This dissertation is a theoretical and historical account of urban sculpture in the U.S. following World War II. The title refers to an example set by corporations during the 1940s and 1950s for commissioning modernist office towers and abstract sculpture that fundamentally shaped the early history of a modern public art in the U.S. This corporate model was taken up by American cities during the 1960s in the construction of new civic centers that combined large-scale, abstract sculpture with glass and steel city office buildings. Federal funding further encouraged new sculpture commissions, which proliferated across the U.S. Emerging theories about visual communication impacted both urban planning and the corporate image during this period, as urban renewal reshaped cities for maximum legibility and corporations commissioned designers to create new trademarks. I argue that these twin aims conditioned the planning, production, and distribution of urban sculpture, whose status oscillated between the landmark within urban planning and the trademark of corporate America, between a concrete city element and an abstract symbol. I tell the history of post-war urban sculpture through three case studies. In the first case study, I examine three significant sculpture commissions for urban building lobbies realized by the architects Skidmore, Owings & Merrill during the 1950s: Harry Bertoia’s screen (1954) at the Manufacturers Trust Company Bank on New York’s Fifth Avenue; Richard Lippold’s Radiant “I” (1958) at the Inland Steel Company Headquarters Building in Chicago; and Alexander Calder’s mobile (1959) for the Chase Manhattan Bank branch at 410 Park Avenue. In the second case study, I trace the parallel trajectories of urban renewal in downtown Grand Rapids, Michigan and Alexander Calder’s fountains and stabiles made for World’s Fairs and international expositions, which intersected in La Grande Vitesse (1969), the National Endowment for the Arts’ first sculpture commission for its Art in Public Places program. In the third case study, I look at three sculptures produced by the fabricator Lippincott Inc., either as a series or in multiple editions, during its first five years of operation: Tony Rosenthal’s cubes (1967-68), Barnett Newman’s Broken Obelisk (1963-67), and Claes Oldenburg’s Geometric Mouse (1969-71). / text

Landscape architecture has a dynamic relationship with public art. While public art may enhance a designed landscape, its success is not dependent on it. However, the sensation of how a public art piece is situated in a landscape and responds to its audience can be greatly enhanced with the help and knowledge of landscape architecture. Artists can use the knowledge and understanding of site specificity that landscape architects possess to situate respected and appreciated works of public art located in functional spaces. The purpose of this document is to explore the relationship between artists and landscape architects. Public art is an important part of our society. It can enhance the identity and character of communities, creating landmarks to be remembered. Public art can inform us about the history and culture of our environment, while evoking thought and conversations of community. It can be fun and uplifting, solemn or full of tension, and it can be mysterious and intriguing. The collaboration between artists and landscape architects can create new and wonderful spaces in our urban environments. By using nature and the surrounding environment, visitors can be completely surprised and engaged by what this collaboration can achieve.

Landscape architecture has a dynamic relationship with public art. While public art may enhance a designed landscape, its success is not dependent on it. However, the sensation of how a public art piece is situated in a landscape and responds to its audience can be greatly enhanced with the help and knowledge of landscape architecture. Artists can use the knowledge and understanding of site specificity that landscape architects possess to situate respected and appreciated works of public art located in functional spaces. The purpose of this document is to explore the relationship between artists and landscape architects. Public art is an important part of our society. It can enhance the identity and character of communities, creating landmarks to be remembered. Public art can inform us about the history and culture of our environment, while evoking thought and conversations of community. It can be fun and uplifting, solemn or full of tension, and it can be mysterious and intriguing. The collaboration between artists and landscape architects can create new and wonderful spaces in our urban environments. By using nature and the surrounding environment, visitors can be completely surprised and engaged by what this collaboration can achieve.

This thesis tests the theories of Porosity which are part of my ongoing investigation into the revision and extension of public space in the city. Porosity Research seeks to classify spaces which exist deep within the skin or fabric of privately owned city buildings. The primary vehicle for this interrogation is the use of public art in the form of a set of games called Porosity Games ??? Snakes and Ladders, Hide and Seek and Jenga. These games are played out or performed within the territory of my Australian Research Foundation Discovery Grant outcomes. Their aim is to prove the validity of the research and to provoke interrogation of that research. The marginality of public art makes it ideally suited to the task of commenting on or contradicting the main body of the text of public space in the city. This contradiction is central to the work of this thesis. One of the vital needs or reasons for this work lies in finding ways of preventing cities from being shut down as a result of rampant capitalism in the ???Age of Terror???. Porosity as a strategy attacks this trend. It seeks the dissolution of architecture through a type of mapping which dissolves existing boundaries associated with rights of access. Capitalism needs to be continually measured by mapping or defining what is public against what is private. It can be argued that the social construction of a city is as important as its physical manifestation as buildings. It can also then be argued that a city which allows public space to penetrate its private space enables a healthier social construction. Fundamental to this thesis is the idea that the survival of the Western city depends on an increased density of public space and multiple ground planes as opposed to one. This creates three dimensional public access and alleviates congestion at the level of the street both for cars and for pedestrians. The Porosity Games are a first step in the transformation of the city through their successful reinvention of internal circulation spaces as game space. Game 1: Snakes and Ladders and Game 2: Hide and Seek both operate without interruption by the propriety of the buildings. Game 3: Jenga then intentionally heightened the risk of capture and eviction of the players for transgression within the climate of fear. Both the framework of surveillance and the intention to claim private space for public use, make the performances and the Porosity Research a useful progression in the project of transformation and the city as a plastic medium for the artist to interrogate.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Rutgers University, 2008. / "Graduate Program in Art History." Includes bibliographical references (p. 265-278).

Thesis (M.A..)--West Virginia University, 2009. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains xv, 220 p. : ill. (some col.), col. maps. Vita. Includes two audio files in the MP3 format. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 211-215).

Thesis (M.L.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 2005. / Includes special report study entitled: Psychological effects on outdoor exhibition.

Thesis (M.P.A.S.)--University of Southern California, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 60-61). Also available on the Internet.

This research explores parallels, connections and synergies between public art, artistic practice beyond the gallery context, and Web 2.0, the Internet platform for user‐ generated content, online communication medium and host for web-based communities. I look at the impact, actual and potential, of Web 2.0 on the ways in which public art is made. Through Web 2.0 a different set of criteria and methods can be established in order to re-examine the practice of art. What can public art learn from Web 2.0? What are the possible debates that Web 2.0 can provoke in the field of public art? What novel forms of audience engagement with, and participation in, public art could be inspired by the practices of co-creation and sharing integral to Web 2.0? Has the relationship between artists and audience changed because of Web 2.0? Web 2.0 prompts us to reconsider the ways in which public art is produced. In my approach I take into consideration that Web 2.0 is useful in expanding the possibilities of public art by providing a unique opportunity for shared creativity in the public space. I call this field Public Art 2.0. This study considers the attributes of Web 2.0 as a methodological framework for public art. It offers a reconsideration of the understanding of the contentious issues surrounding the practice using Web 2.0 as a platform of shared creativity. To validate this argument further, this research investigates two case studies: the Big Art Mob (2006) and the Bubble Project (2002). Both initiatives represent an area where public art and Web 2.0 intersect. This thesis includes a report of findings from qualitative interviews with members of both projects. Public Art 2.0 is a hybrid type of practice that borrows from the digital world and applies the principles of Web 2.0 in the physical space. Public Art 2.0 is a creative space where changes are welcomed at any time. Public Art 2.0 is open source — a process of creation, encouraging multi-authorship and shared creativity. Public Art 2.0 is viral — it can be replicated and re-presented many times by anyone that wishes to do so. Public Art 2.0 is a platform that anyone can build upon and a process that enhances the ability to create together.

This dissertation examines the relationship between art, architecture, and public space in Warsaw since 1970. With an awareness of the marks and erasures of history, I consider the political, social, and cultural transformations of the last five decades and how such changes are represented, omitted, and problematized in the urban landscape. Beginning with the 1970s, I discuss a series of exhibitions, performative interventions, monuments, and public art initiatives in relation to the broader context of Warsaw’s evolution from the Polish People’s Republic (PRL), through the transition years of the 1990s, to EU membership, and into the current phase of global capitalism and growing populist nationalism. My case studies illuminate the ways in which these art initiatives have had the potential to promote engagement with the urban landscape, raise questions about history and memory, and produce conditions that allow for the building of community. Chapter one examines a series of socialist-era exhibitions that used Warsaw as theme and inspiration, and boldly envisioned an alternative reality for the city, with artists reinventing public spaces and proposing ways for art to improve everyday life. The performative interventions of Akademia Ruchu, an artist collective founded in 1973, are the subject of the second chapter, which examines their Warsaw street-actions and community engagement, illuminating the importance of site and the power of the everyday. Chapter three analyzes the successes and failures of four monuments dating from 1985 to 2010, and discusses how such commemorative projects illustrate new aims in the construction of national narratives in the post-1989 period. Finally, chapter four examines the local communities and participatory practices in the work of two contemporary art initiatives: Stacja Muranów and the Bródno Sculpture Park. Together these chapters illuminate the complex relationships between art, artists, and the physical spaces they inhabit. I argue that Warsaw plays an active role in how these projects are understood, and that these meanings are often closely bound up with the realities of everyday life, both as it existed under state socialism and in the current post-socialist city. / 2022-12-13T00:00:00Z