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

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2.3 History of Public Art in America The story of public art in America is a story of democracy and the ever-shifting nature of the power structure existing in American society, due to the fact that public art is in the public, and is viewed by a larger audience than private artworks. This unique situation means that public art is designed to be viewed by everyone, not just those that are trained and educated in the art world. Consequently, the history of public art is filled with controversy. Such conflict appears inevitable as artists, institutions, and the general public now have a role in creating, placing, and interpreting the meaning and value of this public work. The history of public art centers around its function as an aesthetic and place-making tool and as a symbol of the public's collective and shared experience. The origins of public art are about reshaping the public sphere for political and economic reasons. Throughout history the visual reshaping of the public experience has sought to overlay the existing place with the artifacts of the new political or cultural structure. For example, the major Russian port city of St. Petersburg, was renamed Leningrad in honor of Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin, after the outbreak of World War 1, due to the German association of the name. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the City went back to its original name of St. Petersburg. The cultural shift resulted in the removal of hundreds of statues and Soviet iconography in Leningrad and across the countries that made up the former Soviet Union. The importance of public art in defining the public culture and societal narrative is a critical component of public art. Edmund Bacon (1974) in Design of Cities references Pope Sixtus V's efforts to meld artistic beauty into political pragmatism to establish Rome as a Christian city. To do so, he would redefine the public space by developing a: "...basic overall design structure in the form of a movement system as an idea, and at the same time the need to tie down its critical parts in positive physical forms which could 40