Agenda - Parks and Recreation Commission - 01/09/2025

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The different parties responsible for the creation and implementation of the work also may define "public art" differently. Generally, there are three parties involved with public art: the artists, the commissioning public agency, and the public. The acceptance and `success' of a public art installation relies on a good relationship between these three parties (Balfe and Wyszomirski 1988). By its nature,public art that is bought and paid for by public subsidies creates its own controversies, including the presentation of the artwork, the freedom of artistic expression, and the authority of the public administrators to manage these inherent tensions related to the presentation of the public art. This study focuses on the role and action of the local public administrators in small communities. However, previous research has revealed that similar issues appear at all levels of government(i.e., federal, state, and local), and there is value in examining the issues from both from the artist's perspective and a public critical viewpoint (Hoffman, 1992; Maksymowicz, 1992; Mitchell, 1992; Ross, 1995; Doss, 1995; Dorn, 1995; Miles, 1997; Blair and Pij awka, 1998). The very fact that public art is seen and heard by others, and that everybody sees and hears from a different perspective is the meaning of public life (Arendt 1958). The debate on when and how to accommodate the differing perspectives of society is at the core of democracy itself, and the history of public art throughout history has served to both support and challenge the status quo. The changing dynamics of public art depict the conflicts of the abstract, unified space, and the private, conflicts of individuals. A unified `public' and its claim of being fully inclusive, denies the fact that conflict is inherent when accommodating a plurality of interests in a democratic society. 39