What is Public Art

Public Art refers to artwork having form, function and meaning that are intended for and oriented to the general public realm.  It is installed or staged in physical public space or in publicly-accessible space. 

Public art must therefore include the following criteria:

• a public process:  the public must, formally or informally, sanction the work as public art

• broad accessibility:  the public must be able to physically experience it 

• aesthetic quality:   it must have artistic quality or merit:  in short, it must be 'art' 

 What is NOT Public Art

'Not Public Art' refers to works restricted from general, free access, including private collection pieces, museum exhibits, commercial advertisement, or "stealth art" (graffiti, street art).  Such artworks are notable for an absence of a public process or curation/stewardship, often with a focus on personal, corporate, or ephemeral interests rather than on the general public interest.

Essentially, if an artwork is not legally commissioned, is not publicly accessible or in the public realm, and, most notably, did not entail any public process, it is not considered bona fide public art.   

However, artworks that do not qualify as public art may, over time and events, become de facto public art to the extent that the general public explicitly accepts, curates, and/or defines them as public art (for  example, by physically maintaining them or modifying them).  

Examples of 'NOT PUBLIC ART'

• Museum/Gallery Art:  Works displayed in institutions where access is not free or is highly restricted are not public art.

  • Exceptions may exist where museum artworks are permanently installed in a public space of unrestricted public access, illustrating a clear intention of open and free public access and public realm orientation.  Two notable examples:

    • Urban Light (2008) by Chris Burden:   part of  the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's holdings, that was intentionally installed outside the museum to be seamlessly oriented toward the public realm of Wilshire Boulevard.

    • The Thinker (1880) by Auguste Rodin:  part of the Norton-Simon Museum collection, this famous sculpture has been installed for decades only a few feet from the Colorado Boulevard sidewalk with no barrier around it, well outside the entrance to the Museum.

• Private Art:   Artistic pieces in personal collections, corporate offices, in gated residential areas, or on private residential property ("yard art") are not public art.   Yard art is often publicly visible and can be hand-made or commercially produced, such as decorative banners, flags, sculptures, and fountains, as well as the familiar plastic pink flamingos and ceramic garden gnomes.

• Commercial Art or Advertisement:   Murals or signs created specifically for promotion, such as product billboards, produced for commercial purposes or serve primarily as commercial advertisement, are not public art.  

  • Exceptions may exist where a commercial artwork is later "re-purposed" as public art by a public process.  An example of "re-purposed" public art: 

    •  Rainbow Neon Dog (2024) by Wilson Ong:  This neon artwork was originally a 1990 privately-owned pole-mounted neon sign for a pet store in West Hollywood that was no longer in business.  The artistic signage was deemed valuable as a public artwork by the City's Arts and Cultural Affairs Commission,  which created a program to obtain, restore and re-install the piece as public art, serving the entrance to a new city dog park.  

• Signage:  Functional items like municipal signs, directional signs, or plaques.  

  • Artistic works that function primarily as identification, such as municipal entrance signs, promotional event banners, directional signage, or landmark and memorial markers/plaques, are not public art.   Such works, even if created by an artist through a public process, are clearly not intended as stand-alone, titled, and/or artist-signatured  public artworks.

• Unauthorized Graffiti or Street Art:   Artistic writing, drawings, or tagging made on surfaces on private or public property, without a public process or public funding, is not public art.  Street artists throughout the world have produced incredible works that are undeniably artistic.  The high public exposure or the longevity of such artworks does not, in itself, classify them as public art where there is no public process determining artist, theme, content, appearance, location, production, and/or maintenance.   

• Ephemeral/Unsupported Projects:  Art installations that lack community/public consensus, are temporary, or solely reflect the artist's own interest/ego.   An increasingly common example of Ephemeral/Unsupported artwork are sports tributes. Commonly in the form of murals, sports tribute artworks often function primarily as promotional signage for existing sports individuals, sports teams or clubs, and as such are not public art. 

  •  Exceptions exist where artworks, created through a public process, may include a sports theme but are memorial, historical or cultural  tributes to significant persons or events.  A notable example of a public art sculpture honoring notable athletes through what was an ambitious public process is Pasadena's memorial to Jackie Robinson and Mack Robinson:    

    • Pasadena Robinson Memorial  (1997) by Ralph Helmick, John Outterbridge, and Stuart Schechter:  Pasadena was home to the Robinson brothers and this pair of sculptures is prominently installed outside the Pasadena City Hall. 

Characteristics of public art are public process, public accessibility, artistic/aesthetic quality   These characteristics usefully distinguish public art from both "non-public" art (e.g., graffiti, yard art) and "non-art" in public (e.g., signage, commercial advertisement).

Public process

Public art is artwork that is planned, created, procured, and/or maintained through public processes that can define public art forms and goals, community participation, artist and artwork selection, and public funding mechanisms (such as municipal Percent-For-Art programs or Art in Public Places programs).

Public accessibility

Public art is accessibility, both visual and physical, to the general public.   When public art is installed on privately-owned property, physical accessibility is vulnerable to restrictions from underlying private property rights.  Such access restrictions, however, are greatly limited by general public access rights (Kayden, 2000).

Some public artworks can only provide distant visual accessibility, such a s building-mounted murals and large digital and lighting installations (for example, LAX Gateway Pylons).   In contrast, interactive public artworks designed for hands-on accessibility have been especially popular in public places and playgrounds.

Artistic/aesthetic quality

Public art is artistic to the degree that it demonstrates an “expression or application of human creative skill and imagination…to be appreciated primarily for beauty or emotional power" (Oxford).   Public art therefore demonstrates clear aesthetic qualities in form or theme. 

The forms of public art identify the extent to which public art can be physically integrated with the immediate context or environment. These forms, which can overlap, employ different types of public art that suit a particular integration.  We list the following five forms and some common public art types used to achieve the degree of context integration:

• stand alone:  sculptures, statues, structures

• integrated (into façades, pavements, or landscapes):  bas reliefs, mosaics

• applied (to a surface):  murals, mosaics, building-mounted sculptures 

• installation (where artwork and site are mutually embedded):  transit station art

• ephemeral (or non-permanent):  performances, temporary installations

We have found much popular confusion with the use of term "art in public places."  Formally, the term is applied to official government arts programs.  Informally, the term has been used as a broad classification of any artistic feature existing in the public realm. 

The term "art in public places" commonly refers to local government and community arts programs, whereas public art specifically refers to artworks planned, created and installed as public artworks and in public places. "Art in public places" programs may include arts education, art performances, community outreach, or the provision of public art.