6 Sculptures That Rattled Critics and Shook up Public Art

Featured on artsy.net

Everyone loves art, but not everyone has the time (or the cash) to visit art museums. For this reason, governments have a duty to their people to find the money—taxpayer money, if need be—to pay for free works of art. When these public artworks are at long last unveiled, everyone wins: the artists, for nabbing prestigious government contracts; the people, for gaining access to beautiful art; the governments, for sponsoring the kinds of noble aesthetic achievements that lie at the heart of civilization.

If only things were so simple. In the real world, public art projects are more likely to be Sisyphean ordeals, in which ideals of truth, beauty, and democracy are quickly squashed beneath mounds of controversy. Since at least 1504—the year Leonardo da Vinci tried to use his influence to confine his rival Michelangelo’s masterpiece David to a quiet corner of the Piazza della Signoria—the process of gifting sculpture to the general public has provided art historians with an opportunity to see how the sausage gets made: how power and politics, not just creativity, govern art-making.

The past 200 years have provided any number of opportunities to understand the ins and outs of art made for that strange, possibly fictitious group known as “everyone.” Below, then, are six examples of controversial public sculpture, and with them, six different ways of thinking about art in general.

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