There’s a lot of talk about public art these days. The term now seems to commonly refer to free projects that take over part of a city—and sometimes a large part, if you remember the CowParade that started in Chicago in 1999, invaded New York’s sidewalks in 2000, and has since traveled to cities as diverse as Las Vegas, Manchester, Stockholm, Istanbul and, er, West Hartford. Many other projects aim for higher artistic worth (sorry to drag such elitist concepts in this discussion): For several years, the Creative Time organization set up wildly diverse music and art shows in the Brooklyn Bridge’s Anchorage, until post-9/11 security measures closed off the space; New Yorkers also remember Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s The Gates (2005) in Central Park.

In New York, the Public Art Fund is responsible for this summer’s headline-grabbing installation, Olafur Eliasson’s Waterfalls, in which four gigantic man-made waterfalls will dot the East River; meanwhile, the aforementioned Creative Time is bringing a project helmed by David Byrne, Playing the Building, in which visitors will be able to “play” the Battery Maritime Building via a jerry rigged organ.

But the bottom line for most such endeavors is just that: the displays may be free, but public art now means big revenues for the participating cities (sorry to drag such crass concepts in this discussion). Canny mayors are finally catching up to the fact that healthy cultural scenes are often linked to healthy economic returns. (The fact that this blog is hosted by a publicly funded entity is not coincidental either; after all, you could argue that aspects of PBS are a form of public art.) read more