Dr Courtney Pedersen is the Head of Visual Arts at Queensland University of Technology and Senior Lecturer in Art History / Theory. Her research interests include visual arts practice, gender and social space. Her ongoing observation of the role of public art stems from her PhD, an exploration of feminism, genealogy and social history through public installation art, completed in 2005.

Art and the Anxious City

Public art, public interest and the public good

While public art is often considered a key hallmark of a creative city, artworks in the public realm also have the capacity to act as lightening rods for social anxiety at times of perceived crisis. This paper considers recent debates about government-sponsored public art projects in Queensland in light of three international case studies: Rodin’s Thinker in Paris, Tilted Arc in New York and Vault in Melbourne. It considers whether consensus positions on public art are possible or desirable in light of issues of spatial control, and proposes that well-negotiated anxieties about public art may be an indicator of creative vibrancy and dynamism that will assist in the future understanding of Queensland’s experiment with government-mandated public art.