In the summer of 1986, I was a National Endowment for the Arts Fellow in Washington DC. Then, while on three-month hiatus as AES Special Projects Coordinator, I had the good fortune to have a Fellowship in the Visual Arts program under the program direction of Richard Andrews, considered one of the leading public art experts in the country. I spent three months in the NEA’s soaring halls and warren of offices learning from the best and immersing myself in a juicy public art research project.
Little did I know at the time that this would land AES into a national position at a catalytic moment in the burgeoning public art field.
At that time, AES was one of several designated coordinating agencies for public art projects commissioned through the new statewide Percent for Art program administered by the Massachusetts Council on the Arts. Percent for Art programs across the country were being ordained at state and municipal levels, legislating that one percent of renovation or construction costs for public building projects go toward art for those buildings. In western MA, AES implemented processes to purchase or commission new artworks to enhance public spaces. I happily seized the opportunity to usher projects at Belchertown State School (artist, Karin Giusti, UM ’87) and the Pittsfield State Office Building (artists Alex MacClean and Werner Pfeiffer). Unfortunately, Massachusetts’ Percent for Art program was short-lived, but AES’s involvement didn’t stop there.
Back in the Visual Arts program at the NEA, Richard Andrews learned from experience that the most successful public art was conceived with an understanding of context. Processes must engage public agencies, workers, and users of buildings and sites in order for the art to be relevant and meaningful as well as integrated into the design of the site. As programs were proliferating, Andrews observed public art administrators reinventing the wheel when they should be benefiting from the wisdom and experience of leading-edge peers.
As my Fellowship was winding down, Andrews approached me to discuss the concept for a National Public Art Policy Project. It would convene these leaders to deliberate and map out “best practices” in developing public art ordinances, commissioning work, engaging publics, and conserving and managing public artworks and collections. Results would be a book and then regional meetings across the country to disseminate the book and its illuminating public art principles, practices, and model materials.
Andrews asked, would AES collaborate with NEA and coordinate this ambitious project? There was no debate! This initiative aligned well with AES’s mission and approach. Public art epitomized our belief in expanding access to and participation in arts and culture as well as policies such as Percent for Art that ensure public resources. And its practical orientation would help inform administrators, artists, and policymakers nationally. To this day, AES continues to offer intensive training for artists in public art processes, refreshed to include new contexts and trends in public art.
We co-wrote and published Going Public: A field guide to development in art in public places (1988). The book, whose cover features artist George Trakas’ site-specific bridge across the UMass pond, has become a seminal resource for the field and in academic programs teaching public art administration. The regional meetings that introduced its contents from Cambridge to Minneapolis to San Francisco galvanized the growing field.
Today public art is a critical dimension of much community development, cross-sector, and creative placemaking strategies. Artist-activists are deploying the power of art to advance racial, economic, and social justice. Recent controversies and actions regarding who deserves to be memorialized in monuments in public spaces, are critical topics of debate arising in public squares, parks, and state capitol buildings toward goals of reckoning with the full truths of American history.
The National Public Art Policy Project and AES helped lay the foundations for public art—an art form that, at its best, embodies a diversity of creators and democratic practices to enliven and deepen the meaning of our public spaces.
Pam Korza is the former co-director with Barbara Schaffer Bacon of Animating Democracy, a program of Americans for the Arts that, for more than 20 years, worked to strengthen the role of arts and culture as potent contributors to community, civic, and social change. She serves on the Arts Extension Institute Advisory Board and was AES Special Projects Coordinator from 1978-1996. She earned a Bachelor’s degree in Art History (UM ’78).