Public art is artwork created for display in a space that is open to the general public, typically outside of the gallery context. It can be found indoors – such as foyers, atriums and airports – or outdoors – parks, squares, freeways and plazas. Public art is often commissioned to reflect distinctive qualities of the site, function or natural environment. It can also celebrate a local history or cultural heritage and encourage community pride of place.
While monuments, memorials and civic statues are the most common forms of public art, it can take many different shapes. The works can be permanent, as in the case of sculptures made from highly durable materials such as bronze or marble. Alternatively, they may be temporary, such as the graffiti and posters that were used as political tools by the Soviet Union or the Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland. Or they might be interactive, as in the cases of performance, dance or theatre or poetry sprayed on buildings or walls. Increasingly, public art has taken on a more political dimension, whether in the form of sculpture parks that showcase large-scale sculptural forms difficult to show in museum galleries, or the controversies surrounding works such as Victor Pasmore’s Apollo Pavilion in the English new town Peterlee in 1986, and Richard Serra’s Tilted Arc in Foley Square in 1989.
Applied public art refers to any form of work that is applied directly to the surface, either interior or exterior, of another structure or environment. Examples include murals painted on buildings, chalk drawings on footpaths and legal’street art’, such as the Melbourne trams designed by Rose Nolan, or the text-based composition that wrapped around all the windows of the Yarra Trams. Unlike art in the studio or in a museum collection, public art has a predetermined life and must be designed to rigorous standards to ensure it lasts.
In the 1970s, as gentrification and ecological concerns surfaced as both commission motives and critical focus for artists, land art became an important aspect of public art practice, as evidenced by the works of Agnes Denes, Joseph Beuys or Robert Smithson’s 7000 Oaks. More recently, artists have turned to themes of memory, identity and the body in their works for public spaces.
In the USA, the Art in State Buildings (ASB) program and the City of Philadelphia’s Percent for Arts program are among the most prominent public art programs. National organizations such as the Public Art Network and South West Arts are active in promoting best practices and encouraging collaboration between artists, planners, architects and communities planning public art projects.