Lynn Basa - The Artist’s Guide to Public Art: How to Find and Win Commissions

Copyright 2019 by Lynn Basa

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Published by Allworth Press, an imprint of Skyhorse Publishing, Inc. 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018. Allworth Press is a registered trademark of Skyhorse Publishing, Inc., a Delaware corporation.

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Cover design by Mary Ann Smith

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Basa, Lynn, author. | Jacob, Mary Jane, writer of foreword. | Hoffman, Barbara T., contributor.

Title: The artists guide to public art: how to find and win commissions / Lynn Basa ; foreword by Mary Jane Jacob ; with a special section by art lawyer Barbara T. Hoffman.

Description: Second edition. | New York, New York: Allworth Press, an imprint of Skyhorse Publishing, Inc., [2019] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019007390 (print) | LCCN 2019008358 (ebook) | ISBN 9781621536192 (eBook) | ISBN 9781621536147 (paperback)

Subjects: LCSH: Public artEconomic aspectsUnited States. | Art commissionsUnited States. | BISAC: ART / Business Aspects. | ART / General. | ART / American / General. | ART / Study & Teaching. | ART / Art & Politics.

Classification: LCC N8846.U6 (ebook) | LCC N8846.U6 B37 2019 (print) | DDC 700.973dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019007390

Print ISBN: 978-1-62153-614-7

eBook ISBN: 978-1-62153-619-2

Printed in the United States of America

Praise for The Artists Guide to Public Art , Second Edition

What artists dont knowbut need to knowabout how to participate in the amazing, expanding, impactful field of public art could fill a book! This is that book! Just open to any page, and youll see why.

Jack Becker, founder of Forecast Public Art and Public Art Review

Lynn Basa is a practitioner who knows the ins and outs of public art. The second edition of her book offers an additional chapter on how to make the leap into creating art in public places. The Artists Guide to Public Art is a great resource recommended to anyone with an interest or stake in the field.

Christina Lanzl, director, Urban Culture Institute

Filled with both practical specifics and astute perceptions of the genre, I have found The Artists Guide to Public Art to be an indispensable text for my public art class. This new edition updates changes within the field and makes it even more valuable as a text I can rely upon.

Jim Hirschfield, artist and professor of art, University of North CarolinaChapel Hill

After reading this book, I immediately felt inspired and equipped to find and create opportunities for making art in the public realm. Its contents are comprehensive, practical, and highly relevant to current practices. A must-have for anyone interested in public art.

Lynn Sondag, professor of art and design, Dominican University of California

Artistsread this book! It is full of stories and practical advice on how to navigate the public art world. This second edition keeps pace with the changes in public art processes and gives a rare objective look at the good and the not so good. Lynns book provides a complete guide to making the leap from a studio artist to a public artist, putting together an application, a behind-the-scenes look at getting selected, and an understanding of contracts and copyright. It will help artists find their voice and even answer the question, Should I consider making public artwork in the first place?

Karen Rudd, manager, NorfolkArts

At the intersection of public art and public discourse, Basa paints with the finest of strokes.

Jason Vasser-Elong, arts advocate, poet, and author of Shrimp

Contents

with Nancy Herring, Financial Consultant

by Barbara T. Hoffman, Esq.

by Barbara T. Hoffman, Esq.

Foreword

by Mary Jane Jacob

Art in situ has been around throughout human history, defining locations to such a degree that this art becomes synonymous with places, cultures, and peoples. Even if much of it now only remains as architectural and sculptural fragments in museums or images in paintings, photographs, and other secondary sources, it is still these artworks and artifacts that tell us who we are.

Our own American tradition of art in public had its vigorous antecedent in the last century as a key part of the social programs in the 1930s, through which emerged some of the greatest American artists of that time. Their creationsmurals in schools, post offices, and other government buildings; sculptural projects and photographs; urban park systems and public monuments; and more ephemeral but no less impactful efforts, such as community theater, educational programs, and writing and crafts projectschanged the American social landscape.

An alignment of creative forces brought us to this current chapter in public art when, in the late 1980s, tendencies toward installation, site, and environmental genres, along with theoretical discourses of representation, cultural diversity, and globalism met up with the then twenty-year movement of government-commissioned public art. Public art became hota hotbed of artistic activity both intellectually rich and materially experimental, and a volatile field of political and public controversy. Corporate funding and foundation sponsorship kicked in by the nineties to help engender laboratory projects. Foundations then institutionalized these artists pioneering ways of working, setting standards for the practice of public art as they designed their own program initiatives and revamped guidelines. While the public art field is one, by very definition, outside the world of museums and in contrast and complement to these storehouses and showplaces of art, museums also got in the act with outreach projects and the capital projects of new or expanded outdoor sculpture gardens.

Yet during these recent decades, another phenomenon occurred as public art exploded on the scene, encapsulating much of the cultural debates of the time: the public joined artists to reaffirm that art mattered. Artworks in our environs enriched our lives and became a part of them, signifying who we are today. Even classic, seemingly tired traditions of public art were renewed, as cultural politics demanded that form be given to others stories and tragedies in order to provide solace by memorializing gestures and to join in a continuum of human history that even the avant-garde notions could not sever. Thus, the commissioning of art had a mission and platform from which to operate.

These late twentieth-century public projects proved to be critical in defining what art is today and to understating how we engage the world. These works, created by artists in collaboration with fellow artists, architects, tradesman, other professionals, and, yes, sponsors, have made the difference and given us a sense of our culture, that of others, and of how culture and daily life are intrinsically bound.