Aesthetic Grounds

Public Art, Public Space

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Mosaics and Ceramic Murals: Freeport, Bahamas

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Let's put mosaics and ceramic murals on the public art table.    For permanent, community-based public art - nothing is better.   And as a very beautiful artform in the hands of experts and craftspeople.    You can visit and walk-on Roman mosaics almost 2,000 years old.  The tiles of Persians, the Ottomans and other Asian Islamic cultures glow with the blues and greens and reds in the 500 year old … [Read more...]

Kara Walker Tangent: Romancing Sugar on Vacation

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So I took a four day cruise to the Bahamas.  Only one 60 minute session of smartphone use permitted.  Laptop left at home. But I took my new sugar baby brain with me to the Bahamas.  Of the 319,000 people, 85% are dissidents of African slaves that were brought to the Caribbean for sugar production.  But not directly to the Bahamas.  The Bahamas were semi abandoned until British loyalist arrived … [Read more...]

Kara Walker Tangent: Remember Fred Wilson

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The sugar baby is not public art.  I am stubbornly holding onto the idea that an essential part of the definition of  "public art" is the capacity for any person to stumble across the work in accessible public space.  Once the art is locked inside a structure, the key element of the "any person" disappears.  And more importantly it loses it's power as a threat or collaborator to public … [Read more...]

Best of the Week in Public Art

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Friend me at glenn.weiss.100 for the originals in real time. Two best finds of the week are the giant mural in Syria complete this year in the middle of the war and the Smokey Hollow Memorial to the African American Community that was demolished in the late 1960s. Most popular this week is the Edmonton, Canada, pavilion by Marc … [Read more...]

Art Basel, Basel

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You just keep looking and hoping that the highend art universe might bring the meaningful into public view.   These are the best that I could find.                     … [Read more...]

Round-up of Articles on Kara Walker’s sugar baby

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First:  Kara Walker's sugar baby is NOT public art.  It is big sculpture.  To qualify as public art, the work must be accidentally available to any person in real space.  The best public art engages a public space that is truly owned and protected by a community of people.    Once behind the walls - like a strip club - the vast public allows anything as long as the establishment does not attract … [Read more...]

Mobile Art, ELMO and Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park

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If in London, the don't forget to tour the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park for the Public Art.  In September for one weekend, all the mobile art vehicles will set-up shop. ‘PORTABILITY: ART ON THE MOVE’ Celebrating the extraordinary world of mobile art vehicles in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park 20th – 21st September, 2014 For the first time in the UK, Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park is … [Read more...]

PAMM in Miami: Where did the building go? Where is the public art?

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At the Arsht Performing Arts Center across the highway from the new Perez Art Museum Miami, architect Cesar Pelli and the Miami-Dade Percent for Art Program filled the building and public spaces with public art.  Arsht may be the best integrated public art and public architecture of this century.   (According to Miami Dade, PAMM did not qualify for the Percent for Art program.) There is "art" … [Read more...]

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