Whose Public Art? Monuments and Murals in a Contested Public Sphere

Public art, murals, and monuments have become a flashpoint for debate over civic values, memory, and belonging. The United States has experienced increased contestation over public symbols, particularly historic statues, with responses ranging from direct action defacement, protests, removal, and lawsuits. While public art in the twenty-first century is often considered more accessible and democratic, questions emerge about whom these projects represent in relation to changing publics, race and class dispossession, arts-led regeneration, privatization, and state oversight. Public mural projects may empower communities through self-representation and alternative historical narratives, but murals can be appropriated by commercial interests and designed to police urban space. This course aims to develop a complex understanding of monuments and public art in a contested public sphere; diverse case studies situate these projects in the symbolic and material production of place. While centering ethnography, this course includes multi-disciplinary approaches from urban studies and visual cultural studies, and draws on multimodal methodological strategies for assessing the "public" in public art.