More Art in the Public Eye

by Micaela Martegani (Editor), Jeff Kasper (Editor), Emma Drew (Editor)

Overview

More Art in the Public Eye offers critical insight into the ever-growing field of socially engaged public art by demonstrating how the committed collaboration of artists, community members, and cultural producers can meaningfully impact our collective futures. Presented through the lens of More Art's fifteen-year history, the public art projects featured in this book expose issues of systemic inequality and injustice, stoke debate, and inspire alternatives. Artists and participants reflect on their works in newly conducted interviews, while essays from thinkers and actors in the field help situate the projects and the mission of socially engaged art in terms of greater cultural and political paradigms. More Art in the Public Eye establishes the framework for the conditions under which organizations like More Art operate, highlights the many meta-questions behind socially engaged public art, and seeks to amplify the wide array of voices that make up a project.

Contributors. Rebecca Amato, Michael Birchall, Ofri Cnaani, Michelle Coffey, Jennifer Dalton, Emma Drew, Pablo Helguera, Mary Jane Jacob, Jessica Lynne, Jeff Kasper, Kimsooja, Micaela Martegani, Andrea Mastrovito, Tony Oursler, William Powhida, Ernesto Pujol, Michael Rakowitz, Kirk Savage, Dread Scott, Andres Serrano, Gregory Sholette, Xaviera Simmons, Krzysztof Wodiczko

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781733099301
Publisher:	Duke University Press Books
Publication date:	01/03/2020
Pages:	284
Sales rank:	1,088,756
Product dimensions:	6.50(w) x 9.40(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Micaela Martegani is Executive Director and Chief Curator of More Art and Adjunct Professor of Visual and Critical Studies at the School of Visual Arts.

Jeff Kasper is Assistant Professor of Design at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Emma Drew is an independent arts writer and editor.

What People are Saying About This

Carin Kuoni

“More Art spans categories: from intimate social engagement within one neighborhood to all-encompassing, citywide interventions. This book does the same: I love the close-up accounts of specific art projects on the one hand and, on the other, the broad, historical, and contextualizing frame provided by highly accomplished art historians. This is an invaluable guide to projects large and small and an explanation of how we have arrived at the current moment of intersectional art practices.”

Thinking in Place: Art, Action, and Cultural Production - Carol Becker

“More Art in the Public Eye contextualizes the evolution of socially engaged art practice that has gained much momentum in the last decades. This anthology addresses the impact such work has had on society in relationship to the complex issues facing our species, other sentient beings, and the planet. It throws down the gauntlet to artists, writers, thinkers, and activists, encouraging and inspiring us all to be fearless as we address the truly urgent conversations of the twenty-first century.”

Sara Reisman

“Published on the occasion of More Art's fifteenth anniversary, More Art in the Public Eye brings together discursive documents of its unique approach to the ever-evolving field of public art, one that synthesizes and overlaps with socially engaged art, community-based practices, and at times, artistic activism. More Art's critically engaged form of art-in-public-space transcends the categories and limitations of public art—which has so often been instrumentalized for commercial and political ends—by cultivating and facilitating cultural projects that are nuanced, artist-driven, and sensitive to community, place, and time.”

Editorial Reviews

More Art spans categories: from intimate social engagement within one neighborhood to all-encompassing, citywide interventions. This book does the same: I love the close-up accounts of specific art projects on the one hand and, on the other, the broad, historical, and contextualizing frame provided by highly accomplished art historians. This is an invaluable guide to projects large and small and an explanation of how we have arrived at the current moment of intersectional art practices.

Carin Kuoni

More Art in the Public Eye contextualizes the evolution of socially engaged art practice that has gained much momentum in the last decades. This anthology addresses the impact such work has had on society in relationship to the complex issues facing our species, other sentient beings, and the planet. It throws down the gauntlet to artists, writers, thinkers, and activists, encouraging and inspiring us all to be fearless as we address the truly urgent conversations of the twenty-first century.

Thinking in Place: Art, Action, and Cultural Production - Carol Becker

"More Art in the Public Eye centers art and artists in marginalized communities in the urban landscape of New York City and highlights the work that puts a spotlight on issues and problems relevant to the communities that should be of greater concern to all. Valuable not only for the addition of diverse artists in collections but also for the addition of different perspectives on art outside the gallery space and at the intersection of architecture and urban planning, More Art in the Public Eye should be included in every academic art and design library collection."

ARLIS/NA - Kai Alexis Smith

Published on the occasion of More Art's fifteenth anniversary, More Art in the Public Eye brings together discursive documents of its unique approach to the ever-evolving field of public art, one that synthesizes and overlaps with socially engaged art, community-based practices, and at times, artistic activism. More Art's critically engaged form of art-in-public-space transcends the categories and limitations of public art—which has so often been instrumentalized for commercial and political ends—by cultivating and facilitating cultural projects that are nuanced, artist-driven, and sensitive to community, place, and time.

Sara Reisman