Geoforum 41 (2010) 786–795

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Geoforum
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/geoforum

Deconstructing public artopia: Situating public-art claims within practice

Martin Zebracki *, Rob Van Der Vaart, Irina Van Aalst
Section of Rescaling and Representation of Space and Place, Urban and Regional research centre Utrecht (URU), Department of Human Geography and Planning, Faculty of Geosciences,
Utrecht University, Heidelberglaan 2, Utrecht 3584 CS, The Netherlands

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: This paper problematises public artopia, in other words the collection of claims in academic literature
Received 1 May 2009 concerning the allegedly physical-aesthetic, economic, social, and cultural-symbolic roles of art in urban
Received in revised form 2 April 2010 public space. On the basis of interviews with public-art producers (artists, public officials, investors, and
participating residents) in a flagship and a community-art project in Amsterdam, we analyse the situat-
edness of their public-art claims according to actors’ roles, geographical context, and time. The research
Keywords: suggests that public-art theory and policy suffer from three deficiencies. Theoretical claims about public-
Public art
art and policy discourse feature, first, a failure to recognise different actors’ perspectives: claims fail to
Situated knowledges
Community art
locate situated knowledges that are intrinsically (re)constituted by actors’ roles articulating with one
Flagship art another in time and space. Second is the lack of geographical contextuality: claims do not elaborate
Public artopia appropriately on distinct discourses about art projects’ spatial settings. Third is the lack of temporal per-
Public artscape spective. Claims neglect the practice of public-art realisation: that is, the evolution of claims and claim
coalitions over the time horizon of the art projects: preparation, implementation, and evaluation.
Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction: situating public art ‘ostentatious spatiality’” (Chang, 2008, p. 1925). He questions the
creative role of artists in society by asserting that ‘‘seldom is art
The term public art designates artworks, either permanent or created, commissioned, and installed in public spaces unfettered
temporary, commissioned for sites with open public access. These by utilitarian demands” (Chang, 2008, p. 1925). Apart from such
are located outside conventional [museological or private] loca- discussion about publicness and artfulness, there is also debate
tions and settings (Miles, 1997, p. 5): city squares, parks, buildings’ about the power and gender dimensions of public art (see Deut-
exteriors, and infrastructural sites such as railway stations, round- sche, 1996; Massey and Rose, 2003; Rendell, 2000; Staeheli and
abouts, and airports. Public art is a visual practice in that it inte- Mitchell, 2007).
grates, represents, and communicates vision, image, and space. So public art is a domain of contested terminology; ‘‘public art
Dynamism in the arts sector has resulted in a multiplication of can be read in different ways and its uses to beautify the city or cel-
styles and media of expression in cities’ public spaces; ‘‘public ebrate its reimagineering do not necessarily enjoy universal con-
art is an expanding practice that continues to incorporate every sensus” (Sharp et al., 2005, p. 1001). On that note, academics,
medium and discipline from painting to new media, sculpture to artists, social agents, policymakers, and the like are usually not dis-
design, architecture to performance” (Cartiere and Willis, 2008, p. cussing the same subject at all.
15). The aim of this paper is to problematise public artopia: the loose
The multifaceted nature of public art has induced a debate collection of claims in academic literature about the allegedly
about the publicness and the artfulness of public art (Finkelpearl, physical-aesthetic, economic, social, and cultural-symbolic roles
2001; Kwon, 2004). Massey and Rose (2003, p. 19), for example, of art in urban public space, which reflect public art’s notional,
believe that ‘‘for an artwork to be public, negotiation between so- potentially fetishised, and ill-defined geographical contextuality.
cial differences has to be part of what the artwork does. If negoti- Cosgrove (2005) indicates that claims concerning contemporary-
ation among diverse social identities is not invited, then the art’s role in urban space have attracted a surge of interest from
artwork is not public”. Chang (2008) believes that in questioning geographers (see Hall, 2003a,b; Hall and Robertson, 2001; Massey
the publicness of art, one must deal with the nature of artistic cre- and Rose, 2003; Miles, 1997, 2007; Robertson and Richards, 2003;
ativity that he collectively terms ‘‘‘artfulness’ and the problem of Sharp et al., 2005). Notwithstanding, geographers have scarcely re-
searched the mental representations of public-art producers about
the roles of public art in urban space, although the empirical stud-
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +31 30 2532040; fax: +31 30 2532037.
E-mail addresses: [email protected], [email protected], info@
ies of Hall (2003a,b), Roberts and Marsh (1995), Selwood (1995)
artinpublicspace.net (M. Zebracki), [email protected] (R. Van Der Vaart), and Sharp et al. (2005) are important exceptions in that respect.
[email protected] (I. Van Aalst). Dynamics in public-art production discourse are closely connected

0016-7185/$ - see front matter Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2010.04.011
 M. Zebracki et al. / Geoforum 41 (2010) 786–795 787

with spatial rescaling processes as reflected in urban governance tors’ perspectives and geographical as well as temporal dimen-
(see Brenner, 2004) and local and regional identity formation sions. These situated knowledges are inherent in what we term
(see Harvey, 1989; Lefebvre, 1991; Zukin, 1995). Cities are posi- the public artscape. This scape signifies a social relationality in
tioned and defined in changing spatial and sociocultural contexts. which meanings of public artworks and intrinsically social differ-
Within that purview, urban planners use selection mechanisms ences are negotiated. According to Massey and Rose (2003), this
for creating and negotiating geographical images and anti-images, negotiation process defines ‘publicness’, ‘‘and it therefore happens
also by means of public art (see Zebracki, 2010). Studies on public in spaces where social differences are very often evident: in streets,
art or visual culture in general may reveal the geographical dis- shops, parks, malls, markets, squares, playgrounds, car parks, sta-
course of the producers of cultural images. These images also affect tions” (Massey and Rose, 2003, p. 6).
the mental representations that users of geographical knowledge, In this paper, we first outline theoretical claims about public
which is inherent in these images, develop about space and place. art’s roles, including some of the main critiques of such claims. Sec-
Hence, public-art research could open a wider debate about the ond, we discuss the methodological issues of our empirical work.
differentiated ways in which visual culture is represented by both Third, we consider the findings on public-art claims conveyed
producers and users of urban imagery. within our case-study locations (Virtual Museum Zuidas and Face
On the basis of findings from interviews with public-art Your World). Fourth, we discuss the implications of this study with
producers – artists, public officials, investors, and participating regard to public-artopian claims of urban planning.
residents – we analyse the situatedness of their public-art claims
in an attempt to deconstruct public artopia in the context of 2. Public artopia: theoretical claims, critiques, and implications
public-art practice. The two case-study projects involved are both
located in the city of Amsterdam. The first is Virtual Museum International cross-discipline literature on public-art policy
Zuidas (see Map 1), a city-centre flagship-art project targeted at and practice reveals that planners’ urban ambitions and the cor-
international exposure in the booming Zuidas (South Axis), the responding public-art policy and practices have changed in Wes-
business district branded the ‘Financial Mile’ (Salet and Majoor, tern Europe since 1945, particularly since the 1980s’ ‘renaissance’
2005, p. 116). The second case-study is Face Your World (see Map of public art (Hall and Robertson, 2001). Public art has provided a
1), a community-art project aimed at enhancing social cohesion symbol for revitalising initiatives of European and North Ameri-
in the ethnically-diverse neighbourhood of Slotervaart. can cities (Bovaird, 2005). With a repositioning of the role of
We are interested in situating the public-art producers’ per- the state, the commissioning of public art has involved public–
sonal perceptions of the role of art in urban space, taking into ac- private partnerships and sometimes the private sector exclu-
count differentiation in the role and expertise of actors, the types sively. Cosgrove (2005) states that public authorities and private
and locations of art projects, and perceptions over time. In so parties have both promoted public art in landscaping, commis-
doing, Donna Haraway’s concept of situated knowledges, episte- sioned murals and sculptures; they have recognised the signifi-
mologically implying ‘feminist objectivity’ (1991, p. 188), is help- cance of visual images, including public art, in advertising,
ful. This concept provides a conceptual framing mechanism for a promoting, place selling, and place attachment (Fleming, 2007;
‘partial perspective’ to public-art claims, which is not ‘‘‘[from] Knight, 2002). New social and economic claims – public art for
above, from nowhere, from simplicity’, but from ground level, from social cohesion, urban boosterism, and city marketing – have
somewhere and from complexity” (Haraway, 1991, p. 195). Barnes been added to the traditional claims of aesthetics and supporting
(2000, p. 743) asserts that ‘‘situated knowledge is embodied in that collective memory embodied in statues, memorials, and so forth.
it is grounded in the physicality of specific human bodies and their Furthermore, public art and public-art policy in cities have be-
artefacts,” hence in public art, too. Our phenomenological chal- come more differentiated in terms of assumed scales of impact
lenge is to provide insight into public-art practice and public-art on the quality of urban space: from flagship-art projects designed
producers’ concrete experiences to situate public-art claims in ac- for international profiling and exposure in spaces of flow such as
urban centres and business districts to community-art projects
focusing on social engagement and social cohesion at the
neighbourhood level (see Hall, 2003a,b; Lacy, 1995; Miles, 1997;
Remesar, 2005a).
The academic literature features various claims about the con-
tribution made to urban space by public art. According to Hall
(2003a), from the 1980s onwards it has been both prominent
and controversial in urban upgrading; public art is considered
capable of legitimising as well as criticising prevailing urban devel-
opments. It has been the subject of contrasting critical literatures
from artists, art experts, cultural theorists, urban and cultural
geographers, and experts from cognate disciplines (Hall, 2003a;
Miles, 1997, 2003; Moody, 1990; Policy Studies Institute, 1994;
Roberts and Marsh, 1995; Selwood, 1995; Sharp et al., 2005). The
following public-art claims are primarily drawn from research by
Hall (2003a,b), and are all reflected in the work of Miles (1997),
Remesar (2003, 2005a), Selwood (1995) and Sharp et al. (2005).

(a) Physical-aesthetic claims – enhancing aesthetic quality:

improving the attractiveness of a place and thereby encour-
aging more intensive use of a public space; upgrading the
visual or aesthetic quality of place, and turning a former
anonymous place into a physical reference point (see Gold-
Map 1. Localities of Virtual Museum Zuidas (VMZ) and Face Your World (FYW) in the stein, 2005; Hein, 1996, 2006; Rendell, 2006; Sharp et al.,
city of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. 2005).
788 M. Zebracki et al. / Geoforum 41 (2010) 786–795

(b) Economic claims – enhancing economic activity: attracting is predominantly theorised within the arts, it is often contemplated
and increasing investments in the arts; improving economic within the normal confines of art criticism and not within broader
regeneration conditions through creating richer visual envi- geographical contexts of public space, the disciplinary multivocal
ronments; providing marketing and place-promotion oppor- nature of public art notwithstanding (see Miles, 1997). In the arts
tunities in city marketing; boosting cultural tourism; sector, such a geographical and multidisciplinary approach, in this
creating employment for artists, craftspeople, manufactur- case a focus on the spatial effects of public art in a physical-aes-
ers, suppliers, and transporters; encouraging public–private thetic, economic, social and cultural-symbolic sense, is rare.
partnerships; and upscaling land values (see Fleming, 2007; Hall and Robertson (2001) believe, moreover, that many pub-
Florida, 2002, 2008; Landry, 2000, 2008; Roberts and Marsh, lic-art claims are essentialist. The advocates of public art believe
1995). that its intervention in urban space contributes intrinsically to a
(c) Social claims – enhancing community and social interac- ‘good’ or ideal city (see Deutsche, 1996). Such essentialist,
tions: addressing community needs; eradicating social homogenised views overlook the contested, unfixed, and so-
exclusion; promoting social change by revealing fundamen- cially-contingent nature of space and place (Massey, 1994).
tal social contradictions or undermining dominant meanings Essentialism is also reflected in the fundamental shortcomings
of urban space; reducing vandalism and increasing safety; of the technocratic advocacy of public art, for instance in public
and encouraging links between artists and professions that art as ‘social engineering’, which endeavours to resolve ‘social
shape the environment, such as planning, landscaping, problems’ (Hall and Robertson, 2001). Each of the four claims
architecture, design, and engineering (see Alexander, 2003; listed above involves an essentialist view of the public or audi-
Baetens and Pil, 1998; Deutsche, 1996; Finkelpearl, 2001; ence of public art. Alexander (2003) conveys that much of the
Kramer, 1994; Mitchell, 1992; Remesar, 2003, 2005a; Sel- theory development regarding the effects on society of cultural
wood, 1995). products – understood to include public art – ignores the fact that
(d) Cultural-symbolic claims – creating symbolic value: enhanc- cultural products are consumed by the ‘publics’. The misconcep-
ing awareness of local history and identity; promoting tion that ideas from the arts are injected directly into their public
national identity; creating stimuli and ideas in situ for other – the ‘injection model’ – implies this public as passive and uncrit-
actors in the creative industry; contributing to local distinc- ical and the cultural products imposed as intrinsically ‘good’ (see
tiveness; developing civic identity; and creating educational Alexander, 2003). Similarly, Hall (2003b) argues that the public’s
and pedagogical values and benefits (see Bach, 2001; DaCo- experience and its relation to the production of space are neither
sta Kaufmann, 2004; Drake, 2003; Hall, 2003a,b; Kester, demonstrated nor addressed. His Lefebvrian critique runs that
2004; Kwon, 2004; Lacy, 1995; Michalski, 1998; Miles, there are weak theoretical links between the signification (repre-
1997; Senie and Webster, 1998). sentation), production, and experience of space. Everyday prac-
tices and experiences are elemental, since consideration of them
The aforementioned claims, formulated more precisely as inter- contributes to the understanding of the production of meaning
subjective public-art claim coalitions, are reciprocally connected. in these practices and experiences that deconstruct essentialist
For instance, developing civic identity is problematic without a reasoning (see Lees, 2001).
goal to achieve social inclusion. Moreover, the claims are not
unchallenged in academic literature. Hall and Robertson (2001)
see some fundamental difficulties in them. They perceive a lack 3. Methodology
of critical intervention in public-art practice and, analogously, no
sound conceptual apparatus or paradigm to evaluate public-art We have sought to unravel public-art claims on the basis of in-
claims. The lack of evaluative instruments leads to a paucity of depth interviews with pertinent actors involved in two recent pub-
evaluation and hence little evidence supporting these claims. lic-art projects in Amsterdam: Virtual Museum Zuidas (VMZ) and
Selwood (1995, pp. 249–250), for instance, asserts that ‘‘messianic Face Your World (FYW). The interviews allowed us to deconstruct
promoters of public art sometimes suggest that the burgeoning of public artopia, taking account of variations in actor perspective,
public art outside the gallery may contribute towards the creation spatial settings of the projects, and the expression of claims over
of new audiences for art. We found no evidence to support this”. the time horizon of the projects. In 2007, we interviewed seven ac-
Hall (2002, 2003a,b) argues that it has been normal for artists to re- tors from flagship-art project VMZ, 10 actors from community-art
view and evaluate their practice in formal or aesthetic terms, but project FYW, and four Dutch experts in public-art theory and prac-
there is no tradition of researching the impact of arts practice on tice for the purpose of contextualising public-art claims. We per-
urban space. Furthermore, he reasons that there is no tradition of formed a discourse analysis based on the transcript files of the
employing social-science impact methodologies in the investiga- 21 interviews, and relevant (policy) documents, providing project
tion and evaluation of this practice. This lack of evaluation of pub- information in terms of general aims, potential past performance,
lic art has various reasons: scarcity of funding; widespread and and embeddedness within the broader scope of urban policy. The
uncritical acceptance of public art; doubts of the relevance of so- public-art producers interviewed were artists (7), public-sector
cial-science criteria in evaluating public art; and the questioning officials (4), investors (3), and participating residents (3). On the
of evaluating public art at all (Hall and Robertson, 2001). Various basis of a grounded theoretical framework (see Glaser, 1998), we
authors have elaborated further on this obvious reluctance to eval- created discourse-topic files from the interview transcripts that
uate public art and have identified further reasons and barriers we labelled and investigated regarding the situatedness of produc-
(see Fazakerley, 2005; Matzner, 2001; OPENspace Research Centre, tionist advocacy. The interviewees were identified by purposive
2005; Reeves, 2002; Remesar, 2003, 2005a,b). The diverse contexts sampling, a technique to establish correspondence between the re-
of the literature about public art hamper critical comparison and search questions and the pertinent actors (Cameron, 2004). We
the development of strong research tools. According to Phillips performed snowball sampling (see Bryman, 2004); our initial con-
(1988), the lack of critical intervention in public-art practice can tacts with some relevant key informants generated contact with
be attributed to the ‘machinery’ of public-art production that mod- decisive others. Introductory interviews were helpful in teasing
erates against challenging, critical or disruptive interventions in out and corroborating the sampling frame.
urban space, and legitimises current unequal urban developments Following notions of situated knowledges (see Haraway, 1991;
(see Hall and Robertson, 2001). Furthermore, given that public art Rose, 1997), our perspective entailed discerning the partial
 M. Zebracki et al. / Geoforum 41 (2010) 786–795 789

knowledges of the actors. We mediated between these knowl- and thereby a visually-distinct areal profile and stylish business
edges, our situated knowledges, and information found in docu- and residential environment (Zuidas Programme Council for the
mentary material. The two case studies were – in line with Stake Arts, 2001). VMZ’s project leaders, a group of artists and public
(2000) – significant as ‘opportunities to learn’ about the relation- and private actors, intend to integrate public art into architectural
ships between productionist claims on the one hand and the social, development in Zuidas for an indefinite period. The project em-
temporal, and spatial context of these claims on the other. braces two principal objectives: ‘‘high degree of combined func-
Notwithstanding the ‘nongeneralising knowledges’ (Rose, 1997) tions” and ‘‘high-quality public space” (Zuidas Programme
involved, the particulars of the case studies formed the basis for a Council for the Arts, 2001, p. 4). The initial plans incorporate per-
careful ‘analytic generalisation’. This is a useful methodology for manent or recurring temporary public art in Zuidas development,
building theory extending beyond one situation towards other sit- architecture, and public space. The project leaders emphasise eco-
uations (Yin, 1994). Accordingly, the selected public-art projects nomic and aesthetic ambitions under the VMZ project’s slogan
might be considered emblematic cases since they probably involve ‘‘Building Along With Architecture” (Zuidas Programme Council
insights into learning moments experienced in other public-art for the Arts, 2001, p. 17, emphasis added). They try to develop stra-
projects (see also Ragin’s (1994) retroduction approach). Our tegic vision within an artistic milieu for future Zuidas users. More-
methodological focus was therefore not on gauging techniques or over, they believe that VMZ’s principal objectives could be met by
statistical representativeness, but on reflexive approaches that facilitating the development of large-scale public cultural services
provided insight into the geographies of engagement between and cultural and arts initiatives of third parties, including artist-
public art and its producers. We envisage these geographies of in-residence schemes (see Fig. 1) (Boomgaard, 2008; Zuidas
engagement as producers’ discursively-constructed field of posi- Programme Council for the Arts, 2001). Public art is not being
tioning a particular artwork in a specific public place. Such spatial implemented throughout the entire Zuidas area. VMZ seems to
logic of public-art production, which involves a certain degree of have a partiality for noticeable and busy public-art locations, as
location-aware art, pursues to some extent the physical-aesthetic, witness the previous public-art projects Landfall (Fig. 1) and Video
economic, social and/or cultural-symbolic dimensions of public-art Wall, on which video art is displayed throughout the day, alternat-
claims as elaborated in Section 2. For a methodical understanding ing with recordings of earlier events such as Holland Festival.
of geographical engagement in public-art production, we can think
of three discrete public-art paradigms that are discerned by Kwon
(2004, p. 60): art-in-public-places model (focus on ‘art for art’s
sake’); art-as-public-spaces approach (focus on design-oriented
and environmental art); and art-in-the-public-interest model (fo-
cus on activist, grassroots art, termed by Lacy (1995) as ‘new genre
public art’). See for further reference on these paradigms, Kwon
(2004) and Lacy (1995).
During the empirical research, account was taken of the rela-
tionship between our personalities and the research process,
including interviewees, by situating these personalities within that
process: the ‘in-betweenness’ (see Moss, 1993). To enhance
credibility and dependability, we incorporated checks for rigour
– means of verifying interpretation of interview data and
documentary data – by participant checking: that is, by sending
the transcript files to the informants for approval and possible
annotations and corrections; checking the sources against each
other (‘re-search’); cross-referencing to potential documentary
material; and peer approval. Thus, we allowed for the situated
knowledges of the actors interviewed as well as for our intersub-
jective knowledges.

4. Public artopia deconstructed

4.1. Case studies: some background

As a flagship-art project, Virtual Museum Zuidas (VMZ) exempli-

fies the involvement of public artworks by renowned artists. The
project aims at place branding, national and international expo-
sure, and attracting visitors, firms, and potential residents. As an
urban core-development project, VMZ shares many characteristics
with other flagship-art developments (see Hall, 2003a,b; Mataras-
so, 1997).
VMZ was started in 2001 at the Amsterdam local authority’s re-
quest for the creation of an art climate in the Zuidas business dis-
trict. The project is funded by the city, the national Art and Public
Space Foundation (SKOR), the local Amsterdam Foundation for the
Arts (AFK) and by several private actors in the Zuidas area. The to- Fig. 1. Virtual Museum Zuidas, Amsterdam. (a): VMZ office (background) that also
hosts artists-in-residence. The front building is Platform 21, an international centre
tal amount of art investment is not clearly documented, but – for cultural exchange and exhibitions by artists and theoreticians. (b): Landfall
according to a key informant – amounts to approximately (2005), 10 panorama panels scattered throughout the Zuidas from 2005 through
4500,000€. The VMZ investment aims at creating an art climate 2010 (photographs by Zebracki).
790 M. Zebracki et al. / Geoforum 41 (2010) 786–795

In contrast with VMZ, the community-art project Face Your students designed the future Staalman Park of about 13,500 m2
World (FYW) focused on participatory art of a temporary nature. with the help of interactive design software (see Fig. 2). The de-
Social-artistic interventions and engagement at the neighbourhood signs were discussed with parents and other local residents. This
level are the linchpin of community-art projects. Such projects are public process was an integral part of the Urban Lab’s learning
typically situated in residential neighbourhoods and concentrate environment providing encounter and dialogue (Boomgaard,
on community development and social engagement (see Dwelly, 2005; Van Heeswijk and Kaspori, 2006; for further reference on
2001; Hall and Robertson, 2001). Participatory projects might in- Van Heeswijk’s production of relations, see Fotiadi, 2009). The
volve consultation by artists and local authorities with the public, artistic quality of FYW – or ‘artfulness’ – was defined within the
and public engagement in design and production (see Hall and creational process rather than through the final objects produced.
Robertson, 2001). The artistic focus in community-specific art pro- Hence, FYW emphasised ‘‘space [as] a practiced place” (De Certeau,
jects is on the space being intersubjectively created by the partic- 1984, p. 117) with social relations as the matter content rather
ipants (see Kwon, 2004). FYW shared most of these characteristics. than representation (see Bourriaud’s (2002) notion of relational
The artist Jeanne Van Heeswijk initiated FYW in 2005 in cooper- aesthetics).
ation with the architect Dennis Kaspori. The urban district of Sloter-
vaart, the Amsterdam Foundation for the Arts (AFK), and a housing 4.2. Actors and claims
corporation funded the project. According to a key informant total
funding amounted to 350,000€. FYW’s aim was to resolve complex What are the typical discourses of the various actors? On the
socio-physical issues of urban renewal through interactive and par- basis of the four theoretical claims and empirical literature dis-
ticipatory public art; neighbourhood participation; practical educa- cussed in Section 2, we expected the artists to stress physical-aes-
tion; and the ‘potential roles of art in public space’ (Respondent 12, thetic and cultural-symbolic claims. We thought the public officials
female artist). FYW took place in the context of restructuring the would be principally engaged in the socioeconomic goals of public
Staalman neighbourhood, an ethnically-diverse area in the west of art and that the investors would be primarily economically con-
Amsterdam. This project entailed the participatory design of a cerned with the projects. We expected the residents to call up
neighbourhood park followed by its implementation. the direct physical dimensions of art’s spatial contribution.
FYW’s initial aims were: the increased social commitment of At the beginning of our empirical research, we asked a Dutch
the residents to their neighbourhood; residents’ enhanced cultural public-art expert to comment on what was going on behind the
self-awareness; and inclusive urban development. Throughout the scenes. According to him, ‘‘the reasoning about public art is charac-
year of 2005, students from primary and vocational secondary terised by wishful thinking, and hence many axioms about its spa-
schools and their parents cooperated with the initiators and the tial contribution exist. . . Contemplating and assessing the impact
Slotervaart planning department. At FYW’s workplace, Urban Lab, of public art can be quite difficult since it often has a hidden agen-
da, so the parameters for this assessment are soft” (Respondent 18,
male public-art expert).
Indeed; a motley crew of public-art actors creates a cacophony
of voices. This prescience made it harder to map the experiences of
the actors interviewed onto the separate theoretical claims. The
following empirical insights reveal assorted interests and ratio-
nales regarding the public-art claims, which we set against our
expectations.
Artists were extremely concerned with the raisons d’être of the
projects. Their rhetoric was geared to physical-aesthetic and cul-
tural-symbolic aspects, but they also had an eye for the broader so-
cial context: ‘‘participation in Face Your World did not imply
drinking coffee and working clay with Moroccans. People had been
really participating in this project on a daily basis for six months”
(Respondent 12, female artist). Analogously, another artist reported
that ‘‘people should enjoy visiting the Zuidas area, and in this joy
public art should play a decisive role” (Respondent 3, male artist).
Such ‘higher goals’ of social encounter touch on a coexistence
between artists and those who are practising and ‘consuming’
place: the ‘publics’. Nonetheless, artists did not address these goals
without referring to public art’s interplay with economic forces:
‘‘art will increase the use of public space; the public at large should
be attracted to it. . . All beautiful cities attract investments; compa-
nies and people want to settle there” (Respondent 1, male artist).
Ironically, this artist narrowed down the claims within the art sec-
tor: ‘‘this sector is 80% baloney since it chiefly consists of networks
of highbrows. One has to be meticulous with public art. . . The real-
isation of good art requires good consultation. So let’s say the right
art for the right situation and for that purpose the right people
have to be swung into action” (Respondent 1, male artist). This art-
ist both foregrounded and relativised the expedient context – basi-
cally dictated by expertise, armamentaria and funds – in which
public-art producers liaise with one another and thereby produce
Fig. 2. Face Your World, Amsterdam. (a): the location of the prospective Staalman
Park. (b): maquette of the Staalman Park, made by primary and first-year
public-art claims, whether solidly corroborated or not.
secondary-school students in several virtual and physical design phases (photo- Public officials were concerned socioeconomically with the pro-
graphs by Zebracki). ject’s principles, although some of them had broader visions. For
 M. Zebracki et al. / Geoforum 41 (2010) 786–795 791

instance, a public official argued that ‘‘Face Your World was an through the park and along our designs. . . I think the project was
excellent instrument for urban renewal, including the reduction successful, also the party at the end. Then we showed our designs
of vandalism and pollution and promoting mutual understanding to our parents, and people from the municipality were convinced
between residents, particularly between youth and the elderly. It that the park was important to our neighbourhood. But now we
is essential to create public support for urban-renewal operations, don’t have anywhere to play. If children do not get their own place,
and in this respect FYW performed very successfully. . . Yet, I ques- they might cause trouble” (Respondent 9, female resident).
tion the higher social objectives of the leading artist” (Respondent The intellectual level of the project was adapted to that of the
17, male public official). participants – mostly children and their poorly-educated parents.
This observation suggests that the respondent challenged There was no explicit feedback about the execution of the social
exclusive social claims while he embedded FYW’s artistically-in- and cultural-symbolic claims of FYW’s initiators. Nonetheless, the
tended social sculpture in a neighbourhood-based economic con- participants seemed to consider FYW a successful project: ‘‘many
text. A cross-pollination of claims was also inferred by another children have become more aware of what they are doing in the
local official, who claimed that ‘‘Virtual Museum Zuidas exhibits a neighbourhood and what this neighbourhood stands for” (Respon-
social purpose in that it is aimed at creating a venue for workers, dent 9, female resident).
visitors, and future residents. This project turns the Zuidas area A senior resident reiterated these capacities and regarded FYW
into a rendezvous for them. . . There is an administrative and soci- as a democratic learning process for the entire community: ‘‘peo-
etal desire for the realisation of an appealing Zuidas with room for ple had more say in our neighbourhood than they were used to.
a high-quality cultural climate. The best way to do so is the reali- The Dutch Ministry [for Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environ-
sation of as many services as possible. Eventually, the Zuidas ment] has even awarded a prize for civilian participation to this
should become the second lively centre of Amsterdam. Even one project!” (Respondent 11, male resident).
of Virtual Museum Zuidas’ spearheads is that it could attract inter- The different actors conveyed common grounds of public-art
national enterprises” (Respondent 6, male public official). rhetoric, despite the divergence of cultural background and profes-
These responses demonstrate that the settings of public offi- sion. This can be basically inferred from the common execution of
cials’ social-constitutive claims were integrated in an economic aims, which triggered mutual understanding of public-art claims.
agenda. Of course, the integral responsibility of local civil servants
requires them to account for a broad local policy package including 4.3. Place and claims: flagship versus community art
socioeconomic and cultural issues.
Investors were directed towards economic and financial issues. What are the geographical discourses typical of the flagship-art
They were concerned with material investments so that the envi- project (VMZ) on the one hand and the community-art project
ronment would become more attractive and make private under- (FYW) on the other? We observed that the difference in sociospa-
takings more appealing. An investor acknowledged that ‘‘it seems tial setting dictated the core claims of the two art projects. We
that both policymakers and residents should be approached with found that the main concerns of VMZ and FYW were urban boost-
plans addressing the physical dimensions of urban space. There- erism and community involvement respectively. Nonetheless, how
fore, the trump card of Face Your World was the specific design of does empirical detail differentiate both the spatial images that pro-
the Staalman Park” (Respondent 16, female investor). By the same ject claims communicate and the spatial logic from which they
token, an investor held the view that ‘‘the eyes of the general pub- communicate these images?
lic are on the physical environment up to 10 m above the ground, VMZ is part of the development formula of what is to become a
and public art could make that space intriguing” (Respondent 2, business district of international visibility, at least that is the out-
male investor). look. VMZ’s project documents explain that this project’s ambition
A main concern of the investors interviewed was the intricacy is to achieve the integration of public art into the Zuidas develop-
of the realisation of public art and they were therefore quite ment together with all corporate, housing, and leisure activities.
down-to-earth about public-art claims: ‘‘public art is surrounded We found that such integration of spatial activities is intended to
with a ‘not-in-my-frontyard mentality’. It is actually private rather have a radiating effect on ‘like-minded’ places. According to one
than public; the arts are often conceived of as a private affair with of the respondents: ‘‘Virtual Museum Zuidas becomes a cultural
an individual charm. . . The energy put into public-art projects is of- simulation of other special city developments all over the world,
ten disproportionate and unbelievable with regard to the results; it including La Défense in Paris and Docklands in London. Zuidas’ goal
is time-consuming and really expensive. There is a tension be- is to develop a new business centre for Amsterdam. The high-level
tween art and money regarding what makes the Zuidas area go art provided by Virtual Museum Zuidas is indispensable for this pur-
round” (Respondent 5, male investor). This ‘not-in-my-frontyard pose. Virtual Museum therefore concerns an integral part of the
mentality’ conveys that certain recalcitrance rests on investing in overall Zuidas vision” (Respondent 1, male artist). Such claims
and situating public artworks. The investors were seeing public indicate recruiting language that is inherent in VMZ’s strategy, as
artworks as merit goods that like ‘spatial orphans’ have to manoeu- shown by the establishment of an international biennial event
vre themselves into environmental planning. Public art is not func- for the benefit of fine arts in Amsterdam and efforts to attract a cre-
tionally ‘adopted’ by this planning characterised by efficient ative class.
organisation, but is usually exactly the epitome of spatial FYW, on the other hand, can primarily be understood in the
disorganisation. context of social policies typical of deprived urban neighbour-
Hence, we may say that money talks in public-art projects, too. hoods. We believe this project’s key notions were social empower-
It practically eliminates romantic ideals about public art, and the ment and cohesion: ‘‘the main objective of Face Your World is
investors’ affectionate engagement with public art does not mean active citizenship; the residents should feel they are citizens again”
they have faith in it. (Respondent 12, female artist, emphasis added). FYW seemed to
Participating residents’ claims about FYW were, similar to the instigate and foster local identity formation and thereby regain
investors’, quite pragmatic in nature. The residents were not con- reflexive thinking about space within a participatory setting. The
cerned with the artfulness of the project per se. Their claims were Urban Lab opened up both a physical and virtual space wherein
primarily addressing physicalities, as a 10-year-old pupil reported: participants were incited to acquire skills to create mental images
‘‘it was very interesting to create our own design of the park and to of future neighbourhood space, plus to actually represent these
see the results directly. In the software programme we could walk images virtually as well as materially. In so doing, we think these
792 M. Zebracki et al. / Geoforum 41 (2010) 786–795

skills of representing space surpass FYW’s site of activity, from cerned with three phases: preparation, implementation, and
which we can understand why a community worker cosupervising evaluation.
the project with the leading artist posed that FYW was a model During the preparation phases of both projects, claims and goals
worth emulating in other neighbourhoods. Yet, in her train of were formulated as required by funding argumentation. Hence, the
thought, we found that a public-art project is rather tricky to de- initial discourses of both VMZ and FYW were set in a language to
velop if it is parachuted into a place as, so to speak, a one-man mobilise money; the initiators had to be strategic. One of the inde-
band. There should be a synergetic play between the project’s cre- pendent experts interviewed commented that ‘‘Jeanne Van Hees-
ators and participants and those who are conditioning the project’s wijk was strong, effectively attracting funding, branding, and
spatial radius of action: ‘‘public art is not considered the common persevering in her ideas, and that proved to be successful”
way for decision makers to tackle urban-restructuring processes. (Respondent 20, male public-art expert).
Through Jeanne Van Heeswijk’s novel way of working on neigh- During the implementation of the art projects, claims evolved to
bourhood participation, however, the local district was socially in- remain contingent. A local official of VMZ was concerned about
volved. . . Public art as applied in Face Your World is a sound bending his basic principles to private initiatives during the pro-
strategy of urban upgrading” (Respondent 15, female public ject: ‘‘private parties often start cooperating quite enthusiastically
official). so as to develop or maintain a cultural icon, but subsequently no-
Although the two projects may have agreed core goals regard- body seems to be willing to pay for it. Then the ambitions remain
ing spatial impacts, participants differed about how they should on paper” (Respondent 6, male public official).
be realised. The public-art claims were therefore focused on the In addition, the actors were cautious of the sense of reality of
how rather than the what. For instance, VMZ steers a middle course public-art claims and they had to balance the organisational–
between realising permanent artworks forming symbolic reference financial and legal contexts: ‘‘the execution of Face Your World
points and temporary artworks that could anticipate a changing art was complicated given that there is always less money for art
climate. According to the first Vision for Visual Art in the Zuidas, the and culture than for bricks” (Respondent 16, female investor).
entire Zuidas area can be considered a lively and continuously- ‘‘Public art has to undergo nearly the same weighty and time-con-
changing museum (Zuidas Programme Council for the Arts, suming decision-making processes as large urban-planning and
2001). However, one participant was sceptical about VMZ’s dy- architectural projects. It is overwhelming, in both material and
namic ambitions. He regretted that VMZ’s objective was not to pre- immaterial terms, for what is needed to execute public-art objec-
serve a permanent material collection of artworks in urban space: tives” (Respondent 1, male artist). Another actor said that ‘‘it is just
‘‘this is making public art susceptible to public critique seeing that the reality of planning and decision-making processes that – some-
people often need a point of reference regarding public art: where times in an unexpected or unplanned way – gives a lot of trouble to
is the artwork in space, and what does it actually symbolise?” realise something in public space, especially public art, and thus to
(Respondent 6, male public official). substantiate claims” (Respondent 17, male public official). For
In FYW, participants held different views of the relative impor- example, FYW’s participating pupils anticipated their first second-
tance of the process (social sculpture) versus the product (park) ary-school year outside the neighbourhood, yet the park was still
of the spatial intervention. The initiators considered the entire not realised owing to complex regulations. ‘‘There seems to be a
process towards the realisation of the Staalman Park as its objec- general impossibility to realise an object... Public-art claims to have
tive, but according to one of the pupils, ‘‘without the park the everything working against it” (Respondent 5, male investor). And
project would not be complete and would not make the neigh- sometimes statutory preconditions were supposed to be taken into
bourhood nicer” (Respondent 10, female resident). In juxtaposi- account, which hampered the project’s flow: ‘‘some important
tion to this, the initiators would also consider the project decisions had to be made concerning, for instance, a ban on taking
‘complete’ if the participants would merely valorise their mental a dog into Staalman Park. . . That was quite laborious” (Respondent
representations of the neighbourhood. The pupil addressed, fur- 11, male resident). In this respect, the time factor put a slant on
thermore, was worried about significant shifts in the demo- public-art claims. One of the external experts interviewed argued
graphic structure of the neighbourhood, since that would that ‘‘sometimes the temptation is strong to open up an area
change its current spirit. In this vein, the pupil spatially appropri- through art and say goodbye to government intervention”
ated the neighbourhood’s social sphere, as informed by her school (Respondent 19, public-art expert).
principal: ‘‘Face Your World has created a new public heart for the The initial project claims, as in the project proposals, were not
Staalman neighbourhood. Jeanne Van Heeswijk has made the shared by all over time, which disturbed the harmony of ambitions
children ‘accessories’ to present themselves in relation to their so- (belief systems) and fostered shifting and potentially mismatching
cial and physical environment. . . The children have become more actor-and-claim combinations. The projects’ objectives were gen-
serious in and conscious of their reasoning about public space” erally too abstract and the producers interviewed were not clear
(Respondent 8, female public official). In that respect, we believe about their or others’ intentions, expectations, or experiences, as
that FYW’s initiators would conceive this project’s achieved spa- they continued to be throughout the projects. Claims seemed to
tial reflexivity of the participants as ‘complete’. be remoulded throughout the planning process and did not often
surpass the representational, by explaining away: ‘‘objectives are
4.4. Time and claims: before, during, and after projects constantly readjusted in consultation. . . When you are achieving
something different from the initial objectives you may say that
What are the typical discourses in the different phases of VMZ the objectives were not right” (Respondent 12, female artist).
and FYW? And to what extent did actors follow each other’s rhet- The discordance of the expectations could be ascribed to the ab-
oric? The realisation of public art takes place in specific settings. sence of formal plan evaluations in both VMZ and FYW. Public art
Someone takes the initiative; actor groups are formed; proposals is an elusive practice and hard to evaluate. As a result, the projects’
are written and approved; a planning procedure is put in place; objectives regressed to wishful thinking and window dressing. In
stakeholders meet and after a time may, or may not, evaluate the addition, constructions of socially-acceptable reasoning about pub-
process of realisation. The claims’ evolution throughout the pub- lic art and the dilution of public-art claims implied intricate claim
lic-art projects revealed – albeit with hindsight – how the produc- dynamics. Actors often disagreed; nevertheless, they did not jeop-
ers experienced their public-art claims and potentially renounced ardise the project as a whole, which demonstrates the paradoxical
them. The issue of public-art claims’ temporality is basically con- nature of situated knowledges.
 M. Zebracki et al. / Geoforum 41 (2010) 786–795 793

5. Discussion and end points development, albeit in sincere dialogue with the social needs of
the general population. The means, however, are generally inade-
This study opened a geographical, multidisciplinary debate quate in practice owing to policy priorities. Investors conveyed a
about public-art claims and the geographies of engagement be- socioeconomic relevance of public art by mind and a symbolic
tween public art and its producers. In so doing, it provided insight layer by heart in stressing the cultural valorisation of art’s eco-
into the situatedness of the mental representations of public-art nomic benefit. Although the investors interviewed often thought
producers regarding the roles of art in urban public space. Hitherto, of the economic embeddedness of art in space, they seemed to at-
such an approach has been overlooked or inchoate in previous re- tach credence to the aesthetic added-value of public art irrespec-
search. This work’s empirical localities differed in nature. Where tive of their financial investments in it. The participating
the flagship-art project VMZ was basically concerned with, in residents involved in FYW conceived of art as a window of oppor-
terms of Kwon (2004), an art-as-public-spaces approach, the com- tunity to launch spontaneous, prosaic socio-physical matters. In
munity-art project FYW pertained to an art-in-the-public-interest the rhetoric sphere of the residents, little response emerged to
model (see Kwon, 2004). The public-art claims examined as part the deeper aesthetic and symbolic grandiloquence of artists. All
of these projects resided in a complex, hybrid field of physical-aes- in all, the typologically-constructed narrative of the actors is situ-
thetic, economic, social, and cultural-symbolic forces on the basis ated in particularly practised places as elucidated by the following
of which actors’ experiences were situated. Assessing the exclusive conclusion.
role of public art in its contribution to distinguishing attributes of The geographical contextuality of this study demonstrated dif-
urban space was difficult for the interviewees and for us, as it was ferent spatial emphases within the projects’ claims. VMZ was tied
to articulate and sustain exclusive claims on such a contribution. up with economic urban upgrading, and FYW with empowering
Our analysis suggests that in further research on public art and residents in public space’s social sphere. Nevertheless, on closer
public-art policy, academics and policymakers should take into ac- consideration of the geographical rhetoric, we discerned converg-
count three deficiencies: ing elements. VMZ was clearly related to materialistic rhetoric
about space. To some extent, this had common ground with
(a) a lack of recognition of actors’ perspectives: claims do not FYW’s aim to redefine the aesthetics of space throughout the rela-
locate adequately situated knowledges of actors, which are tions between participants in the context of the creation of the
articulated in space and time; park. Importantly, in contrast with FYW, VMZ did not feature a
(b) a lack of geographical contextuality: claims do not elaborate significant resident public, so in this project the discourse of artis-
appropriately on distinct discourses about art projects’ spa- tic reification would probably be more dominant than the dis-
tial settings; course of social sculpture. We attribute the hybridisation of
(c) a lack of temporal perspective: claims neglect the practice of spatial claims – and the ordering and othering implicated – to
public-art realisation, that is the evolution of claims and the reciprocal influence of the actors involved. In consultation
claim coalitions over the time horizon of the art projects: with one another throughout the project, the locational aware-
preparation, implementation, and evaluation. ness betokened by actors’ claims became valorised in relation to
each other. Foremost, VMZ and FYW were both overridingly con-
As to be expected from the theoretical framework, these diffi- sidered examples for public-art led urban upgrading in other spa-
culties touch on the two main critiques of public-art research: a tial settings, international business centres and restructuring
lack of evaluation of public-art claims and the essentialist nature neighbourhoods respectively. Such higher ambition of creating
of these claims. The first critique of sound evaluative systematics an exemplary project did not result in a rhetoric neutralising
applied to both case studies. With regard to the second critique, the localities wherein the projects took place. VMZ and FYW were
essentialist reasoning needs some empirical differentiation. We not seen as ‘products’ that could come about in an isotropic ‘spa-
stipulate this differentiation throughout our conclusions about tial container’. Instead, the projects’ valorisation comprehended
the three dimensions addressed above, and with all due deference reflexive thinking about the inconstant nature of the spatial
we are aware of the reflexive rather than representative relevance images that project claims communicate on the one hand and
of our insights gained from the interviewees. the (potential) appropriation of these images by public space’s
This study’s actors’ perspective opened up enlightening vistas to users on the other. The multivocality of the public artscape should
public-art practice and its encompassed geographies as experi- therefore be borne in mind, also throughout the project, which
enced by public-art producers: artists, public officials, investors, brings us to the following end point.
and participating residents. The case studies showed that the pro- Considering the temporal perspective of the public-art claims, we
ducers did not generally consider the concept, form, symbolism may conclude that claims were formulated in order to attract fund-
and context of public art as self-evident phenomena in urban ing in the first place. By and large these claims did not erode con-
space. Nevertheless, sometimes they did reveal assumed thoughts siderably, even though they were not used within an evaluative
about ‘the public’. On an analytic-generalising note, this work reference system. The actors influenced each other’s oratory, either
demonstrated actor-typical public-art claims. Two discourses of in formal meetings or informal encounters. The mutual influence
public-art producers formed congruous claim coalitions: the phys- reinforced claim coalitions over time. Furthermore, public-art
ical-aesthetic and cultural-symbolic discourse of artists, and the claims should not be conceptually entangled within the purview
socioeconomic discourse of public officials, investors, and partici- of the realisation of these claims. Nevertheless, they have to be
pating residents. In finer detail, artists emphasised aesthetic and put into the perspective of realisation: the stubbornness of pub-
symbolic claims in a broad package such as FYW’s ‘social sculp- lic-art practice. VMZ took the brunt as regards claims that were
ture’ (the ‘publics’ as art) and VMZ’s effort to create a physical-aes- slackened by financial setbacks and bureaucratic and legal con-
thetic artscape for a new, almost imagined public. Furthermore, straints. This study’s temporal focus made clear that the relation-
artists revived their core idea(l)s and intuition. They did not high- ship between discourse and practice is less than a marriage of
light symbolic claims punctuated with economic vistas that were convenience. Claims might emerge spontaneously, survive, and
common among the other actors; note VMZ’s contemplated role either converge or diverge. In the juxtaposition of the theoretical
as a showpiece and the perceived exemplary function of FYW for and empirical claims about public art, one must ask: who says
other socioeconomic restructuring programmes in the city. Public what, in which spatial context, and when? Our concluding reflec-
officials were primarily concerned with socioeconomic urban tion covers three points.
794 M. Zebracki et al. / Geoforum 41 (2010) 786–795

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