Turds in the plaza: How do we fix public art?

“Nobody wants to upset anybody with art,” says Shiro Muchiri, founder of townhouse gallery SoShiro Space in Marylebone. “If today’s art is only about what size and what budget, we might end up in a very boring era.”

Muchiri is discussing art for public spaces, an area of hot debate since at least the 1970s, when artist James Wines coined the phrase “Plop Art” and said of public art: “I don’t care if they want to put up these boring glass boxes, but why do they always deposit that little turd in the plaza when they leave?”

More than a decade on, Tom Wolfe’s article, The Worship of Art: Notes on the New God – published in Harper’s in October 1984 characterises the history of public sculpture in America as going from glorifying ideals and triumphs, to glorifying “the person or group who paid for it”, to the glorification of art itself:

“If people want to place Turds in the Plaza as a form of religious offering or prayer, and they own the plazas, there isn’t much anybody else can do about it,” Wolfe writes. “But what happens when they use public money, tax money, to do the same thing on plazas owned by the public? At that point you’re in for a glorious farce.”   

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No fan of Henry Moore or Richard Serra, Wolfe concludes that communities fail to connect with most public art because they aren’t meant to – the art is supposed to go over Joe Public’s head as that’s what legitimises it as high art: “Public bafflement or opposition is taken as evidence of an object’s spiritual worthiness.”

In the end, Wolfe considers whether it’s people, not landowners, that should determine what artworks are installed in public spaces.

That’s a question Muchiri has been asking herself, too. The gallerist has teamed up with Hanna Afolabi, founder of Mood and Space, to create a new art consultancy entitled Art in Architecture, with the ambition to change the way public art is commissioned.

Their founding idea is to use the process of commissioning art on major projects in existing communities to deliver a positive social impact at every stage of development – from community engagement through to the installation of the artwork itself.

Social value may be gaining in importance as the S in ESG investment, but art is rarely seen as a means to making that positive impact. But Afolabi argues that art can play a unique role and crack some notoriously difficult nuts when it comes to social value: “We assume that everyone wants a new job or an apprenticeship, but actually some people just want to feel that they belong,” says Afolabi. “There’s a massive opportunity to use art to make people to feel represented in their community.”

Inducing a feeling of belonging is not an easy thing to do. But the potential for art doesn’t end there. Muchiri also sees the opportunity to support artists from diverse backgrounds – people from the community who may not have access to the substantial resources required to create public art, ie. you can’t make a bronze statue in a bedsit. There’s also the opportunity to learn about art, the art industry, the artistic process and connect with artists.