ABSTRACT
“New Genre” was not the title, but it was the subject of the Public Art programs—both undergraduate and master’s—that came to be taught at Chelsea, in a tradition of contextual arts practice that goes back to the school’s complex origins in the late nineteenth century. One of the persistent features that has threaded its way through this evolution, and a key theme of this essay, is the relationship between art and design—whether complementary or competitive—and the corresponding discussion between fine art and public art, both as subject, and as practice.
