The “Expo” and the Post-“Expo”: The Role of Public Art in Urban Regeneration Processes in the Late 20th Century

Rita Ochoa

doi:10.3390/su14020985

Abstract

In 1998, the Lisbon Universal Exhibition—Expo’98—led to an urban regeneration process on Lisbon’s waterfront. Following the example of other cities, this event was a pretext for rethinking and replacing a depressed area and for reconnecting it with the Tagus river through the creation of a set of new spaces for common use along the water. It was promoted as a public art program, which can be considered quite innovative in the Portuguese context. In view of this framework, this article aims to debate the relationships between public art and the dynamics of urban regeneration at the end of the 20th century. For that, it will analyse: (1) Expo’98’s public art program, comparing its initial assumptions with the final results; and (2) the impact of this program, through the identification of the placement of public art before (1974–1998) and after (1999–2009) the event. Although most of the implemented works did not (intentionally) explore aspects of space integration nor issues of public space appropriation, Expo’98’s public art program originated a monumentalisation of Lisbon’s eastern riverfront, later extended to other waterfront areas. At the same time, it played an important role in the way of understanding the city and public space that decisively influenced subsequent policies and projects. It is concluded that public art had a significant role in urban processes in the late 20th century, which is quite evident in a discourse of urban art as space qualifier and as a means of economic and social development.

Highlights

In 1998 the last universal exhibition of the millennium—Expo’98—took place in Lisbon, which gave rise to an urban regeneration operation with strong impact in the city, in its eastern part. This dynamic was very frequent in the late 20th century: worldwide international events—Grand Projects as International Exhibitions, Olympic Games and others—were the pretext for urban regeneration processes that replaced entire deserted areas [1,2,3] at their own expense
Several cities hosted public art programs, attracting prestigious artists, either directly with art galleries or through commissioning, where “leading international artists and architects leave their mark on cities, generating new elements for their valuation in the context of global competition” [4] (p. 26) (“artistas y arquitectos internacionales de primera línea dejan su marca en las ciudades, generando en el contexto de la competencia global nuevos elementos para su valorización”)
In the field of public art, the program developed in the scope of Expo’98 gave rise to a monumentalisation of all these new areas, associating symbolic elements with spaces of water fruition

Summary

Introduction

In 1998 the last universal exhibition of the millennium—Expo’98—took place in Lisbon, which gave rise to an urban regeneration operation with strong impact in the city, in its eastern part This dynamic was very frequent in the late 20th century: worldwide international events—Grand Projects as International Exhibitions, Olympic Games and others—were the pretext for urban regeneration processes that replaced entire deserted areas [1,2,3] at their own expense (in Europe, often with the help of European Union programs). These events took place in the spirit of the aestheticisation of city life, which did not limit itself only to the disciplines of architecture and urbanism, and extended to the visual arts.

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