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Public art for the public.

Article Excerpt
THERE used to be two federal programs dedicated to funding public art. Now there is one. This isn't an accident--a bureaucratic trick of fate or yet another example of congressional budgetary perfidy. It is easy to imagine circumstances in which we would still have both, or in which both would have vanished. In fact, for a long time both programs were on the same road to self-destruction: funding projects that many members of the general public found incomprehensible at best and offensive at worst. The story of how one program adapted while the other disappeared is instructive for anyone concerned with how government can and should support artists.

The key to understanding the divergence between the two programs lies in a concept that seems so intuitive once stated that it is almost surprising that it encounters so much resistance in the art world--the distinction between "public art" and "gallery art." People will tolerate, and perhaps even embrace, artworks in a gallery setting that would irk them if displayed in a public space. Unlike gallery art, public art must not be mindful merely of artistic concerns, but must also be attentive to the contextual aspect of its siting--it is created not to stand on its own, but to augment a larger public space. It is as much a question of public utility, associational significance, and expectations as it is a matter of the quality of particular pieces of art: Works that may gain critical renown in a gallery or sculpture park might be ridiculed in public.

The National Endowment for the Arts' Art in Public Places Program (APP) collapsed because it remained stubbornly out of touch with this reality. The General Services Administration's Art in Architecture Program (AiA), on the other hand, has thrived under a new model that recognizes the difference between gallery art and public art, and that takes account of the sensibilities of the people who will have to see the artwork every day. The GSA and NEA learned this lesson the hard way, through trial and error. But the two programs responded to their hurdles in very different ways. The GSA drew on the evolving wisdom of the field of public art, opening itself to local community input at its building sites and to the development of art forms that lend themselves to increased integration of artistic and architectural elements. However, the NEA's APP, assaulted by the twin knives of congressional budget cuts and public scrutiny, did not learn from its mistakes and was not robust enough to survive challenges to its institutional core of curators, artists, and museum directors.

"Our tax money paid for that?"

Public art, unlike gallery art, must be made for the public--the public is, of necessity, its audience. One can choose not to go to a gallery, but there are only a finite number of doors to a courthouse, and citizens are affected when art is commissioned for a plaza in front of the primary entrance--they will have to look at it whether it offends them or not. And they arguably have a right to critique anything that impedes their progress across that space or that annoys them on their way.

This discussion is difficult to approach, even by arts professionals, because it is easy to interpret it as outright criticism of artists' work, even when that is not the intent. The curatorial class tends to view as troglodytes those who express negative judgments about art. Sometimes this attitude insulates artists from attacks that are merely ignorant. But it also does a disservice, insulating art from productive discussion and further marginalizing artists by cutting off any dialogue with the lay public. All citizens, including artists, have a right to free speech, but nobody deserves a free ride to use taxpayer money without any discussion. Ideological debates on artistic standards by partisan legislators may be biased and shortsighted. But even naive criticism can carry a measure of truth. If a senator misunderstands a sculpture in a plaza, how is the average passerby supposed to make sense of it? And why should there be a great disconnect between the viewing public and an artist working in a public space?

Recognizing the public versus gallery divide does not necessarily amount to censorship of unappealing projects, but simply a more realistic assessment of a public art program's accountability. This attitude challenges the politically correct notion of art as a sacrosanct endeavor. But at the same time, one must recognize that public art is a special kind of art. Failure to appreciate this difference has often led the public to shine a negative spotlight on particularly offensive or ridiculous pieces of public art. One need look no further than the investigative reporting on local television news to see the populist discontent with gallery-type art in public spaces. This leads to the ever-looming question, "Is that where my tax money is going?" The end result of a public art failure can be quite serious. A public outcry comes to serve as a preemptive strike on the inclination of a community to commission public art. Unfortunately, this legacy often lasts long into the future.

A classic example comes courtesy of the pre-reform GSA program, in New Bedford, Massachusetts. In 1978, James Surls's Sea Flower installation was placed outside the new Hastings Keith Federal Building. The citizens were already put off by the aggressive architecture of the building itself, placed as it was at a diagonal to the city grid, interrupting the streetscape. Then the large-scale Sea Flower sculpture reared its pointy head in the plaza. The sculptor intended the anemone sculpture to be a riff on the sea theme of the New England fishing community. But residents were merely miffed and mystified by the hunk of wood and metal. As New Bedford's Marketing Director Arthur Motta put it in an interview:

Picture telephone poles cut up into pieces eight feet in length and then rounded at one end and inserted in a spinal column that receives them like tubular steel. These things jutted out at all angles. The steel was rusted and then bled across the sidewalk over the course of years. Every now and then you'd have a report in the paper of a little old lady who banged her head on one of the projectiles and hurt herself.

Motta goes on to suggest that one shouldn't think of New Bedford as an art-intolerant place--it is a small...

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