Annually, the Public Art Network (PAN) Year in Review recognizes outstanding public art projects that represent the most compelling work for the year from across the country and beyond. The projects are selected and presented by a jury of three professionals who represent different aspects of the public art field, including artists, administrators, and other public art allies. New this year, the PAN Advisory Council curated the selected 49 selected projects for 2018 under five unique themes to broaden the exposure of the selected works on ARTSblog and social media, and to provide context to the works through national trends and themes that are impacting the field today.

Many of 2018’s selected public art projects addressed issues at the forefront of current political discourse — particularly, how history and culture has not represented race, gender, sexuality, and class with fairness. Politically and socially, the issues are playing out through the incoming U.S. House of Representatives and the #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements, among others. The arts and culture field is not exempt from addressing these national challenges, as demonstrated in recent museum exhibitions focused on decolonization, through the debate on memorials and monuments, and with temporary and permanent public artworks. Of the 2018 selected PAN Year in Review projects, six uniquely addressed the issue of underrepresented histories. 

Annually, the Public Art Network (PAN) Year in Review recognizes outstanding public art projects that represent the most compelling work for the year from across the country and beyond. The projects are selected and presented by a jury of three professionals who represent different aspects of the public art field, including artists, administrators, and other public art allies. New this year, the PAN Advisory Council curated the selected 49 selected projects for 2018 under five unique themes to broaden the exposure of the selected works on ARTSblog and social media, and to provide context to the works through national trends and themes that are impacting the field today.

Over the past decade, performative and participatory public artworks have gained in popularity with commissioning agencies and the communities they serve. Typically, public art is seen as a long-term, integrated, stationary, visual arts-based artwork. Performative and participatory projects allow for a new type of public art that that include multiple sensory experiences and a different way of engaging community where a whole community may be considered an artist. Performative and participatory public art projects create music, encourage touch, and utilize participation to be fully realized as a completed art piece. Of the 2018 selected PAN Year in Review projects, 15 uniquely expanded the definitions of artist, medium, and material. These performative and participatory projects are redefining both the commissioning process and what is expected of a finalized public artwork. 

Annually, the Public Art Network (PAN) Year in Review recognizes outstanding public art projects that represent the most compelling work for the year from across the country and beyond. The projects are selected and presented by a jury of three professionals who represent different aspects of the public art field, including artists, administrators, and other public art allies. New this year, the PAN Advisory Council curated the selected 49 selected projects for 2018 under five unique themes to broaden the exposure of the selected works on ARTSblog and social media, and to provide context to the works through national trends and themes that are impacting the field today.

Site-responsiveness is a hallmark of public art, wherein the artist(s) commits to an investigation of site to inform the work. Creative investigation considers geography, locality, topography, community (local, historical and global), and history (local, private and national)—sometimes re-telling well-known stories and sometimes unearthing long forgotten or unheard stories. The 2018 PAN Year in Review projects featured below each serve as a social agent to explore local histories of what we build, create, and invent. Holding our histories to inform our futures, these works also explore human perception, evolution, conflict, and progress. Many of these projects acknowledge environments or communities that once existed in these landscapes, reinterpreting history of community in a contemporary and, in many cases, interactive way.

The “Lost & Found Factory” tapped into our personal memories of singular connections we have to special things. These objects may be small or large or abstract and unwieldy, and yet somehow they all have been etched onto our minds. They act as symbols for relationships, relics of important moments, or as souvenirs that take use back to places we have experienced. 

“My hope is that the piece will shift viewers out of their everyday space and into a sense of wonder, make them think about things in a different way."

Creative Justice is a public art program, but it is also a social justice movement. No coincidence that both art and social movements are born of imagination. They are about exploring the possibilities we create as individuals and as members of communities. About seeing where we are and where we want to go. In doing so, they articulate the power and potential of our communities.

Public art can serve as a platform to educate, create awareness, and to inspire action. As an artist working in communities for more than 15 years, I believe that when we decide to write and tell our own stories and create the images that are true reflections of who we decide we are—those are revolutionary acts.

More than anything, this project has shown me the power of art. You can reach a public that spans the globe and this reach is exponential.

As public art project managers, we walk the line between nudging artists to push their vision and practice while giving them the confidence and trust to imagine and execute a groundbreaking artwork. Trusting your own expertise and instinct—paired with an understanding of an artist’s aesthetic, studio practice and process—paves the way for an authentic and successful artwork.

Imagine Art Here: Tysons Tiles was an ambitious project for a public art novice. I learned some valuable lessons managing a public art project for the first time that I’d like to pass along.

My brief was to make something temporary, to create a colorful distraction to the development and inspire people—but it accomplished so much more: it confirmed that culture is an essential amenity to the growth of a city. 

I envisioned an image of the sheep straying into the park. It is as if, from somewhere far away, one day a flock of sheep wander into Chinatown Park at the Rose Kennedy Greenway for some unknown reason. But at the same time, they look natural as if they have been there all along.

“Chroma Booster” plays on the tradition of having a fountain in large public gathering spaces. The 55-foot tall painted pipes invited visitors to the pathway to cool off in the mist or play with other features that will send water cascading on their friends. Visitors see how art can be transformational and repurpose something utilitarian like a parking lot into a vibrant public meeting space.

The more I looked at the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers coming together in Pittsburgh to form the Ohio River, the more I drew parallels between those waters and myself. I, and so many others like me, are the children of two genetic and cultural rivers that propelled towards each other for thousands of years. The confluence of these two rivers can be seen as the unavoidable collision of the Old World with the New World.

Murmur Wall is a two-year experimental installation that offers a glimpse into the immediate future. It is an artificially intelligent, anticipatory architecture that reveals what the city is whispering, thinking, and feeling in real-time. 

“Passing Storms” portrays the changing weather as metaphor for unpredictable and shifting states of mind. As the residents and visitors move through the hospital courtyards, they see the cloud and rain sculptures subtly change depending on the angle of the light and the color of the sky.