Thursday, September 1, 2016

Murals, sculptures and even sound scores adorn our cities, exposing and exploring our histories and cultures. With these Public Art works comes the innate challenge of how to preserve and promote the works themselves, their conceptions and their creators. Donna Bryson explores this challenge and attempts to answer the question: "how can public art be preserved and shared?" in her article published in The Christian Science Monitor, Arts and Culture.

Bryson points to artist Jane Golden, founder of the City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program, an organization built to support Philadelphia's Public Artists by offering teaching opportunities, publicity and artist residency programs, suggesting that Public Art and its artists thrive through public promotion and programming.

Bryson also notes Denver as an example city for Public Art preservation and promotion, stating that the city puts "aside a percentage of capital construction budgets for art and have online guides to the resulting public collections" (2016). Through targeting some of their budget to Public Art, Denver has supported the work of artists like Jim Green, a Sound Artist whose architecturally integrated works allow listeners to experience his art on the sidewalks of Denver through recordings in city grates. 

Lastly, Bryson suggests the web as a collective space to archive Public Art works to be accessible from anywhere in the world, noting German artist Bianca Nandzik's MuralGuide.org.

 

Please see Bryson's full article here.

 

Photo by Steve Weinik (http://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Arts/2016/0830/How-can-public-art-be-preserved-and-shared, 2016)

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