ABSTRACT
How can we evaluate the impact of an artwork in the urban environment? How can we describe its role in and contribution to a given community? The ways that the presence of an artwork affects an urban public space are often postulated or mentioned in visual arts discourse, but they are rarely empirically studied and analysed, especially with regard to their social consequences. For instance, artists and public art professionals commonly assert that artworks installed directly in the city space reach out to the population, the community or the public. Such statements suggest an attempt to mark a clear break from art found inside the white cube that is the gallery or museum space by affirming the social specificity of such art practices— but they do not fully realise such a distinction because their definition of the notion of public is too vague. Far from being an isolated phenomenon or exclusive to public art practitioners, this sort of position is symptomatic of what Zebracki et al. (2012:22) have called ‘public artopia’, which they describe as ‘the loose collection of claims in academic literature about the allegedly physical-aesthetic, economic, social and cultural-symbolic roles of art in public space’.
