Art, Architecture and the City – Symbiosis Through Public Art

There is no better dialogue about art and the built environment than when public art is discussed.

Although they are intended as places to appreciate art, museums and galleries tend to isolate it within their walls, in spaces where the art experience is selectively presented to a specially trained audience, the initiated few. Great effort is currently directed at creating more inclusive environments, but these institutions still maintain an air of elitism and no longer represent the optimal site for a publicly shared art experience.

When freed from the indoor galleries, art is able to transcend the limits of authorized and specialized conversation, instead, revealing its potential to surprise and engage, to provoke and disrupt, to respond and unite, to seize and glorify, to inquire and transform. In public squares, on streets, built into architectural structures, along transit lines, by rivers, or in parks and gardens, art engages in a dialogue with the existing environment, raising interesting questions: functional, cultural, historical, socioeconomic and even political.

Artworks interact with the buildings, neighborhoods and the larger urban landscapes that surround them. The best examples seem not just to grow from their site, but to respond to it, magnifying its significance, and granting it an identity and a sense of place. A conspicuously human element to city building, art contributes to the transformation of the urban context by interpreting it and even competing with it, anticipating the arrival of future intervention and development.

Public art is visually accessible and open to a wide and diverse audience, specialized or not. Everyone that passes through the public space is an art viewer and potential beneficiary of an unexpected but meaningful encounter. Art doesn’t just stimulate the visual sense; it also provokes curiosity and participatory reflection, educates, changes mindsets, and creates a forum for public dialogue.

The transformative role of public art and its ability to influence economic development through tourism, revitalization and growth have been recognized by international and local governmental agencies since the beginning of the 20th century. Public art programs rolled out through formalized policies, procedures and guidelines are meant to ensure that art remains a basic right, democratically available to a wide, non-professional audience that has free admission to high-quality art. Public artworks commissioned under these programs are installed in accessible spaces, are publicly funded and involve collaborative input. But, how are these programs funded and who is paying? It’s not free.

In Canada, to formalize the interest in public art and its widely accepted importance, the Province of Quebec first introduced a public art program in 1950, followed in 1986 by the City of Toronto, the first Canadian municipality to put in place and manage the “Percent for Public Art Program.” The program established that one per cent of capital costs on private development projects would go toward public art. It was meant to “secure funds for public art through the planning and development approval process,” and to “commission art through private developer contributions.” The City of Toronto also funds public art through its own large capital projects. In more recent years, there has been an interest in temporary installations, as opposed to permanent structures, programs like Nuit Blanche demonstrating successful private-public collaborations in making art a component of urban life.

Public art is not an afterthought. It needs to be conceptualized, planned and integrated into the design and construction of its architectural, urban or landscape medium, so that the cultural message in the artist’s concept is preserved. The specialized curatorial dimension of the public commissioning process developed through open competitions, ensures that art doesn’t get reduced to a simple ornamental or landmark function, but rises to levels of quality, character and distinction that can withstand a diverse critique.

A successful symbiosis of art, architecture and urban fabric endows a city with a public art collection that can redefine it as a museum of monumental scale.

REFERENCES

Alemani, Cecilia, ed. High Art: Public Art on the High Line. New York: Skira Rizzoli, 2015

Matzner, Florian, ed. Public Art: A Reader; Berlin: Cantz, 2004

Toronto Urban Design. Percent for Public Art Program Guidelines, August, 2010

The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Art is…, October, 2013. https://www.torontopubliclibrary.ca/detail.jsp?Entt=RDM3047442&R=3047442

Bird, Michael. 100 Ideas that Changed Art. London: Laurence King, 2012

The Artful City, http://www.theartfulcity.org