Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

This guide to New York's official public art from 1982 to 2004 includes about 200 works by ethnically diverse painters, sculptors, and metalworkers, as well as makers of quilts, mosaics, ceramics, and landscape and earth art. Rivers, by Houston Conwill, Estella Conwill Majozo, and Joseph DePace, Bill and Mary Buchen's two sound pieces for playgrounds, and Mierle Laderman Ukeles's justly famous Fresh Kills Landfill project are all outstanding. Large color plates record the pieces, but, unfortunately, the cultural commentary is lackluster, proclaiming the art a "dessert" or a "happy" addition to the city's architecture. When artists are quoted, they speak of the "anguish" of their responsibility to provoke visual communication with and within harried commuters and the boroughs' inhabitants-especially children but also tourists, the hospitalized, and the incarcerated. Interestingly, none of the artworks shown dates from 2001, and none is specifically related to 9/11. Criticisms aside, this is a book of some consequence: a distinctive, lavish, coffee table-style tome that is highly recommended for the browsing shelf and specialized collections.-Mary Hamel-Schwulst, Univ. of Southern Mississippi Lib., Long Beach (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

CHOICE Review

Published to mark the 20th anniversary of New York City's Percent for Art Program, City Art documents the 189 projects completed by the time the book went to press as well as 39 projects then under way. Begun in 1982 as the city was emerging from the fiscal crisis of the 1970s, the Percent for Art Program allocated as much as $400,000 to incorporate art into each new construction project. Unlike the turn-of-the-20th-century crusade to incorporate Beaux Arts classical sculpture onto public buildings and in public places, which historian Michele Bogart describes as an attempt to promote civic culture and order at a time when New York's population was incredibly diverse, the Percent for Art Program embraces a different goal. Its projects are site-specific art; in collaboration with city agencies and neighborhood representatives, the artists generally attempt to reflect the evolving nature of specific communities and the people who live there. Although some of the art represented is abstract, most incorporates aspects of the neighborhood's history, remote or recent. Eleanor Heartney's essay "The City as Laboratory" is a thoughtful meditation on the meanings of public art in our time. ^BSumming Up: Highly recommended. General readers; upper-division undergraduates; graduate students; professionals. D. Schuyler Franklin & Marshall College