Public Art Program Research Articles

Avant-garde or democracy? Transformations and Dilemmas of the U.S. public art programme in the 1970s

ABSTRACT The “Works of Art in Public Places” programme was established by the National Endowment for the Arts right after its creation in 1965. It first subsidized modernist sculptures from well-known artists. But in the 1970s, it began to support more recent and experimental trends, breaking with modernism, which was then criticized for producing an art disconnected from its social environment. Therefore, public officials attributed to postmodernist site-specific artworks the power to reintegrate art into social life and thus to disseminate it to a wider audience. This aesthetic was favoured less for its observable effects than because it made it possible to (superficially) resolve a fundamental contradiction faced by any arts policy in a liberal-democratic regime, between the recognition of the autonomy of the artist and the will to improve access to the arts.

‘Welcome to the North’: Public Art, Place-Marketing and the Northern Imaginary

Public art created in the cause of place-marketing has become a common component of urban regeneration. Focusing on the ‘Welcome to the North’ (WTTN) public art programme, this article examines public art’s contribution to place marketing at a pan-regional level. Funded under the UK government’s £100 million ‘Northern Way’ economic growth programme, between 2007 and 2010, WTTN commissioned six ‘iconic’ artworks across the north of England. Rather than comprising a cohesive visual imaginary, these artworks, and the process of their commissioning, are better understood as outcomes of a temporary alliance between divergent artistic and geopolitical ambitions – a Northern way of doing things perhaps?

University Art Museum Connecting Communities to Create Aesthetic Life through Public Art Program: In the Name of the Trees

Starting from the theoretical viewpoints of relational aesthetics, the relationship was explored between a university art museum and communities in the Public Art Program—in the Name of the Trees offered by the National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU). Observational and interview methods were used to obtain research materials and explore how university art museums interact with communities through public art exhibitions and strengthen the relatively weak relationships with the community to co-create an aesthetic life. It is also observed how community residents can change their opinions about the university art museum by participating in the public art program. The results show that the university art museum effectively establishes interaction with the community residents through public art programs such as "collection-sharing", "teacher-student co-creation", "artist stationing" and "education promotion activities" and plays an active role in promoting interpersonal communication, sustaining the natural environment development and improving community public space.

Plural city: layered singularities and urban design: case of Belgrade City (RS)

A growing urban population, a new social dynamism, and fast-changing urban contexts, together with a lack of urban planning, lead to intensifying contradictions that threaten to harness urban prosperity, cohesion, and sustainability. All this creates a need for reframing the perspective on the city and its management. By analysing connecting concepts to the plural city in literature, the paper offers new ways of understanding and reading the city. We describe plural qualities of an inclusive city from the perspective of urban design—a city as a plurality of unique places and subjectivities in time—i.e. the plural city. Following the case study methodology, we critically discussed and evaluated the case of Belgrade as a plural city due to its lasting diversity and heterogeneity in both urban matrix and social tissue. As a result, we defined the elements, relationships, and plurality of views within the plural city in multiscale. Based on 18-years of experience gained through the Public art & Public space program, we have shown that public art strategies can be used as a method and tool to initiate spatial transformations and offer different ways of experiencing the urban landscape.

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

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.

3232 Translational Science 2019

OBJECTIVES/SPECIFIC AIMS: We hypothesize that VL testing varies by geographic sub-region, country, age, gender, mode of transmission, year of diagnosis, and country of origin; and also that a higher prevalence of VL testing may be associated with higher prevalence of population-level VL suppression. Our primary aim is to determine country- and regional-level factors that are associated with viral load testing amongst HIV patients. Our secondary aim is to explore the association between prevalence of viral load testing and viral load suppression at the population level. METHODS/STUDY POPULATION: This is a retrospective analysis of de-identified individual-level data reported to the European Surveillance System (TESSy). The TESSy is a database of communicable diseases (including HIV) for the ECDC and WHO European Regional Office. It captures data from 31 European Union/European Economic Area (EU/EEA) countries and 23 non-EU/EEA countries. Stored data is from year 2000. TESSy is used for data analysis and production of outputs for public health action. The patient cohort include adults older 18 years, whose last clinic attendance was reported in 2014 or later, or whose viral load test was reported in the year of the visit or the year before the year of their last reported clinic attendance. Patient demographic data include age, sex, mode of transmission, country of origin (migrants), country of diagnosis, geographic region, last clinic attendance, viral load and therapy status. Geographic region will be categorized into East, West and Centre as per WHO guidelines. Countries will be categorized and analyzed according to their European Union (EU)-, European Economic Area (EEA)- and income (GDP)-status, using current World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) guidelines. All statistical analysis will be performed in R-Studio and R i386 3.0.2. Missing data will be characterized in terms of quantity (how much is missing) and pattern (random versus non-random) and impact on covariates to be tested. Multiple data imputations would be used in cases where missing data is found to be at random. Data from external sources like UNAIDS, World Bank and IMF will also be used for comparison and validation of TESSy data for imputation of missing data. Continuous variables will be analyzed through appropriate parametric and non-parametric tests while categorical variables will be analyzed through methods of proportion. Multivariate logistic regression methods will be used to explore the associations between VL testing and VL suppression separately with age, sex, year of diagnosis, country of origin (migrants), mode of transmission, in the total population, then at country- and regional-level. The same associations will be explored using a country’s EU and EEA status (EU versus EEA versus non-EU/EEA), and income status (high versus upper middle versus lower middle versus low). DISCUSSION/SIGNIFICANCE OF IMPACT: Even though this is a retrospective analysis of a database with likely significant missing data that may affect analysis of data and interpretation of results, our study will impact all levels of HIV policy across Europe. The strengths of this study likely outweigh the limitation imposed by missing data and include potential regional-, country- and demographic-specific public health, epidemiologic and ART program policy initiatives. Also our analysis of pattern of missing data may inform a more efficient and meaningful data collection and input into TESSy database.

Unsilencing the silent South African HIV-positive RESEARCHER: An HIV-positive researcher’s reflection on negotiating insider- outsider positionalities whilst conducting a HIV study in eThekwini, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

The research study that informed this article’s discussion, critically interrogates an HIV-infected research team’s positionality whilst conducting a mixed-methods’ study on HIV-positive patients’ experiences of the public ART programme at four ARV clinics in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. It primarily utilises the principal investigator’s (PI) narrative to explore insider/outsider positionality, reflexivity, bracketing and participatory action research through exposure of feelings, emotions, challenges, engagements, relationships and observations. The fluid positionality of the HIV-positive research team presented both challenges and opportunities. However, the opportunities for more HIV-infected researchers to engage in HIV-related research to assist with destigmatising HIV, close research gaps and the creation of a trustworthy research environment to achieve an ethical and reliable health science study, far outweigh the challenges. Further, such research can improve patients’ support and healthcare, healthcare workers’ perceptions of patients, and provide a guide for policymakers to better understand the recipients of HIV policies. Lastly, the term ‘HIV reflexivity’ is coined as a result.

Application to Occupy

Urban Animators: Living Laboratory (UA:LL) was a public art research project that actively engaged with the RMIT University New Academic Street capital works project, undertaken at the Melbourne city campus from 2015-2017. The construction site and the surrounding campus were envisaged as a living laboratory encouraging research that engaged with the internal infrastructure, process and community of RMIT University.As curator of the UA:LL public art program I created a framework that encouraged collaboration, provocation, solidarity and exchange amongst RMIT University students, staff and alumni. This was achieved through the process of open expression of interests, learning and teaching, invited artists and industry research partnerships all resulting in public artworks embedded in the construction zone. The artistic installations included public artworks on construction hoardings and projections within the constriction zone that positively activated the site condition and helped mitigate the disruption occurring on the campus.As a curator, artist and designer I proposed a spatial curatorial proposition to the city via a public art installation titled ‘Gantry Section D’ as part of the UA:LL program. ‘Gantry Section D’ was the result of an intensive period of practice based investigation into the condition created when a city is undergoing transformation.

To Embrace or to Contest Urban Regeneration? Ambiguities of Artistic and Social Practice in Contemporary Johannesburg

Johannesburg inner city has undergone major changes in the last twenty-five years, a process keenly observed, commented and negotiated by many local artists. The transitional years can be summarized by two phases in urban policy, the discourses of which are coined by urban ‘decay’ marked by informal practices in the first years of transition in the 1990s, and ‘urban regeneration’ when the city authorities intervened with private-public partnerships and a public art program in the 2000s. These recent interventions promise a better city but also appear to reinforce social injustice and spatial control. As an integral part of strategic gentrification, they involve artists and the art market, offering new opportunities and spaces for studios, galleries, or art commissions while extruding undesired and often illegalized residents and traders.The reaction of artists in Johannesburg is accordingly ambivalent if not contradictory. Some try to understand the logic of informal practices and include or even support them in their art practice. This often involves opposing the increasing regulations by the city authorities and police and engaging with discriminated stakeholders. Others discover business opportunities by offering their creative, administrative and collaborative expertise for public art projects to the city administration and thus blend into the official urban policy. Finally, many artists are just residents and visitors of these neighborhoods, sometimes unintentionally benefiting from or even contributing to these developments.I argue that as social actors, artists willingly or not participate in and shape the city even beyond their artistic practice. Therefore, their artistic intentions and their practice as ordinary urban dwellers often interfere or even converge with each other, This paper discusses two case studies of artistic interventions in the inner city of Johannesburg by Ismail Farouk and the Trinity Session and analyzes the observed ambiguities between alignment with and opposition to urban policy and its implications with regard to the role of artists as social actors in the crossfire of urban regeneration and social justice.

The Resonances of Public Art: Thoughts on the Notion of Co‐Productive Acts and Public Art

AbstractUsing a serendipitous public art encounter as a point of departure, this article explores how what I call co‐productive acts are an important part of building relationships between individuals, public art installations, communities, and public art programs. This article is a “thought piece”; as such, I present an introductory examination into an important arena in need of further inquiry: public art and co‐productive acts. As will be made clear, co‐productive acts are different from the production of public art, co‐productions, and collaborations. Though all are important parts of the making of public art, they occur at different times in the life cycle of a piece, and involve different people and interactions. Many people are unaware of their community's public art program (e.g., the process, the funding, and the collection); however, when they experience a piece of public art, there is a possibility that they might have a very different understanding of the piece, themselves, the collection, and the public art program. As a contribution to the literature and practice of public art, I pose questions and suggest directions for further inquiry that might help the field consider how co‐productive acts are, indeed, an important part of the life of public art (installations and municipal public art programs).

Integrating Art into Places in Transition - Rose Kennedy Greenway in Boston as a Case Study

Among the many projects realized in public spaces, some are truly unique – and these are the ones that build the identity of a place. The aim of this paper is to examine how integrating art and cultural strategies into public space can enhance and reinforce the sense of a place. Particular attention is devoted to urban spaces that we call “places in transition”, where public art improves the city’s imaginative capacity, enlivens neighbourhoods, and sparks civic exchange. Research methods include multidisciplinary literature studies and a detailed case study of the Rose Kennedy Greenway (RKG) – a contemporary urban park in Boston, USA, intended to stitch together the various neighbourhoods surrounding downtown. The Greenway is also a place in transition, to which the Conservancy introduces innovative and contemporary art through temporary exhibitions, engaging people in experiences, interactions and dialogue with art. The five-year Public Art Strategy was supported by Fund for the Arts, a public art program of the New England Foundation for the Arts. The main vision of the project is to amplify the Greenway’s unique characteristic through art that is connective, innovative, and celebratory. There are the two main types of projects within the Public Art Strategy for the RKG: short-term projects called “Platforms” and long-term projects called “Magnets”. The particular conceptual framework is being developed to guide proposals: connection, interactivity, civic dialogue, ecology, and the environment. The article examines the case and analyses the important issues related to implementing art into a public space such as re-imagining places, short-term and long-term artistic interventions, arts and cultural programming.

Embedding Artists within Planning: Calgary’s Watershed+ Initiative

Since 2011, artists have been embedded within Calgary’s Utilities and Environmental Protection department as part of the public art program Watershed+. In particular, artists are given workspaces alongside municipal staff to encourage interaction and new ideas. Watershed+ has led to innovative examples of public art that are meant to provoke thought about the local environment. Through interviews with artists and municipal staff engaged in the project, this paper explores the specific avenues through which the initiative has embedded artists within municipal planning. The paper also considers the transferability of the Watershed+ model to other cities.

(Re)Making Public Campus Art: Connecting the University, Publics and the City

This article analyses how public campus art is used and envisaged as mode for engagement with diverse and broad publics. Public engagement not only forms a spearhead of British universities today, it is also a major topical concern of policymaking, governance and the creative industries. Precisely in this context, universities’ broader rationales for commissioning/implementing public artworks on campus have been overlooked. Attention has been mainly focused on the intents of artists for creating the public artwork, while public campus art is in need to be studied as a phenomenon itself. In our mixed positionalities as public-art scholars and curators, we specifically contrast public-art visions and engagement practices on the basis of the recent Public Art Programme supported by a Public Art Strategy (2015–present) of the University of Leeds vis-a-vis the long-duration public-art initiative entitled In Certain Places (2003–present), mediated through the University of Central Lancashire in Preston, UK. The article discusses the roles, uses and alleged effects of public art across these two case-study localities at the intra-campus level and beyond the campus. In so doing, the article critically attends to how public-art visions are collaboratively developed to produce mutual benefits for the campus and the city at large.

Curating on Campus: A Dialogue

“How do you build a model program for campus art from the ground up?” This is the question Andree Bober faced a decade ago as founding director of Landmarks, the public art program of The Universit...

Trends in the burden of HIV mortality after roll-out of antiretroviral therapy in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa: an observational community cohort study

SummaryBackgroundAntiretroviral therapy (ART) substantially decreases morbidity and mortality among people living with HIV. In this study, we describe population-level trends in the adult life expectancy (LE), and trends in the residual burden of HIV mortality following the rollout of a public sector ART programme in one of the populations with the most severe HIV epidemics in the world.MethodsData come from a demographic and HIV surveillance system in northern KwaZulu-Natal (South Africa), and cover the calendar years 2001 through 2014. We use non-parametric survival analysis methods to estimate gains in the population-wide LE at age 15 since the introduction of ART, and the shortfall of the population-wide adult LE compared to that of the HIV negative population (i.e., the LE deficit). LE gains and deficits are further disaggregated by age and cause of death using demographic decomposition methods.FindingsThe dataset contains information on 93,903 adults who jointly contribute 535,428 person-years of observation to the analyses and 9,992 deaths. Since the rollout of ART in 2004, adult LE increased by 15·2 years for men (95%-CI: 12·4-17·8), and 17·2 years for women (95%-CI: 14·5-20·2). Reductions in pulmonary TB and HIV related mortality account for 79·7% of the LE gains among men, and 90·7% among women. For men, 9·5% is the result of a decline in external injuries. By 2014, the LE deficit had contracted to 1·2 years for men (95%-CI: -2·9-5·8) and to 5·3 years for women (95%-CI: 2·6-7·8). Pulmonary TB and HIV are responsible for 84·9% of the LE deficit among men in 2011-'14, and for 80·8% among women.InterpretationThe burden of HIV on adult mortality in this population is rapidly shrinking, but remains sizable for women, despite their better engagement with HIV care services. The recent gains in adult life-years lived as well as the current LE deficit are almost exclusively due to differences in mortality attributed to HIV and pulmonary TB.FundingWellcome Trust, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the National Institutes of Health.

Clinical, Virologic, Immunologic Outcomes and Emerging HIV Drug Resistance Patterns in Children and Adolescents in Public ART Care in Zimbabwe.

ObjectiveTo determine immunologic, virologic outcomes and drug resistance among children and adolescents receiving care during routine programmatic implementation in a low-income country.MethodsA cross-sectional evaluation with collection of clinical and laboratory data for children (0-<10 years) and adolescents (10–19 years) attending a public ART program in Harare providing care for pediatric patients since 2004, was conducted. Longitudinal data for each participant was obtained from the clinic based medical record.ResultsData from 599 children and adolescents was evaluated. The participants presented to care with low CD4 cell count and CD4%, median baseline CD4% was lower in adolescents compared with children (11.0% vs. 15.0%, p<0.0001). The median age at ART initiation was 8.0 years (IQR 3.0, 12.0); median time on ART was 2.9 years (IQR 1.7, 4.5). On ART, median CD4% improved for all age groups but remained below 25%. Older age (≥ 5 years) at ART initiation was associated with severe stunting (HAZ <-2: 53.3% vs. 28.4%, p<0.0001). Virologic failure rate was 30.6% and associated with age at ART initiation. In children, nevirapine based ART regimen was associated with a 3-fold increased risk of failure (AOR: 3.5; 95% CI: 1.3, 9.1, p = 0.0180). Children (<10y) on ART for ≥4 years had higher failure rates than those on ART for <4 years (39.6% vs. 23.9%, p = 0.0239). In those initiating ART as adolescents, each additional year in age above 10 years at the time of ART initiation (AOR 0.4 95%CI: 0.1, 0.9, p = 0.0324), and each additional year on ART (AOR 0.4, 95%CI 0.2, 0.9, p = 0.0379) were associated with decreased risk of virologic failure. Drug resistance was evident in 67.6% of sequenced virus isolates.ConclusionsDuring routine programmatic implementation of HIV care for children and adolescents, delayed age at ART initiation has long-term implications on immunologic recovery, growth and virologic outcomes.

Is the Public Art Programme in the Ethekwini District, Kwazulu-Natal, Patient-Centred?

Is the Public Art Programme in the Ethekwini District, Kwazulu-Natal, Patient-Centred?

Administering Public Art Programs in Arizona's Cities and Towns: Development, Operation, and Promotion

This article contributes to our understanding public art at the local level by providing analysis of local government public art programs. A survey was conducted with cities and towns in Arizona that have public art programs. The article begins by defining public art and explaining how government funding for public art began in the United States. Next, it highlights the benefits of public art. Public art program funding sources, budgets, maintenance, personnel, and promotion techniques are discussed for the cities/towns surveyed. Last, recommendations are provided for cities/towns seeking to create or expand their public art programs.

Planning a suburban public artscape: The case of Mississauga, Canada

Abstract This article critically examines the cultural planning and policy frameworks recently developed in the suburban municipality of Mississauga, now considered Canada’s sixth largest city, to ameliorate an impoverished public artscape. In the absence of a public art programme and a three-decades-long anti-art mayoral regime, Mississauga’s public artscape has emerged in an ad hoc manner with no rationale for the distribution of art within the city and no strategy for engaging and empowering diverse publics. An analysis of Mississauga’s first Culture Master Plan (2009) reveals that public art is treated as a straightforward mechanism for animating the public realm despite the lived suburban realities of significant spatial distances, high car dependence, nine-to-five commuting patterns, low foot traffic and enormous cultural diversity. A critique of the ensuing Framework for a Public Art Program (2010) report produced by the Culture Division is used to evaluate the most recent addition to Mississauga’s public art collection, the sculpture Buen Amigo (2011) by Chilean artist Francisco Gazitua. The sculpture was privately commissioned by the developers of the Absolute World luxury condominium 56-storey towers by Beijing architect Yansong Ma. The towers and the sculpture are intended to be landmarks that help to brand the suburban municipality as culturally sophisticated and economically dynamic. This article considers the spatial politics and interrelationships between the different urban actors involved in the selection of one work of public art and critically assesses the cultural policy frameworks that informed this decision-making process.

Anxiety and depression amongst patients enrolled in a public sector antiretroviral treatment programme in South Africa: a cross-sectional study

BackgroundHIV/AIDS and depression are projected to be the two leading causes of disability by 2030. HIV/AIDS and anxiety/depression are interlinked. People suffering from depression may be more likely to engage in risky sexual behaviour, and therefore at greater risk of contracting HIV. An HIV + diagnosis may trigger symptoms of anxiety and depression, which may in turn result in risky sexual behaviour and the spread of HIV. This study explores correlates of anxiety and depression in patients enrolled in a public sector ART programme in South Africa.MethodsInterviews were conducted with 716 patients initiating ART at twelve public health care facilities in the Free State. Symptoms of anxiety and depression were measured using the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS). An 8+ cut-off was used to identify possible cases of anxiety and depression. Multivariate logistic regression analysis, using STATA Version 11, was performed to identify correlates of anxiety and depression.ResultsThe prevalence of symptoms of respectively anxiety and depression amongst this study population in the Free State was 30.6% and 25.4%. The multivariate logistic regression analyses identified five correlates of symptoms of anxiety and depression. Disruptive side effects (OR = 3.62, CI 1.95-6.74) and avoidant coping (OR = 1.42, CI 1.22-1.65) were associated with a greater number of symptoms of anxiety. Stigma was associated with an increase in symptoms of anxiety (OR = 1.14, CI 1.07-1.21) and of depression (OR = 1.13, CI 1.06-1.20), while being a widow (OR = 0.30, CI 0.13-0.69) and participating in a support group (OR = 0.21, CI 0.05-0.99) were associated with decreased symptoms of depression.ConclusionsThe findings from the study provide valuable insights into the psychosocial aspects of the Free State public-sector ART programme. Combined with the literature on the intricate link between mental health problems and treatment outcomes our results emphasise firstly, the necessity that resources be allocated for both screening and treating mental health problems and, secondly, the need for interventions that will encourage support-group participation, address ART side effects, reduce maladaptive coping styles, and minimise the stigma associated with symptoms of anxiety and/or depression.