Art in Public Places

Background

In an effort to realize NYU's full potential for the display and promotion of art, NYU’s Provost convened in 2017 a leading group of University faculty— scholars and practitioners—across a wide spectrum of schools and disciplines. Their charge was to begin to lay the groundwork for a public art initiative by researching the practices and policies of other universities and identifying issues to be considered in order to activate our campus with the visual arts.

NYU is a leader in education for the arts and creative research and practice, and art on campus and in public building spaces should reflect this leadership status.
- From the NYU Public Art Committee Report

Next Steps

In order to advance the work of this first Committee, the Provost asked a subset of members of the original Committee to form the Art in Public Places Committee to refine next steps.

The Art in Public Places committee has since been working to:

• consider spaces around the University where public art may be displayed
• compose a policy concerning public art at NYU
• make recommendations regarding the Mercer construction project and address the decentralized nature of art and public spaces at NYU
• evaluate the benefit of NYU's commissioning public art
• and draft a brief statement stating why public art is an important cause and is beneficial to a person’s learning environment and general sense of wellbeing

This group is chaired by Edward Sullivan, Professor of Art History at the Institute of Fine Arts and Provostial Fellow for the Arts.

Read the Comittee's Full Report