The unavoidability of the public sphere as a general issue for the arts, an issue that goes well beyond public art in the narrow or traditional sense, is thus the unifying agenda of these essays. Within this agenda, however, a dialectic emerges between what I will call utopian and critical relations between art and its public: on the one hand, art that attempts to raise up an ideal public sphere, a nonsite, an imaginary landscape (we might imagine here the classical image of a temple entrance or plaza filled with wise women and men engaging in enlightened discourse); on the other hand, art

October 1992 Monograph (National Assembly of Local Arts Agencies) exploring a Percent-for-Art controversy involving public art in Phoenix

Graffiti's ultimate rejection by the mainstream art world was assured, in part, by the terms upon which it was initially accepted. It was represented by the art world as an essentially public art form, and its publicness was an important part of its allure. As a result, graffiti on canvas constituted an uncomfortable paradox for the art world from the start.

The artist, Richard Serra discusses the moral rights of artists and freedom of expression in the context of what happened to his own work of sculpture the Titled Arc and the controversy surrounding an exhibition, funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, of the photographs of Robert Mapplethorpe.

The author, an artist, discusses the work of individual artists and groups of artists who have worked on public art projects, and emphasizes artist-initiated projects and the role of the community.

The Beijing Massacre, and the confrontation of images at the central public space in China, is full of instruction for anyone who wants to think about public art and, more generally, about the whole relation of images, violence and the public sphere. Even in the political and legal control is exerted, not only over the erection of public statues and monuments but over the display of a wide range of images, artistic or otherwise, to actual or potential publics. Even in the the publicness of public images goes well beyond their specific sites or sponsorship: publicity has, in a very real sense

This idea, that sculpture becomes public by taking the spatial experience of its audience as a subject, is so seductive it has influenced everything from Serra's steel fortresses to the benign and cheery works featured in many shopping malls. If anything unifies the whole range of contemporary sculpture from minimalism to the political agitation of Krzysztof Wodiczko, it is the idea enunciated best by Krauss, that contemporary sculpture takes as its subject the public, conventional nature of what might be called cultural space. The shift Krauss describes from the inner space of the artist's

This publication provides a description of public art projects in Arizona. These projects demonstrate a variety of models which integrate public art into community design and infrastructure that can be adapted by both small and large communities.

Contemporary public art is still in the process of defining its artistic and legal identity. Indeed to juxtapose the terms public and artis a paradox. Art is often said to be the individual inquiry of the sculptor or painter, the epitome of self-expression and vision that may challenge conventional wisdom and values. The term public encompasses a reference to the community, the social order, self-negation: hence the paradox of linking the private and the public in a single concept. A goal of any general or jurisprudential theory concerning government sponsorship or ownership of art in the

The author discusses the Vietnam Veterans Memorial as a work of public art and its impact in the context of its setting among other monumental sculptures on the Mall in Washington, D.C.