David Harding What have we learned about public art?

That work which is intended to be permanent/long term remains the most difficult in terms of criticality, of sustained (or changing) meaning and of its physical survival, intact. It remains a target for casual attack.
That art and the urbs/city offers more possibilities to the artist than art and architecture.
That monuments continue to generate wide acceptability
That monuments can be counter monuments
That artists as members of design teams may end up making no evident or specific visual contribution.
That it is not part of the art market in that it cannot be bought and sold.
That commissioning briefs for it can actually be seen as offering a greater challenge to the creativity and inventiveness of artists.
That conceptual public art can say more about the city and its people than the fixed object.
That it has increased the opportunity for socially engaged practice.
That the demands of government for social inclusion have been dangerous for the quality of work produced.
That some of the claims made for it in terms of social and environmental change are fraudulent.

All of these are attempts at trying to define what public art is.

Then I got to thinking about something I wrote a long time ago and it is this – artists get on and make work – others write about it, worrying about what it is and trying to make sense of it.