The issues raised in this Monograph will be debated and explored in depth at the NALAA preconference on public art, The Public Art of Re-collection: A Commemorative Art Symposium, to be held in San Jose, California, from June 8-10, 1995.

American towns and cities have long been studded with public art - most of which is commemorative statuary honoring the heroic dead, or an historic event, or personifying some abstract ideal such as Truth. Typically, the subject and purpose of the commissioned work has been as much a matter of prior public agreement as has been the intended style of its execution. Artists were favored if - and because - they could express the common will and taste. In those cases where controversy has erupted - e.g. over a statue of George Washington clad in a toga or an expressionistic portrait of John F.

In recent decades, many cities have realized that no form of transportation moves large numbers of people with the speed, efficiency and environmental benefits of mass transit. Trains and buses enable cities to reduce the harm done to their environment and economy by the proliferation of automobiles. Because urban leaders understand that transit makes their regions more livable and more competitive, with the assistance of the federal government they have worked to revitalize old systems and build new ones. They also recognize the power of transit to create a sense of place and to manifest

Nothing stirs the imagination as does art; and nothing stir's the public's imagination - or indignation - as do publicly funded, large-scale works of art that are located in highly traveled places. Recently, the State of Rhode Island was faced with its own public arts controversy, playing out an all-too-familiar script in an all-too-familiar performance. This essay explores one model of successful public arts patronage and then applies it to the Rhode Island drama as a case study in an attempt to identify elements, both similar and unique, in order to discuss possible plot shifts and

Monograph provides a good overview of ISTEA funding as well as first-hand accounts from local and state arts agencies that have been successful in receiving ISTEA funding.

Critical Issues in Public Art: Content, Context and Controversy is an anthology (twenty two essays) that was developed from the editors' work on the Winter 1989 Art Journal - an issue devoted to public art. The book is divided into four parts.

There is one public building decorated with state-supported artworks in the that the news media continuously highlights but that is not itself connected to political discourse: the U. S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C. Recently, however, some reporters focused more directly on this building and its embellishment, in part, because the monument atop the dome of the Capitol, Thomas Crawford's Statue of Freedom was placed in front of the east facade for restoration between 9 May and 23 October 1993. This statue, along with two others that once decorated the left and right of the central

Local papers ranked it the biggest cultural controversy to hit San Francisco in 20 years. But for the sculptor Richard Serra, it was a familiar refrain. The controversy started in early July when the San Francisco Chronicle published a photograph of a preliminary model of a Serra sculpture commissioned by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. The model was of a 48-foot tall, 140-ton planar structure intended for a parking area across from the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, which, with the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum, makes up the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

Because of the paucity of published information on the urban garden, I thought it would be helpful to have writers from different disciplines address the urban garden from their own distinct perspectives. Jane Weissman provides an overview of community gardening in New York City and its historical antecedents. While Weissman's focus is on the grassroots efforts of neighborhood groups across the city, her essay also reveals the linkages between community gardening and public art. From the context of the municipal parks and grand European-style boulevards that have been the primary form of

The authors review the many facets of public art from enhancing the community to the people's negative and positive reactions to the placement of public art in their enviroment.