• Serra's claim of censorship:
• Serra claim TA removal violated his lst Amendment free speech rights
• Many of Serra's and TA's advocates argued that TA had effect of criticizing Federal Plaza by revealing its dysfunctional state
• Whether or not this was Serra's intention
• Can one's rights of speech be violated when the restrictions are on something one did not intend to say?
• Kelly claims they also compounded Federal Plaza's problems
• And people made TA the scapegoat for those problems
• By removing TA, they achieved a restoration of the plaza to a more tolerable, less dysfunctional state
• Court ruling on censorship
• Court says free speech rights were not violated because he relinquished them when he sold TA to GAS
• Since TA was not site specific, his freedom of speech not violated when it was removed
• So if TA had been site specific, its removal would have violated his rights of free speech?
• Court rejected Serra's assertion that he could only express himself via TA in Federal Plaza
• His right of free speech even in particular expression of TA could survival its removal from plaza
• The idea is that TA was not affected by the plaza; its identity was not determined by the plaza
• Court said Serra has right to express himself, but no particular right to do so in Federal Plaza
• GSA decision was content neutral: Not trying to restrict individual artistic expression but restore public space


• Was TA site specific?
• For TA to be site specific was for there to be a legal relation between site and artwork that prevented its relocation/removal
• This seems like it has nothing to do with site specificity but rather with the legality of its removal
• Site specificity in an artistic sense concerns whether that location is essential to the nature of that piece of artwork
• Court argued not site specific and Kelly agrees
• To be site specific to Federal Plaza TA had to be public, but it was not
  • Since it privatized a bit of public space, and did not take into consideration the public as people and as space
    
    
• Why was TA not public?
  
  
• It was a wrongful inclosure by a private person of public property-something that should be free and open to the enjoyment of the public
• Can we make sense of this? Is it suppose to be like building a private swiming pool on public land?
• TA a private sculpture located in public space
• Not public art specific to a particular public site
• Serra privatized a public space instead of creating a public sculpture in it
• Serra: "Ideally I would prefer to have a private space in a public situation"
• Since TA not public, it was not site specific and thus it was not destroyed by being removed
• I don't see the connection between public and site specific.
• Why couldn't private art be site-specific (defined in part by its site)?
• It clearly was in public space and in that sense it was public
• But not public in another sense (it did not pay attention to the wishes/interests of the public who use the plaza)
• Serra did not take the public seriously (did not pay attention to their interests)
• Serra did not have to appease all the publics of Federal Plaza
• But Serra deliberately ignored and even defy them
• Serra did not regard the public who experienced TA as people who had legitimate aesthetic or other claims to the Plaza
• "TA treats the plaza as abstract space regardless of its function or meaning within the urban fabric"
• He thought of the people as "traffic" in the plaza
• Serra did not want to "worry about the indigenous community and get caught up in the politics of the site"
• This seems to me to directly contradict Horowitz's account of what TA was doing: Getting people to think about the politics of urban open space
• Kelly interprets this as Serra refusing to deal with the public on whose behalf GSA acted
• For art to be public, it must be created with a recognition by the artist of the people (the relevant "public")
  • For TA to be public, Serra would have had to recognize the identities and rights of the publics associated with the plaza (worked there, lived there, visited)
    
    
• Serra treated Federal Plaza as a space constituted more by aesthetic (artistic?) issues than public issues
• Purpose of TA, says Serra, not only to redefine people's experience of the plaza, but to alter the space itself:
• "After the piece is created, the space will be understood primarily as a function of the sculpture"
• Reciprocity needed for site specificity: Kelly argues that if it is going to be site specific, not only must the space be altered by the sculpture, but the sculpture must be altered by the space
• Kelly claims it was not: "In its own way TA floats above its urban site"
• Serra had a one sided notion of site specificity



• Serra was trying to show the autonomy of sculpture from architecture
• And this undermines his site specific claim
• Typically sculpture was treated as having a mere decorative function for the buildings around it
• "I've found a way to dislocate/alter the decorative function of the plaza and bring people into the sculpture's context"
• Serra wanted to enlightened people about public space by forcing people to recognize his sculpture separate from the architecturally defined space of the plaza
• Main worry is that Serra was coercing the public and confronting the public?
• Public rejected Serra's offer to be enlightened and reciprocated his confrontational gesture by blocking his efforts to redefine their space w/o being consulted.

 

• Serra's lack of respect for democracy (with regard to matters of public art)
• Serra prefers to work in countries with strong governments not directly responsible to the public (less democratic than the U.S.) (E.g., Germany and France)
• His wife, speaking for Serra says: "I have come to realize that democracy doesn't work all that well in integrating art and the public" "I don't think you can include a community in that kind of decision-making process. A government can educate a community; this is almost non-existent in the U.S., but France is very good about it."
  

DETAILS ON MAYA LIN VIETNAM VETERANS MEMORIAL

• Lin won a 1981veterans sponsored national competition (1,421 proposals) for design
• Veterans were principle organizers (raised money, arranged competition, chose the jury, oversaw construction ad led the dedication)
• Politicians left out and so not have to resolve deeply partisan debates about wisdom of Vietnam war
• Congressional approval needed only for land on Washington Mall where situated
• Some tried unsuccessfully to challenge its funding (but this was private)
• Unveiled in 1982
• Overwhelmingly supported by viewing public
• Year after year the most visited monument in Washington
• Two granite walls, 450 feet and meet at apex
• Veneered so reflect surrounding space (Washington Monument and Lincoln memorial)
• Linked the VVM with two other memorials about divisive wars in U.S. history
• Lin accentuated time frame of war by listing names chronologically by when soldiers died from 1959 to 1975
• Discourages mere filing past the names as they start in middle and go to right end and then continue in the middle concluding at left end
• Names sunken 10 feet below the ground, so to visit the names of the dead one has to go underground
  
• Photos of VVM
• https://www.americanrhetoric.com/images/VietnamVeteransMemorialwall.jpg
• https://bensguide.gpo.gov/images/symbols/vietnam_flowers.jpg
• https://www.achievement.org/achievers/lin0/large/lin0-029.jpg
  
• Some veterans and members of Congress strongly objected to her design
• Though it unheroic
• Reminded citizens more of individual death and national defeat than of the war's mission
• Wanted more traditional war memorial promoting patriotism
• Led by Ross Perot, opposition did succeed in having a second memorial built on the Mall ("Three Fighting Men" designed by Frederick Hart)
• Helped diffuse opposition of VVM
• Kelly thinks VVM was a "counter-monument"
  • Critical of other memorials
• But also showing what else a memorial can be
  
• Lin and organizers of VVM politically astute (and not politically neutral)
• Design of memorial was to make no political statement regarding the war or its conduct
• A black v-shaped memorial into ground listing names of dead seems like a pretty political statement to me
• Dedicate memorial to veterans and not war
• Must be "reflective and contemplative" in nature; so surviving veterans could meditate on Vietnam wars tragic complexity
  
• Public regards memorial/sculpture as its own, rather than a sculpture belonging to an artist who regards them as "traffic"

• Kelly claims VVM is site specific in exactly sense TA was not
• It took into consideration the interests and desires of the public who the sculpture was for
  
• Ways VVM was site specific
• (I think it better to say "was public")
• Lin did not presume to resolve debate about that war; many individuals and publics are represented by the memorial
• Viewing the piece is to enter a debate
• Public art's task is to keep debate alive and open ended
• Reflected other monuments (and in this sense is site specific)
  • Serra's TA stood out against the surrounding architecture
• Lin respected public's autonomy with respect to public art, Serra did not
  • Instead of Serra's idea of having viewers experience his sculpture and his idea of architectural space
• Lin brings viewers to experience the subject matter of the memorial
• Allows visitors to revisit the Vietnam War on their own terms
• She did not pretend to reach a consensus on the war
• Public guided the artist in the Lin case
• Art experts involved in selection of Lin design chosen and guided by the veterans
• Serra case: artists insisted on maneuvering the public
• Lin worked with rather than against (a la Serra) the people and the space
• Not combative like Serra


• Of course a war memorial should--and would have to--treat its subject matter more gently and be more subservient to its viewers than the sort of sculpture Serra created



• KELLY'S MAIN LESSON(S)
• Learned from Serra and Lin cases
• Artists who make public art can no longer deal with the public on their own (artists) terms (using/imposing their artistic ideas on the public)
• Can't privilege the private over the public
• Must submit themselves to negotiations with the public about the public's art (it is not the artist's art)
• Lin did this; Serra now acknowledges this and public art since these cases has done this
  
• Is this the claim that public art must submit to the taste/desires of the public, rather than educating them about that taste or other matters?
• Do the TA and VVM cases show that for public art to succeed it must submit to the desires, tastes, and beliefs of the public, rather than educating or challenging them about their taste, desires, and/or beliefs?



• VVM not a public statement about individual artistic rights or rights of sculpture in relation to architecture (as with Serra)
• A site for the public to express itself on the issue of Vietnam in different and competing ways



• Lin shows us how to handle controversy involving public art w/o imposing anyone set of aesthetic or political principles onto the public