Sara Reisman is the curator for Public Art in New York City. She has been working with them for several years. She spoke about the process that goes into picking public art for a site. On average it can take 3 to 10 years. She showed several diagrams that she makes for each purposel. They include such things as whether it will be a permanent piece, contextual, interventionist, if it has to be site specific or performance art. She has done pieces in parks, schools, transit centers and other public areas. Sometimes her commissions must answer to additional criteria for their projects, such as if it has to be community based, or integrated into that specific area. Some of the problems with public art are maintenance, if the piece can be in an unobstructed area and seen properly. One issue that appeared in some of the video projects was that the owners of the salons were the video screens were placed, didn't even have the video on. She also stated that politics are involved in everything, and that each project is tied to some allocation.
There are also trends in public art such as Ecology, Technology, and currently Lighting is very popular. Overall she showed quite a large variety of different pieces from each category of Public Art. I enjoyed her lecture, and I was able to see how her job could be very frustrating at times.
Teresa Neal
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