Miwon Kwon

Miwon Kwon disputes the common definitions of public art which imply or assume that, in contrast to other forms of art, public art is more direct or establishes a more immediate relationship with its audience. Kwon contends that public art is fully mediated, perhaps even more than art in an art museum or gallery setting. She discussed evolving public art politics concerning the use of the site as evident in NEA guidelines for site specificity when awarding public art grants.

Kwon scrutinized underlying assumptions of community by examining these guidelines alongside individual artists rhetoric, such as Suzanne Lacy's naming of "New Genre Public Art." Kwon claims "New Genre Public Art's" self description is predicated on a major rethinking of site specificity, in both aesthetic and political terms.

Kwon provided an extensive and detailed historical analysis of public art's evolution over the last thirty years. This analysis outlined the following three paradigms of public art since the mid-1960s: "art in public places", "art as public spaces" and "art in the public interest". The politics, practices and premises of these three public art paradigms were measured against the example of "Culture in Action: New Public Art In Chicago." "Culture in Action," representing New Genre Public Art, or art in the public interest, explaining public art's explicit move from aesthetic function to social function. I found her discussion on Culture in Action most interesting.

Proposing a major break from previous models of public art, Culture in Action not only took the entire city of Chicago as its stage, it "focused on the active participation of residents in diverse communities in the creation of the artworks in order to provide a new vision of public art."