Bibliography of Temporary Public Art Issues and Contexts

Kwon, Miwon. One Place after Another: Site-Specific Art and Locational Identity. The MIT Press, 2004.

One Place after Another offers a critical history of site-specific art since the late 1960s and a theoretical framework for examining the rhetoric of aesthetic vanguardism and political progressivism associated with its many permutations. Informed by urban theory, postmodernist criticism in art and architecture, and debates concerning identity politics and the public sphere, the book addresses the siting of art as more than an artistic problem. It examines site specificity as a complex cipher of the unstable relationship between location and identity in the era of late capitalism. The book addresses the work of, among others, John Ahearn, Mark Dion, Andrea Fraser, Donald Judd, Renee Green, Suzanne Lacy, Inigo Manglano-Ovalle, Richard Serra, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, and Fred Wilson.

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Senie, HF. Critical Issues in Public Art. Smithsonian, 1998.

In this anthology, twenty-two artists, architects, historians, critics, curators, and philosophers explore the role of public art in creating a national identity, contending that each work can only be understood by analyzing the context in which it is commissioned, built, and received. They emphasize the historical continuum between traditional works such as Mount Rushmore, the Washington Monument, and the New York Public Library lions and contemporary memorials such as the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the Names Project AIDS Quilt. They discuss the influence of patronage on form and content, isolate the factors that precipitate controversy, and show how public art overtly and covertly conveys civic values and national culture. Complete with an updated introduction, Critical Issues in Public Art shows how monuments, murals, memorials, and sculptures in public places are complex cultural achievements that must speak to increasingly diverse groups.

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Lacy, Suzanne. Mapping the Terrain: New Genre Public Art. Bay Press, 1994.

Mapping the Terrain: New Genre Public Art, edited by Lacy, fuels the emerging critical discourse in public art and begins to define a new style of art production. The text includes 12 essays by important artists, curators and critics, as well as a compendium of the work of over 90 artists. Many of the essays included in this text speak out strongly against Modernist claims of authorship and individuality. Historical notions of a passive audience viewing large-scale sculpture in plazas, what Lucy Lippard refers to as "plunk art," are challenged by new genre public art. By interacting with the audience in participatory events that intend to build community, many have questioned whether the result is actually art or social work.....Mapping the Terrain seeks to firmly place this type of activity in an art context and calls for a re-evaluation of existing definitions of art. Particularly noteworthy in this regard are the essays by Suzi Gablik, Patricia Phillips, Lippard and Jeff Kelley.

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Organizations Involved with Temporary Public Art

Site Projects

Site Projects is a community based non-profit organization that commissions site-specific art projects in the public realm in New Haven by internationally-recognized artists. The goal is to present visual art that appeals to a broad and diverse audience and that is site-specific to New Haven, an economically and ethnically mixed city that supports a vibrant arts community and many other cultural resources.

Site Projects Website