#5: The Public Art Waiting Game

Helloooo? Anybody there?

Author

Mia Pearlman
September 18, 2025

Last night at 3am (yay insomnia!) I was wondering why ghosting has become so common in public art, and everywhere else. At least being married I don’t get ghosted by dates anymore! In fact, the only place I experience ghosting these days is in my professional life.

A few months ago an art consulting firm from Asia got in touch about an exciting possible project, and before I knew it we were having late night Zoom calls with the whole team and sending reams of emails back and forth about what looked like a very likely collaboration. They submitted the proposal to the client, and things drastically slowed down. I checked in once a month, and at some point they just stopped returning my emails.

Listen, I am a grown ass lady and I can handle it if the client decided to go in another direction, or cut the budget, or whatever. It happens ALL THE TIME. Being an artist is like 85% rejection. Maybe 98%.

But why the ghosting? I’ll never know what happened. And I would like to.

There is no way to predict when ghosting will happen or with whom. Nonetheless, artists wind up wondering why there is suddenly a veil of secrecy so thick even an email can’t get through.

There are basically two main ways to get public art projects in my experience. Please comment below if I am missing others!

  1. You throw your hat in the ring for an RFQ usually created by a municipal/transit/airport/etc art program adminstrator, or sometimes by a private consultant. You are one of maybe hundreds, and a committee or jury evaluates from the pool and picks a few finalists to do proposals for a fee.

  2. A private art advisor reaches out with an opportunity. Sometime this is early stage: they are showing a ton of artists to a usually private client like a corporation, in order to see what they like and winnow down to a few finalists. Other times they can get in touch at the finalist stage, or even at the very end of the process. I have been contacted after I was already selected! Now THAT is a great surpise.

In either scenario, these days you often never learn the result of the process. Some RFQ managers and private consultants are fantastic at letting artists know if they were chosen or not, and sometimes we even learn who made it to the final round. This is very educational, and I always appreciate it. Many a time I have looked at the finalists’ work and thought, “Welp, I know why they didn’t choose me. Not what they were looking for!” But much of the time, it’s crickets.

Have you been ghosted, or <journalist voice> do YOU enjoy ghosting? Is there an upside to ghosting that I’ve missed?

Compared to everything that’s going on in the world, ghosting is barely what I would consider a problem. But I sure want to know what actually happened with that project in Asia so I can stop thinking about it at 3am!!

REMINDER: The next PUBLIC ART PARTY is on Wednesday, October 15th at the lovely Sugar Hill Children’s Museum! I hope to see you there.

Hope to see you there! Please comment below about ghosting IF YOU DARE!

Reply

or to participate.