

This multidisciplinary companion offers a comprehensive overview of the global arena of public art. It is organised around four distinct topics: activation, social justice, memory and identity, and ecology, with a final chapter mapping significant works of public and social practice art around the world between 2008 and 2018. The thematic approach brings into view similarities and differences in the recent globalisation of public art practices, while the multidisciplinary emphasis allows for a consideration of the complex outcomes and consequences of such practices, as they engage different disciplines and communities and affect a diversity of audiences beyond the existing 'art world'. The book will highlight an international selection of artist projects that illustrate the themes. This book will be of interest to scholars in contemporary art, art history, urban studies, and museum studies.

Let's Go Outside: Art in Public, 2022

As I write this introduction in October 2021, we are emerging from Melbourne’s latest lockdown, which lasted seventy-seven days. Since the pandemic started, Melbournians have endured more than 250 days in lockdown—the longest period anywhere in the world. Living through this much time governed by necessary but substantial public health restrictions—with access to the outdoors parcelled out into blocks of one to two hours; excursions confined to five, ten or fifteen kilometre radiuses, before curfew at 8pm or 9pm; and activities reduced to exercise or recreation with one other person, grocery shopping, or giving or receiving care— makes your nostalgia for times when going outside was less regulated and policed profoundly acute. With the benefit of hindsight, I think of the Let’s Go Outside symposium as a momentous and auspicious gathering, given that the COVID-19 crisis would profoundly limit our capacity to travel and assemble in person a mere six months later. Consequently, it has been our intention as editors from the outset to retain the spirit of the original symposium and to include a number of perspectives from across the diverse range of public art output in Australia and internationally. Taking up debates from Let’s Go Outside, this edited reader reflects on the growing interest in making and presenting art outside of conventional gallery contexts and explores the opportunities and complexities of realising art in the public realm. Our case studies expand on topics relevant to artists, designers, art consultants, policymakers, commissioners and curators working in this area, including indigenising the public realm; producing memorials to difficult pasts; placemaking and urban renewal; commissioning models; considerations of access, inclusion and diversity; and public art practices that are experimental, temporary and socially engaged. As well as case studies, the publication’s twenty-one contributions include critical essays, artist pages, creative explorations, as well as interviews and features on key practitioners in the field. The book aims to situate and contrast Australia’s unique approaches to public art by featuring essays on public art commissioning and practice internationally, including Hong Kong, Aotearoa (New Zealand), Indonesia, the US and the UK, and features the perspectives of twenty-five scholars, public artists and collectives.