Public art in urban areas offers a window on a city's soul. Art in the form of sculptures, monuments, and other creative expressions can inform us of the ways artists think of the urban environment, the goals of policy makers in art installations, and the way members of the public interact with art and with each other in the city. Taking Singapore as a case study, I argue that contemporary public art has the power to inform place identity and inspire community aspirations. Unlike the hard power of industry, art offers a soft branding approach to imaging the city, its people, and their goals. However, such powers are not limitless, and concerns have also been raised about their publicness and artfulness. The power and powerlessness of public art in Singapore are not unlike those encountered in other cities where artful planning has taken centre stage in contemporary urban redevelopment.

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Public Art Controversy: The Serra and Lin Cases

Art and Soul: Powerful and Powerless Art in Singapore

This article explores three loci of commemoration of 9/11 in New York City: the street memorial exemplified by makeshift shrines, posters of the missing, and graffiti; the museum installations that...

Memory, Visibility, and Public Space: Reflections on Commemoration(s) of 9/11

Fifteen years after the 1999 NATO bombings, a number of emblematic buildings in Belgrade still lie in ruins and are at the center of debates surrounding their reconstruction. This article examines the collective memory and narratives of the NATO bombings through a spatial lens, looking at how architectural discourses of reconstruction relate to multiple understandings and narratives of the bombings themselves. It focuses on how architects in Belgrade discuss and envision the reconstruction of buildings such as the Generalstab in relationship to the collective memories of political violence and war. The article explores the continuum between calls for full restoration and memorialization, by discussing how architects relate to the bombing of 1999 on personal and professional levels, and how narratives of the bombing influence architectural visions for the reconstruction itself. All in all, the article argues that architectural reconstruction, collective memory, and national identity shape each other. On the one hand, reconstruction responds to collective memory as architects make sense of the collective memory of war; on the other hand, reconstructed urban space reshapes memory by creating a new cadre materiel for remembrance.

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Making Sense of Ruins: Architectural Reconstruction and Collective Memory in Belgrade

From Design to Completion: The Transformation of U.S. War Memorials on the National Mall

Art can be addressed, not just to individuals, but to groups. Art can even be part of how groups think to themselves – how they keep a grip on their values over time. I focus on monuments as a case study. Monuments, I claim, can function as a commitment to a group value, for the sake of long-term action guidance. Art can function here where charters and mission statements cannot, precisely because of art’s powers to capture subtlety and emotion. In particular, art can serve as the vessel for group emotions, by making emotional content sufficiently public so as to be the object of a group commitment. Art enables groups to guide themselves with values too subtle to be codified.

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Public Art Controversy: The Serra and Lin Cases

Citations

Art and Soul: Powerful and Powerless Art in Singapore

Memory, Visibility, and Public Space: Reflections on Commemoration(s) of 9/11

Making Sense of Ruins: Architectural Reconstruction and Collective Memory in Belgrade

From Design to Completion: The Transformation of U.S. War Memorials on the National Mall

Monuments as Commitments: How Art Speaks to Groups and How Groups Think in Art

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