Notes on public art in the making: the thunder of bunnies beyond the horizon
“Over the last century, the practices of landscape architecture and the practice of art have become scarcely recognizable to late Victorian proponents of beauty and order. Movements such as landscape urbanism demonstrate that the scope and ambition of the landscape architecture profession has extended into new realms. And in art, the proliferation of means and media has been so vast and unrelenting that every human activity, without exception, may be eligible for a foundation grant.”
The Boston chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects asked me and my colleague Nina Chase to sum up the paradigm shift underway in public art. On the eve of a sweeping political movement to rethink memorials and monuments, we wrote about a cul-de-sac that traditional public art has entered. We noted an important — and necessary — cultural shift away from lionizing figures associated with historic privilege and toward inclusive, participatory, clamorous, and complex landscape. Not incidentally, we write about the collusion between landscape architecture and memory-making, tracing this uneasy history from the Beaux Arts movement to the present day.
Chase and I were gratified that the piece was picked up nationally by Building Design and Construction, serving as primer on public art for the industry.