While the public art field has grown rapidly over the last three decades, little attention has been paid to preservation. Artworks that were installed with great effort are now suffering the ravages of time, sending conservators and commissioning agencies into a vigorous search for solutions. Conservation and Maintenance of Contemporary Public Art is a collection of papers based on presentations delivered at a conference held in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 2001. Among the contributors are many of the most renowned artists, administrators, critics, and conservators working in public art today. Together, they bring varied perspectives on the complex issues involved.
Theoretical questions of permanence and public participation are addressed along with specific concerns, such as funding and legal responsibilities. The book also includes case studies that examine major conservation projects and how commissioning agencies have responded to the conservation challenge.
Impressive in its scope and effective as a stimulant for ongoing discussion, the conference on Conservation and Maintenance of Contemporary Public Art brought together two professional worlds that meet increasingly in the field yet seldom assess the relationship and share experience ....The list of topics discussed and the speakers and panelists gathered in Cambridge provided an unusual opportunity to learn about the issues, share experiences, and establish an ongoing public dialogue for what in many ways has been a clandestine relationship.
Ricardo Barreto, Public Art Review
Not only did [the conference] successfully integrate conservation and maintenance with actual, extensive, and highly diverse case studies, it also creatively developed an overview of the wide spectrum of contemporary public art. It allowed for major discourse of like-minded artists, conservationists, scholars, museum curators, and administrators. Truly, this was a remarkable convention focused on a difficult succession of quality-of-life issues.
Mark Favermann, Art New England
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Acknowledgements
Preface
Introduction
Materials, maintenance, change, and community
Materials as rhetoric
Patricia C. Phillips
Maintenance art
Mierle Laderman Ukeles
Biodeterioration, gardening, and public art
Judith M. Jacob and Wendy Jacob
Public participation in conservation 1: The Great Wall of Los Angeles
Judith F. Baca
Public participation in conservation 2: The Kamehameha I Monument in Hawai'i
Glenn Wharton
Temporality and preservation: a panel discussion
Patricia C. Phillips, Nikolas Pappas, Ellen Driscoll, and Craigen Bowen. Moderated and edited by Ann Wilson Lloyd
The peculiarities of public art - six conservation case studies
Conserving in a changing environment: some critical issues and new perspectives
Julie Boivin
The MIT Wiesner building collaboration
Patricia Fuller
Ground work: restoring Robert Morris's untitled earthwork
Helen Lessick
Maintaining integrity: the conservation of Pavilion in the Trees by Martin Puryear
Laura S. Griffith and John Carr
From pillar to post with Ambit
Alison Bracker
Authenticity and appearance: the restoration of Nam June Paik's Requiem for the Twentieth Century
Bradford Gonyer
The owner's challenge
The Cambridge Arts Council's Conservation and Maintenance Program: overview Hafthor Yngvason
Maintenance in the field: a conservator's perspective
Carol Snow
Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority Metro Art program: overview Donna Williams
The role of conservation technicians
Ralph Wanlass
Wisconsin Art Board's Percent for Art Conservation Initiative: overview
Chris Manke
Collection management and databases in Percent for Art programs
Rae Atira-Soncea
The New York City Board of Education's Public Art for Public Schools program: overview
Michele Cohen
An economical approach to conservation
Gregory W. Frux
Issues in contemporary public art conservation
Where to start when the city is full of art - the Los Angeles Murals Assessment and Conservation Project
Leslie Rainer, Chris Stavroudis, Donna Williams, and Aneta Zebala
Preventive medicine for new commissions: conservation review
Edited by Rika Smith McNally
Public art maintenance funding survey
Jack Becker
Creative approaches to preservation funding
Susan Nichols
Sample contract provisions used with public art projects protected under the Visual Artists Rights Act
Andrew D. Epstein, Esq.
Appendix 1: Materials
Appendix 2: Wisconsin Arts Board's Percent for Art Conservation Initiative proposal
Appendix 3: Three-Dimesional Work of Art: Documentation and Conservation Record
Appendix 4: Wisconsin Art Board Percent for Art subject thesaurus
Appendix 5: Public Art for Public Schools maintenance recommendations
List of Contributors
Reviews
This book is indeed a useful tool for new and old public art programs...primary sources for issues in contemporary public art are few and far between. They remind us that if the right ingredients are in the mix, public art can be an important record of city history and, perhaps, even a treasure.
Journal of the Canadian Association of Conservation 28 (2003)
Hafthor Yngvason and the Cambridge Arts Council have done a service for those dealing with issues of preservation of contemporary art. By publishing this collection of essays and broadening the scope of the discussion to artworks in the public realm, they have enlarged and made accessible the current body of knowledge and have provided successful models and valuable resources.
Journal of the American Institute for Conservation 43 (2004) 193 -196
