2019

Presented at the 2019 Public Art Preconference in Minneapolis, MN on June 14th.

Jurors

Seitu Jones, Artist

Seitu Jones was born in Minneapolis in 1951. Working on his own or in collaboration, Jones has created over 30 large-scale public art works. He's been awarded a Minnesota State Arts Board Fellowship, a McKnight Visual Artist Fellowship, a Bush Artist Fellowship, a Bush Leadership Fellowship, and a National Endowment for the Arts/Theater Communication Group Designer Fellowship. Seitu was awarded a 2001-2002 Loeb Fellowship at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and was the Artist-in-Residence in the Harvard Ceramics Program. He was Millennium Artist-in-Residence for 651 Arts in Brooklyn, NY, and was the first Artist-in-Residence for the City of Minneapolis. In 2014, he integrated artwork into three stations for the new Greenline Light Rail Transit system in the Twin Cities. A 2013 Joyce Award, from Chicago's Joyce Foundation allowed Seitu to develop CREATE: The Community Meal, a dinner for 2,000 people at a table a half a mile long. The project focused on access to healthy food. Seitu is working with members of his neighborhood to create a 5-acre farm in a new St. Paul city park. For 18 months Seitu was a Senior Fellow in Agricultural Systems in the College of Food, Agriculture and Natural Science Resources at the University of Minnesota. Jones received an MLS in Environmental History and a BS in Landscape Design from the University of Minnesota.

Aaron Ott, Curator of Public Art, Albright Knox Art Gallery

Aaron Ott joined the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in April of 2014 as the Museum's inaugural Curator of Public Art. He spearheads the Albright-Knox Public Art Initiative, an innovative partnership between the Albright-Knox, Erie County, and the City of Buffalo established in 2014. The goal of the initiative is to create spaces of dialogue where diverse communities have the ability to engage with, respond to, and cooperatively produce great public art establishing Western New York as a critical cultural center.

Ott's curatorial philosophy is grounded in the notion that the shared landscape of our lives is abundant with the opportunity to create, experience, and talk about notions of beauty, culture, originality, and innovation. He is committed to art that is generous in spirit, conceptually affirmative, and participatory in format.

From the Americans for the Arts Store

2018

Presented at the 2018 Public Art Preconference in Denver, CO on June 15th.

Jurors

Bryan C. Lee Jr, Director of Design, COLLAQATE

Bryan C. Lee, Jr is the founding organizer of the Design Justice Platform and organized the Design As Protest National day of Action. Additionally, he has led two award winning architecture + design programs for high school students through the Arts Council (local) and the National Organization of Minority Architects (national), respectively. He serves on several boards; most notably as the Design Education Chair National NOMA board and on the National AIA Equity + the Future of Architecture Committee. He was selected as the 2014 NOMA member of the year, 2015 Next City Vanguard Fellow, 2015 International British American Project Fellow. In 2016, Bryan was selected to give a TED Talk and to Keynote at SXSW Eco on Design Justice.

Karen Mack, Executive Director, LA Commons

Karen Mack is founder and Executive Director of LA Commons, an organization dedicated to promoting Los Angeles' diverse neighborhoods through locally based, interactive, artistic and cultural programming.  LA Commons has implemented community art projects, tours and classes in communities throughout LA. Ms. Mack is a nationally recognized voice on the role of creativity in the empowerment of communities and is asked to speak regularly on this topic.  Prior to work with LA Commons, she served as a Public Service Fellow at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University where she researched the role of culture in community building.  She holds an MPA from Harvard University and an MBA from the John Anderson School of Management at UCLA.  She is a past president of the board of the Los Angeles Neighborhood Initiative and of the City’s Board of Neighborhood Commissioners.

Patrick Marold, Artist

Patrick Marold, artist, has been working for over 20 years to bind the physical environment with our perceived orientation through enhanced systems of space and form. Since earning a BFA from Rhode Island School of Design in 1997, his artistic development has maintained an intimate connection to landscape, extending the environmental traditions unique to post-minimalism. Refinement of his practice has been pursued in various locations in America and abroad, including opportunities like that of his 2000 Fulbright Fellowship in Iceland where he began to more fully utilize spatial dynamics to generate an enhanced understanding of light and movement. Exhibiting widely in galleries and museums, he has earned multiple awards and recognition for his studio works as well as his publicly sited projects. In 2007, Marold received international attention for The Windmill Project, a temporary landscape installation in Vail, Colorado, which seeded a local valley with a mass of light-generating turbines committed to capturing and visualizing the choreography of the wind through a unique landscape. In the last decade he has completed numerous public commissions including the 7 acre installation, Shadow Array, at Denver’s International Airport, as well as a sky and sound work, Solar Drones, located in Calgary’s National Music Centre. Diversity in setting, scale, and technical realization have equipped him with the capability to apply his vision across a broad range of sites while preserving a unity of vision. Marold maintains a studio in Colorado, and continues working toward a means of spatial intercession, inviting the viewer to consider new orientations of landscape, materials, physical forces, and their impact on personal and communal perception.

From the Americans for the Arts Store

2017

Presented at the 2017 Public Art Preconference in San Francisco, CA on June 16th.

Jurors

Alison Saar, Artist

Alison Saar was born in Los Angeles, California.  She studied art and art history at Scripps College and received an MFA from the Otis Art Institute. She  received the United States Artist Fellowship in 2012 and has also been awarded the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship and two National Endowment Fellowships. Alison has exhibited at many galleries and museums, including the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden and the Whitney Museum of American Art.  Her art is represented in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Baltimore Art Museum, the Modern Museum of Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 

Kevin B. Chen, artist and curator

Kevin B. Chen has been involved in the Bay Area arts community for over two decades as a curator, writer, and visual artist. He currently serves as co-chair for the City of Oakland's Public Art Advisory Committee, a member of Recology's Artist in Residence Program Advisory Board and Root Division and Pro Arts Gallery’s Curatorial Committees, manages the Artist Residency Program and Public Programs at the de Young Museum, and is visiting faculty at Stanford University. He has curated projects for Headlands Center for the Arts, University of Nevada Reno, San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, San Francisco Arts Commission Galleries, and Chinese Culture Center of San Francisco & Kearny Street Workshop. He was the Program Director of Visual Arts at Intersection for the Arts for over 15 years, where he curated over 70 exhibitions and hundreds of public programs. He has been a funding and residency panelist (Creative Capital Foundation, MAP Fund, Alliance of Artists Communities, Creative Work Fund, City of San Jose, Headlands Center for the Arts), an exhibition juror (CCA, SF Camerawork, CSU Chico, Root Division), and author of catalog essays (The Third Line – Art Gallery in Dubai, Paper Museum Press/Park Life, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Light Work, AKAAKA Art Publishing). His own visual work has exhibited locally at San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, Southern Exposure, Palo Alto Art Center, Jack Fischer Gallery, and nationally at Angel’s Gate Cultural Center (San Pedro, CA), Harn Museum of Art (Gainesville, FL), Bob Rauschenberg Gallery (Ft. Myers, FL), Bruno David Gallery (St. Louis, MO), and The Kitchen (New York, NY).

Sherri Brueggemann, Public Art Urban Enhancement Program Manager, City of Albuquerque, Cultural Services Department

Sherri Brueggemann is the Public Art Urban Enhancement Program Manager for the City of Albuquerque, Cultural Services Department. She has been managing art programs and public art projects in New Mexico for 20 years. Sherri holds a Masters from UNM’s School of Public Administration with an emphasis in cultural policy evaluation. Sherri was a founding member of the Americans for the Arts Public Art Network and served on the PAN Council from 2000-2002. She is also a former printmaker, special events coordinator, winery owner, and has been a professor of practice at the University of New Mexico  College of Fine Arts, Arts Management Program from 2008-2016. She has served as a board member for numerous arts, cultural and civic non-profit organizations in the Southwest, including the New Mexico Route 66 Association, the New Mexico Winegrowers Association, the Albuquerque Arts Alliance and 516 Arts. She helped spearhead the Albuquerque/ Bernalillo County Arts & Cultural Industries Economic Impact Study, the ABQ Cultural Count Task Force, the New Mexico MainStreet Downtown Arts & Cultural District, and Albuquerque Convention and Visitor’s Bureau Cultural Directors’ Tourism Steering Committees. Sherri has recently been appointed to the New Mexico Hospitality Association’s Space Tourism Committee. In her spare time, she founded and manages the InterGalactic Cultural Relations Institute.

2016

Presented at the 2016 Public Art Preconference in Boston, MA on June 17th

Jurors

Lucas Antony Cowan, Public Art Curator, Rose Kennedy Greenway Conservancy

Lucas Antony Cowan is both an art administrator and curator with many years of experience in the fields of public and contemporary art.  He is the Public Art Curator for the Rose Kennedy Greenway Conservancy, where he leads the Conservancy's efforts to bring world-class temporary exhibitions of contemporary public art to the mile-and-a-half parks system in the heart of Boston that connect people and the city with beauty and fun. Prior to joining The Greenway in 2014, Cowan directed the Public Art Program for the Maryland State Arts Council, where he was instrumental in the passage of the 2013 Maryland Public Art Initiative, adding Maryland to 23 other states and the District of Columbia to the list of state public art programs; and was the Senior Curator of Exhibits for Millennium Park and the Chicago Office of Tourism and Culture in Chicago, IL. He has curated and managed dozens of public art commissions and exhibitions that include artists such as: Mark di Suvero, Jun Kaneko, Thomas Sayre, Shinique Smith, Sui Jianguo and Lawrence Weiner.

Cowan has served on juries and panels across the United States, and has consulted on cultural park planning for major cities such as San Francisco and Chicago. Cowan previously served on the board of trustees for the International Sculpture Center, publishers of Sculpture magazine, and is a founding member of the Advisory Council for Cold Hollow Sculpture Park in Vermont. Cowan holds degrees from the Maryland Institute College of Art and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Franka Diehnelt, Co-Owner, merge conceptual design, LLC

Franka Diehnelt is co-owner of Merge Conceptual Design, an artist collaborative based in Santa Monica, CA that was founded in 2003. Merge Conceptual Design creates art with a strong conceptual component that utilizes many different media in the installations. Recent works include a site installation called “Aritzona” in Phoenix, “Sublimare” at the San Diego International Airport, “re-currents” in Scottsdale and “Sky” at the San Francisco Airport. Merge Conceptual Design was recognized at the 2013 Year in Review for “SODO”, a one mile encompassing graphic application onto the underside of the expanded Spokane Street Viaduct in Seattle.

Franka was born in former East Germany and studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna after the fall of the Berlin Wall. She was a guest student at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen for a year, and has traveled extensively – from studying glaciers at the Galdhøpiggen, Norway to documenting ancient baths in Sanaa, Jemen. Franka settled in Los Angeles after she won the Museum of Applied Arts Vienna’s Schindler Grant. She now resides with her family on a farm in Topanga, CA.

As collaborator in her studio, she is highly valued for her design sensibility, her in-depth research, and her interest in anything worth exploring- from music to politics. 

Constance White, Lead Creative, SLDcreative

Constance Y. White is a creative professional who inspires artists and design teams to develop collaborative and integrated projects for public spaces.  Her passion and creativity have contributed to over 19 years of successful experience as a program administrator and project manager. 

Constance began her career as the Public Art Coordinator with the City of Dallas Office of Cultural Affair’s Percent for Art Public Art program.  Afterwards, she lead the Art Program for San Diego International Airport and developed and implemented their first Airport Art Master Plan. During that time, the airport become recognized globally for its presentation of art and culture. Over the past year, Constance has advised Charlotte Douglass International and Dallas-Fort Worth International Airports on creating and sustaining airport art programs; completed an Airport Art Master Plan for Birmingham Shuttlesworth International Airport, and authored a major essay on art, transportation and infrastructure commissioned and published by Americans for the Arts. 

Currently, Constance is a consultant in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. She has a penchant for complexity and beauty, and specializes in leading the ideation, planning and management of art and culture projects and programming from inception to completion.

From the Americans for the Arts Store

2015

Presented at the 2015 Public Art & Placemaking Preconference in Chicago, IL on June 11th

Jurors

Peggy Kendellen, Program Manager, Regional Arts & Cultural Council

Peggy Kendellen has worked in the public art field for over 20 years in Portland, Oregon, and currently manages both site specific and temporary public art projects, residencies, and the Public Art Murals Program.  She has conducted professional development workshops for artists and has spoken locally, regionally and nationally on public art issues and served on public art selection panels in the Pacific Northwest and Canada. Peggy was re-served two terms on the Public Art Network Council and served as the council’s chair for 2012.  In 2009, she initiated the launch of the Northwest Public Art Council which has become an annual convening of public art administrators from the Pacific Northwest, British Columbia, Alaska and Idaho.  She has contributed essays for Public Art By the Book edited by Barbara Goldstein and The Practice of Public Art edited by Camron Cartiere and Shelly Willis.

Laurie Jo Reynolds, Artist

Laurie Jo Reynolds is an artist and policy advocate. She was the organizer for Tamms Year Ten, a grassroots campaign to close the notorious state supermax in Tamms, Illinois, shuttered in 2013 by Governor Pat Quinn. As a 2010 Soros Justice Fellow, Reynolds researched best practices to stop sexual abuse and reduce recidivism, creating functional and dialogical art to support policy change. She recently produced work for Citizen Culture: Art and Architecture Shape Policy, Santa Monica Museum of Art; A Proximity of Consciousness, Sullivan Galleries, Chicago; and Museum of Arte Útil, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Netherlands. Reynolds is the recipient of a Creative Capital grant, a Blade of Grass fellowship and the Lenore Annenberg Prize for Art and Social Change. In 2014, she was on the staff of Governor Quinn’s re-election campaign. She is now Assistant Professor of Public Arts, Social Justice, and Culture at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Ernest C. Wong, FASLA, APA, Principal, site design group, ltd.

As the founding Principal and President of site design group, ltd., Ernest C. Wong has been instrumental in the success of the firm and the landscape architecture and urban design profession in the City of Chicago. Under his direction for over 25 years, the landscape architecture and urban design firm has won numerous national and international design awards for unprecedented creative design and beautifully detailed urban spaces.

Ernie serves on the board of numerous public service organizations and professional juries including the Chinese American Service League, YWCA Metropolitan Chicago, Student Conservation Association, and the Near South Planning Board. Ernie also serves on Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s Chicago Landmarks and Cultural Affairs Commissions, and was recently named the “2010 Chicagoan of the Year” by the Chicago Tribune. In 2013, Ernie was elevated to the American Society of Landscape Architects Council of Fellows for his exceptional leadership, extensive community service, and outreach work.

From the Americans for the Arts Store

2014

Presented at the 2014 Public Art & Placemaking Preconference in Nashville, TN on June 12th

Jurors

Cath Brunner, Public Art Program Director, 4Culture
Ralph Helmick, Artist
Janet Zweig, Artist

From the Americans for the Arts Store

2013

Presented at the 2013 Public Art Network Preconference in Pittsburgh, PA on June 13th

Jurors

John Carson, Head of the School of Fine Art, Carnegie Mellon University

John Carson is an artist who has worked in various media and contexts. He is currently Head of The School of Art at Carnegie Mellon University. He was previously the Course Director of undergraduate Fine Art at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London, and before that was Curator and Production Manager with Artangel Trust, a public art organization in London commissioning temporary art work in unusual locations. He has exhibited, presented, performed, taught and advised internationally, since leaving his home town of Belfast, Northern Ireland in 1981

Norie Sato, Artist

Norie Sato is an artist living in Seattle, whose artwork has included both a studio practice and art for public places over the past 30 plus years. She has created individual, collaborative, design team public art projects as well as creating various public art plans. She  works from site and context-driven ideas first, then finds the appropriate form and materials, striving to add meaning and human touch to the built environment. Her public art work has been recognized 5 times by the Public Art Network’s Year in Review.  In 2010, she was named an Honorary Member of the Seattle chapter of the American Institute of Architects. She is a former council member of the Public Art Network. 

Justine Topfer, Project Manager, San Francisco Art Commission

Justine Topfer is a Project Manager with the San Francisco Arts Commission's Public Art Program, and an independent curator with ‘Out of the Box Projects’. Her most recent curatorial forays in the public realm include: Design Renegade in Hong Kong, The DC Commission on Arts and the Humanities’ The 5x5 Project, and Sydney’s Art & About. Justine is inspired by unmapped landscapes, offbeat spaces, and bold statements. For her life is a journey, made sensical and non-sensical, through contemporary art.

From the Americans for the Arts Store

Additional Materials

2012

Presented at the 2012 Public Art Network Preconference in San Antonio, TX on June 7th

Jurors

Jean Greer, Public Art Consultant
Daniel Mihalyo, Architect/Artist
Celia Munoz, Artist

From the Americans for the Arts Store

2011

Presented at the 2011 Public Art Network Preconference in San Diego, CA on June 16th

Jurors

Gail Goldman, Public Art Consultant
Kendal Henry, Artist and Public Art Consultant
Richard Turner, Artist

From the Americans for the Arts Store

Additional Materials

As part of the 2011 PAN Year in Review selection process, the jury selected a San Joes Public Art as Program of the Year to highlight their attributes to best practices and leadership to the field. See here to learn more:

2011 PAN Year in Review Program of the Year Award: San Jose Public Art

The context in which a public artwork exists extends beyond the building or plaza that it might inhabit through the immediate audience and the wider community to the institution that commissioned it. It is at this level that vision of the arts administrator and/or consultant is of paramount importance.  A comprehensive plan, a unique vision can bring a sense of cohesiveness to the experience of a suite of artworks in a single building or a constellation of works spread throughout a city. Furthermore, the skilled arts administrator is often the artist’s best ally when it comes to negotiating the bureaucracy that often attends the public art process. It is important to recognize both the innovative programs that arts administrators have conceived and their tireless advocacy for the individual artist and artwork.

Here are some of the reasons why San Jose was recognized as Program of the Year, which you can adapt to your purposes any way you see fit:

  • Every single project and San Jose submitted made the first and second cuts, making it outstanding among all other program submittals. 
  • Exemplary leadership and vision.
  • Willingness to think outside the box and take risks, which in fact are thoughtful and calculated.
  • Clever, unique, inventive public art projects.
  • Precedent-setting partnerships with the private sector and resourceful integration of artwork within capital construction budgets.
  • Making a difference in the field of public art as well as contributing to San Jose’s identify as a creative and tech-savvy city.
  • Consistent standards of excellence in concept, implementation, and maintenance.
2010

Presented at the 2010 Public Art Preconference in Baltimore, MD on June 24

Jurors

Helen Lessick, Artist and Public Art Consultant
Fred Wilson, Artist

From the Americans for the Arts Store

2009

Presented in June at the 2009 Americans for the Arts Annual Convention in Seattle, WA

Jurors

Janet Echelman, Artist
Mildred Howard, Artist

From the Americans for the Arts Store

2008

Presented at the 2008 Americans for the Arts Annual Convention in Philadelphia, PA on June 22nd.

Jurors

Dr. Theodore C. Landsmark, M.E.D., J.D., PH.D., Associate AIA, President, Boston Architectural College

Ted Landsmark has been President of the Boston Architectural College since 1997. Dr. Landsmark holds degrees in law and environmental design from Yale University, and a doctorate in American Studies from Boston University. He has taught at M.I.T. and UMass Boston, and has been an administrator at Harvard University and the Massachusetts College of Art. He practiced architectural law, and worked as Special Assistant to the Mayor of Boston.

He has served as National Chair of the AIA Committee on Diversity since 2003. In 2006, he received the Whitney Young Jr. Award from the AIA for his work to promote diversity in the design profession. In 2005, he was elected President-Elect of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture, and took office as ACSA President in 2006.

He is a Trustee Emeritus of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and serves on the Board for: the New England Foundation for the Arts, the Boston Fund for the Arts, the North Bennet Street School, the Pro-Arts Consortium, and the Boston Society of Architects.

He has lectured nationally on architectural education, diversity in the design profession, community organizing, youth violence, and 19th Century African American material culture, derived from his dissertation research at Boston University.

Jody Pinto, Artist

Internationally known for her creative integration of art into architecture and landscape Jody Pinto lives and works in New York City.  She has completed nearly forty collaborative projects in the United States, Israel and Japan including a wide range of master-planning, functional elements, landscape interventions, free standing and integrated structural elements. She has received numerous awards and grants including the National Endowment for the Arts; Federal Design Achievement Award; National Design for Transportation Award; American Institute of Architects Honor Award “Art in Public Spaces“ and two American Society of Landscape Architects Honor Awards.

Her drawings are in numerous private and public collections, including the Guggenheim Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art, NY; the National Gallery of Art and the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Current projects include a 130 acre regional park master plan and design for the city of North Las Vegas; the redesign of Palmer Street in Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA and a series of canopies for the new CATS Light-Rail System, Charlotte, NC.

A feature article in Landscape Architecture Magazine describes her basic philosophy of public art:

"New York-based Pinto, describes designing South Beach as an act of 'pealing back a film, revealing what was already there, and exposing the possibilities. The human theater of the beach, the people and their activities, became the central focus of the design. The provocative integration of drama and mystery into daily activity provides a connective tissue between life and art.”

Additional Materials

2007

Presented at the 2007 Americans for the Arts Annual Convention in Las Vegas, NV on June 3rd

Jurors

Larry Kirkland, Artist
Miwon Kwon, Art Historian, Writer and Professor

From the Americans for the Arts Store

2006

Presented in June at the 2006 Americans for the Arts Annual Convention in Milwaukee, WI

Jurors

Mary Miss, Artist
Robert Rindler, President, Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design

Additional Materials

2005

Presented in June at the 2005 Americans for the Arts Annual Convention in Austin, TX

Jurors

Sherry Kafka, Urban Design and Planning Consultant
Donald Lipski, Artist
2004

Presented at the 2004 Americans for the Arts Annual Convention in Washington, DC on July 16th

Jurors

Ellen Driscoll, Artist
Glenn Harper, Editor, Sculpture Magazine

From the Americans for the Arts Store

Additional Materials

2003

Presented at the 2003 Americans for the Arts Annual Convention in Portland, OR.

Jurors

Patricia Phillips, Art Historian, Professor and Writer
Henry Sayre, Writer

Additional Materials

2002

Presented at the 2002 Americans for the Arts Annual Convention in Nashville, TN

Jurors

Benito Huerta, Artist
Nancy Princenthal, Writer

Additional Materials

2001

Presented at the 2001 Americans for the Arts Annual Convention in New York, NY

Jurors

Jack Becker, Editor, Public Art Review/Executive Director, Forecast Public Artworks
Harriet F. Senie, Art Historian, Professor and Writer

Additional Materials

2000

Presented at the 2000 Public Art Preconference in Santa Monica, CA

Jurors

Mary Rubin, Public Art Project Manager, San Jose Public Art
Unknown Second Juror

Additional Materials