A Work of Art is Not Necessarily Public
  1. When it is like a statue of a hero, which is usually there to maintain dominant or existing conditions. These conditions are often connected with private interests.
  2. When private interests construct [a] sculpture or monument.
  3. When an artist sells a work to a private collector, few others can experience the work of art.
  4. When developers request artwork to increase land values.
  5. The Houdon sculpture of Washington is in many people’s awareness, but [it] signs for stability and the maintenance of the status quo, which is in the hands of the power elite.

There are one hundred thousand billboards in Los Angeles County. All have approximately the same message. Nine out of ten tell us the corporations bidding for our money. They want to separate us from our money.

At one level, I see works of art as public when they are supported by the public’s taxes. Works of art also become public when they become part of the public’s awareness. Similarly, many of the ideas behind works of art come from public domain. The money which purchases works of art often comes from the labor of many others.

But there are not a lot of works which allow the viewer access to a meaning, which gives the viewers tools to reconfigure something other than already prevailing knowledge. thereby many or most artwork at the level of meaning support private interests and are thereby private.

If we can’t understand the author’s intent or the purpose or the function of a work of art, then it is private.

If the work of art doesn’t increase our knowledge of areas of alternate insight which don’t reproduce dominant knowledge, then the work of art is meant to stabilize exiting conditions, and it is, thereby, likely to have been produced for private interests.

THIS OBJECT COMES FROM THE OLD FURNACES OF LE NOUVEAU MUSÉE AT THE BEGINNING OF ITS RENOVATION IN FEBRUARY 1991. IT IS TO BE DISTRIBUTED FOR FREE TO PEOPLE OF LOW INCOME WHO HAVE HOUSING PROBLEMS.

The text on top read as follows:

HOUSING IS YOUR RIGHT. DON’T ACCEPT RENOVATION OR DISCRIMINATION.

ACTION LYONNAISE POUR L’INSERTION SOCIALE PAR LE LOGEMENT: 78 39 26 38

ASSOCIATION VILLEEURBANNAISE POUR LE DROIT AU LOGEMENT: 78 94 95 61

By making choices and decisions, you produce meaning rather than take the meaning adults give you and simply reproduce it.

One of the ways I learned (and I don’t know who taught me) was to take an object which everyone took for granted and ask myself why it was in the position it was in.

An example might be a park bench, made of unpainted metal tubes and fiberglass table and seats, which sat along a pathway. I might ask myself:

A) Why isn’t it in the middle of the grass?

B) Why is it at one end of the pathway rather than the other?

C) How long will it take for the sun to bleach the green tint in the fiberglass?

D) How long will it take for the metal to rust?

E) How many pounds do you need to put on the table so it will sink into the grass?

F) What would it look like if you threw it off the top of a building?

G) If you threw it off the top of a tall building, how could you make it land?

H) How come all the seats are at the same height on public benches? Is it because adults make them for adults without thinking about young people?

I) How come they aren’t much longer so more people can sit at them?

Many of these questions, when I looked back, had political or social implications.

Other questions about the museum that interest me turn around the museum’s concrete function with the public. At times I can’t help but ask:

A) Why can’t we take home some of the museum’s treasures?

B) Are the best museums those with a good library and cafeteria? In other words, a place the public can stay for a day?

C) Are the best museums those with long hours to allow for visits after work?

D) Is a successful museum one which makes knowledge accessible and insures its circulation?

B) Should the museum exist to not only represent cultural wealth, but [also] aesthetic objects from communities of poverty as well as communities in between?

C) Why do many museums want to inspire awe in the viewer?