Sittings of public art: integration versus intervention - Miwon Kwon

In Sittings of public art: integration versus intervention Miwon Kwon charts the trajectory of public art from an initial art-in-public-places paradigm to an art-as-public-space paradigm, and examines the cases of two public art 'failures', Richard Serra's Tilted Arc and John Ahearn's installation of three bronze cast sculptures in the South Bronx, and how they inform the meaning of site-specifity.

Kwon describes how public art has shifted from the art-in-public-places paradigm of the 1960s, that is, from modernist, typically abstract sculptures, that were often enlargements of existing museum pieces, to a public art that sought to be integrated, inhabitable, and functional.

Kwon contrasts two approaches to site-specific public art in the disruptive model of Serra's Tilted Arc and the assimilative model of Ahearn's figurative South Bronx project. Tilted Arc, a 12 ft high, 120 ft long, wall-like steel sculpture cutting across New YorkCity's Federation Plaza, approached the idea of site specificity from a critical standpoint, and is argued by Kwon to be deliberately interruptive and oppositional. Serra's non-assimilative work acknowledges the often socially dysfunctional nature of public space, and was eventually removed following protest. Like Serra, Ahearn also concerned himself with the site-specificity of public art, but unlike Serra, opted for an assimilative approach. Ahearn's three figurative bronze sculptures of a group of his neighbours arose from the idea of a site defined by it's community, or inhabitants, and sought to reflect the lives of these inhabitants within the work. Ahearn's integrationist approach was ultimately rejected by the community he sought to represent, and suggests questions relating to the definitions of site, public, and community.