Public Art

Trail Towns, a program that promotes the economic potential of rails-to-trails systems, explains how art can create a sense of place and promote creative reuse along the trail.

Street artist Cayetano Ferrer likes to take everyday urban objects like street signs or electrical boxes and use paint and stickers to camoflage them so they basically disappear.

West Hollywood, California recently opened a new public library, hiring a number of prominent artists like Shepard Fairey to turn it into a local landmark.

In New York, Arts for Transit is a program that was started to bring "original and integrated artworks into MTA stations and spaces and to promote design excellence." Director, Sandra Bloodworth sits with Urban Omnibus to discuss the program.

ArtPrize, a yearly art festival in Grand Rapids, Michigan, is attracting unprecedented crowds to this unexpected destination.

A group of local artists in Omaha, Nebraska are putting their mark on old grain elevators located right in the heart of the city, making the art pieces an Omaha fixture.

Rocco Landesman, Chairman of the NEA, has long make the link between the arts and economic development. He is one of the big hitters behind ArtPlace, a public-private collaboration to foster creative placemaking.

Artists are using the vacant buildings of the Rust Belt to create their art, and to comment on possibilities and visions for the future.

Graffiti artists from around the world were invited to transform the brutalist post-war architecture of Bristol, England's Nelson Street.

New street furniture being tested in the Broadway pedestrian zone attempts to create a semi-sheltered, intimate space in the middle of the glitz of 42nd St.

Public art plays a role in cities across the world. But what role exactly, and for what purpose? Glass House Conversations explores these questions in this series.

A variety of unsanctioned urban art projects are scattered throughout Toronto, bringing life and energy to otherwise underused spaces.

A new 26-foot statue of Marilyn Monroe -- recreating a famous film scene in which wind blows up the star's skirt -- has been unveiled in Chicago. Tourists seem to like it, but others argue it's too kitschy.

The legacy of Los Angeles murals has all but left the city, buried under sign ordinances, billboard policy and tagging. Tanner Blackman in the Dept. of City Planning Code Studies Section is working to free up the knot of regulation.

South Korea's law mandates developers to commission public art as 1% of the total cost of a proposed project. What the law does not specify is the level of taste that comes with it.

Toronto artist Caroline Macfarlane found a rusted bicycle that had been locked to a bike rack for a very long time. She decided to make it into art, painting the whole bike neon pink and adding a basket of flowers. The city responded by fining her.

Faces are appearing in Brooklyn, plastered along the slats of front stoops as part of a participatory public art project by famous French street artist JR.

An independent group is seeking to "ignite essential discussions about art in Los Angeles" by getting locals to put APPROVE or DISAPPROVE stickers on public art around the city.

The capper to the San Pablo Avenue Streetscape Project is to be a public art project that would line the boulevard. But the art commission in charge has rejected the artists' plans as "poorly done" and wants them to come back with a new concept.

Does public art make a difference, and how? ASLA's The Dirt blog looks at all the ways public art is effective, from job creation and real estate value to cultural cache and tourism.