How does one begin to rank the area's best public art? My criteria include aesthetics (beginning with beauty, but more than that), pleasure, meaning.
Exploring our community’s public art this way, you get a deeper vision of what we have, of the rich histories of our many, diverse communities, of different possibilities already (if perhaps tentatively) being explored.
There are familiar stories here, but also stories rarely told. This list adopts a more expansive definition of art - accommodating “fine art” sculptures as well as landmark signs, graffiti, dinosaurs, conceptual art, psychogeography, secrets and surprises often left out of other lists.
SOCIAL BUTTERFLY MEDAL WANDERING WILLOWS NOT WORKING FULL
This ranking of public art around Greater Boston is an attempt to reassess what we have, and to make a more full accounting by acknowledging the best pieces in our downtown parks and government plazas - while looking beyond, out into our neighborhoods and suburbs. In the past few years, excitement has been growing around Greater Boston about new possibilities for public art after a string of spectacular temporary projects - JR’s mural of a man standing on a raft wheatpasted onto the side of the (former) Hancock building, Janet Echelman’s glowing rope web suspended over the Rose Kennedy Greenway, Amanda Parer’s giant inflatable rabbits at Lawn On D and graffiti stars Os Gemeos’ giant painting of a cartoon guy at Dewey Square.Īs these projects have embraced more delight and daring, I’ve been thinking about the long-term public artworks around here.įormer Boston Globe art critic Sebastian Smee has called our community’s collection of public art “frankly mediocre” and “relentlessly conservative.” Globe columnist Yvonne Abraham has lamented our “stodgy legions of bronze figures depicting politicians and sporting or other heroes.” Boston has some of the greatest 19th century bronze monuments in the nation, but overall, the collection is seen as too white, too male, too bronze, too dated, too dull. (Composite by Jesse Costa/WBUR) This article is more than 5 years old.
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