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

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One of the most notable examples of failure in the proper siting of public art from this period is a sculpture in Manhattan's Foley Square Federal Plaza known as the Tilted Arc. The General Services Administration (GSA) commissioned the Tilted Arc for this location in 1979, and it was removed in 1989 after much public controversy. Artist Richard Serra created the massive sculpture and it was installed in 1981. Tilted Arc was an unadorned steel sculpture nearly the length of a city block that was 120 feet long, 12 feet high, and 2.5 inches thick. From the beginning, the sculpture fell under extreme criticism and was derisively nicknamed"The Berlin Wall of Foley Square" (Doss 1995, pp. 17-18). Because of the controversy surrounding this sculpture in regard to its use of public space, Tilted Arc is one of the most discussed examples of 20th century public art (Baldini 2014). The work raised questions about how public art is commissioned, what are appropriate styles of art, and what are the criteria for the successful implementation of public art. More importantly, when describing The Destruction of Tilted Arc: Documents published in 1991 (C. Weyergraf-Serra, M. Buskirk), Rosalyn Deutsche (1996, p. 258) writes: "The documents raise timely questions, whose implications extend far beyond arcane art-world matters, about what it means for art and space to be "public." Insofar as the GSA ostensibly dismantled Tilted Arc "to increase public use of the plaza." The removal of the Tilted Arc was a direct result of a petition by some 1300 office workers from buildings adjacent to the public plaza. The artist defended his work through the hearing process, saying that it was designed as a site-specific sculpture, and that removing the work, or placing it in another location, would render it meaningless (Babon 2000). In part, the controversy that arose was an intentional consequence of the artist's desire to make people see their surroundings differently: "He wanted a sculpture that provoked a relentless consciousness of the streets, office buildings and court around it, to be at the same time analytical and mythical, 51