Uneven Development: Public Art in New York City

A qualitative exploration of arts‐based neighbourhood revitalization: The case of ‘The Space at 2106 Main’ in West Tampa, Florida

“…A serious if unintended consequence of this attitude is that previously excluded artists and communities could lend a veneer of legitimacy to the naturalization of gentrification (see Deutsche, , , for a version of this critique). Moreover, the failure to problematize the contradictory roles of investment banker‐turned‐place‐makers like Morris in his double role as property developer and champion of community revitalization, exposes artists and other community members to the trap of making their artistic productions “complicit in the obfuscation of its inequitable structural roots and consequences” (Hall & Robertson, , p. 21).…”

Artful Cities

“…For example, critics have pointed out the increasing privatisation of the public realm in the contemporary city and have questioned taken‐for‐granted notions of spaces of ‘open public access’ (Miles 1997). Other definitions have posited art's ‘public’ realm as more social than physical (Deutsche 1991a,b). Citing artistic intention, Deutsche argues that art becomes public through its address, engagement with or intervention into public issues.…”

Beneath and before: continuums of publicness in public art

“…It is a commonplace to claim public art has become 'complicit in rather than critical of exclusive, uneven development' (Deutsche 1991;Hall and Robertson 2001:20;Miles 1998, my emphasis). Many arguments support this: the sheer logistics of permission and arrangements (Phillips 1988), the notion of the public sphere as necessarily stripped of passion in order to be civil and rational (Fraser 1989;Lefebvre 1991), and the observations that, if public art happens to challenge dominant social order, it is relegated to the colonized rather than the valorized spaces of the postmodern city (Blomley 2004;Dwyer 2002).…”