Public Art Round Table

Visual & Critical Studies Forum
Wednesday, March 2 , 10 am – 12 pm
Boardroom, San Francisco campus

What does public art look like in the 21st century? How can artistic 
practices negotiate the spectrum between the dreaded “plop art,” on the one 
hand, and palliative landscape design or graffiti-deterring murals on the
 other?  Are there ways in which works of art can engage viewers in public
 space without being antagonistic or nostalgic?  Where are the lines between
 vandalism and free speech when it comes to public artworks?  This
 roundtable-style forum brings together distinguished speakers from the Bay 
Area and beyond who are working in many aspects of “public art.”  Together, 
the invited artists, activists, commissioners, scholars, and conservators 
will discuss the history and future of making, engaging, and preserving art 
in the public sphere.  Topics may include issues relating to projects’
 conception and commission, display, funding, community involvement,
 critique, censorship, and vandalism.

Student Review
By: Liesa Lietzke

The Visual and Critical Studies forum on March 2^nd was a roundtable discussion featuring five speakers engaged in public arts. The range of practices discussed was a testament to the flexibility of the term “public.” Susan Roberts-Manganelli spoke of her work conservator of Stanford’s large collection of outdoor sculptures, a type of art that is “public” in the more traditional sense of being installed outdoors in public places. Mathieu Gregoire oversees similar collections for the Universities of California at San Francisco and San Diego. Matthew Passmore of the design studio Rebar, Alison Smith, and Kota Ezawa are artists whose practices intersect with the public in often-unusual ways. Passmore described Rebar’s work as “A weed growing through the crack in the regulatory forces on space,” exemplified in various projects including a temporary public park, complete with grass, a bench and a tree, set up in the niche space of metered street parking, rented for the day via regularly deposited coins.