ONE PLACE AFTER ANOTHER - Monoskop

Sculpture Chicago were shocked to be told, “You’re fooling yourself if you think that
by seeing a sculptor weld two pieces of steel together, somebody has a sense of
what art-making is.” 7 In fact, Jacob’s desire to shift the role of the viewer from passive
spectator to active art-maker became one of the central goals of “Culture in
Action.” 8
Lauded by some as one of the most important public art events in North
America in the twentieth century, 9 and criticized by others for its exploitation of
communities and/or reduction of art to a kind of inadequate and ineffectual social
work, 10 this project’s scale and ambition, and the discussions it generated concerning
the definition and function of contemporary public art, remain unrivaled in the
post-Tilted Arc era. But the symptomatic aspects of “Culture in Action,” particularly
in relation to the problematics of site specificity, are most evident when we compare
the Chicago program to another public art exhibition of similar scale and ambition,
“In Public: Seattle 1991.” Organized by Diane Shamash, then the Manager of the
Public Arts Program of the Seattle Arts Commission (SAC), “In Public” showcased
eighteen installations also sited throughout the city (sixteen temporary and two
permanent). 11
With funds made available in 1986 through the Percent for Art program during
the construction of the new Seattle Art Museum, SAC solicited proposals from
thirty local, national, and international artists that would “address, intervene in, and
engage the public life of the city.” This kind of approach, seeing the entire city and
its processes as a site for artistic intervention, was not new to SAC. Indeed, it was
SAC’s formulation of the architect/artist design team concept for the Viewlands
Hoffman electrical substation project in the mid 1970s that set an influential precedent
for the urban design approach to public art throughout the 1980s. 12 “In
Public,” at the beginning of the 1990s, was an attempt to reassess the wisdom of imposing
architect/artist collaborative structures, which by then had become extremely
formulaic and restrictive, on artists wanting to work in the public realm. 13 So
with the exception of the Pier 62/63 collaboration between architects Henry Smith-
Miller and Laurie Hawkinson and artist Barbara Kruger, “In Public” granted individual
artists the opportunity to initiate and direct their own projects, in locations of
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FROM SITE TO COMMUNITY IN NEW GENRE PUBLIC ART