Weekend reading recommendation!

Author

Mia Pearlman
May 09, 2025

Hi public art peeps,

I hope everyone isn’t worn out from mentally willing the clock to tick faster on this Friday (here in the western hemisphere)! The week is almost over….really. I promise.

I’d like to share a terrific article, “Beyond the Bronze: How the Public‑Art Process Shapes—and Sometimes Strangles—Creative Possibility” by Iryna Kanishcheva and Oaklianna Caraballo, on the website Monochronicle. They clearly lay out the many frustrations that artists and art administrators feel about the RFQ process, and ask some important questions.

For example, why do we have to write a one page letter of interest for an RFQ that asks about our “approach” to the project, a 250 word version for another opportunity that explicitly demands the opposite, and a third RFQ that only wants an artist statement crammed into 1,000 characters? It’s maddening. 

Same for renaming our images 20 different ways, some to be uploaded into a platform, others embedded in a PDF to be emailed. If high school students can apply to 1,000 colleges with a common application, why can’t we standardize RFQ’s?

Kanishcheva and Caraballo also confront the issue of “community engagement” discussed in my previous newsletter. What does community engagement mean? And how do we know when it’s been a success? Is it necessary? Who evaluates it?

The article asks how the composition of a public art panel or jury affects the outcome. I think almost every public artist has experienced presenting their work in front of a group of people, some of whom look bored out of their minds, or are visibly checking their watches. Were they assigned by their boss to be there? Are they even interested in public art? 

One suspects that the outcome of such a panel will likely be a commission to a very experienced (often white male) artist who has realized a version of the same proposal in 10+ other places. No risk, questionable reward.

This type of panel structure can also affect choice of medium or form. Metal or stone are safer bets than materials like light, video, projection and other less clearly “durable” or “low maintenance” materials. 

What the article does not broach is the (to me) essential question of what is public art for, anyway? Why is all of this money, time and energy devoted to the commissioning of art for public spaces, and what is expected in return?

Is the purpose to beautify, memorialize, create wayfinding, placemake, or elevate the history of a community? To illustrate a narrative about a place or people? Is it to support visual artists by giving us opportunities to make ambitious art that we could never afford to create otherwise?

Many artists have expressed frustration to me about this last point. They ask, “If this RFQ was for art, why did an architect or designer win? They aren’t artists, and what they make isn’t art, it’s design. How is that fair?”

It seems to me, as a New Yorker who remembers the Richard Serra “Tilted Arc” controversy and several others, that the increasing bureaucratization of public art may also stifle artistic risk-taking and innovation. When art has to be likable by everyone from the billionaire real estate developer to the bored panelist to the local grandma, what is lost? Are these systems and requirements actually filtering out potential greatness?

I’d love to know what YOU think! What kind of changes, if any, do you think would benefit the public art world, and public art in general? What work isn’t getting chosen that should be, and why? What barriers have you experienced to a successful public art project?

Please share your thoughts in the comments! Or email them to me and I will post them anonymously: [email protected].

Have a great weekend, and Happy Mother’s Day to all my fellow moms!

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