Just art, politics and publics: Researching geographies of public art and accountability

This article draws a geographical research agenda on public art and accountability. The rationale for doing so lies in what I consider the ‘bird’s-eye doctrine’ that prevails in today’s publicly funded urban public-art practice. I argue that the roles and uses of art in urban public space are primarily understood and designed through the chiefly essentialist eye of public art’s enablers, being particularly policy-makers, planners, artists and practitioners. Such bird’s-eye doctrine scarcely challenges the everyday social realities of public art from the ground level, that is, from the eyes of the very publics for whom public art is and should ideally be intended. On the basis of a literature study and the author’s previous empirical research, this article provides pointers for how future research could further geographically disentangle public-art practices at the crossroads of the domains of the publics, politics and art. More particularly, such research should dwell on the extent to which public-art practices account and should account for genuinely involving the publics in the preparation, realization, evaluation and everyday social realities of public art at different yet co-emerging socio-spatial levels of public-art practice.