Public Art & Ethics Today

Public Art & Ethics Today

When art belongs to all of us, what responsibilities does it have and who gets to decide?

Public art works have long been sites of debate, even controversy. Often funded by taxpayer dollars and claiming space in our civic commons, they rightfully draw intense scrutiny. In the Bay Area, public art has stoked recent disputes over access to community resources, gentrification and displacement, cultural representation, and the treatment of history and collective trauma – to say nothing of taste, which is informed by all of these things.

But, as public art exposes social tensions, can it also help us engage in civil dialogue? In divided times, can public art create spaces of common moral imagination and shared purpose? Should it even be subject to any such democratic imperative? What responsibility does public art have to the public, especially as it becomes more fragmented and its ethical standards evolve over time?

As San Francisco grappled with heated debates over murals, monuments, and other works occupying its civic spaces, artists and thinkers Dewey Crumpler, Cristóbal Martinez, and Zoé Samudzi KQED arts reporter Chloe Veltman for this discussion on the ethics of public art in the 21st Century, how they are playing out locally, and what they can teach us about sharing space.

Presented in partnership between KQED and SFMOMA’s Open Space.