Food has always been one of the firmest definers of place. Cheese-steak sandwiches, pit beef, and deep-dish pizza are edible shorthand for Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Chicago. Iowa is about corn and Maine is about lobster. But food has subtler and more complex connections to place. It can be a part of rituals that hallow a … Read More

World – Public art today is a rapidly growing and evolving field. Each project embodies a unique convergence of time and place, artist and community, style and approach, vision and actualization. Yet public art lacks evaluative studies, in-depth research, and comparative data to serve the expanding field worldwide. Likewise, information about high-caliber projects in different cities and countries is not broadly accessible across … Read More

Religion, with its emphasis on tradition, has a pretty uneasy relationship with the latest styles in contemporary culture, art included. Much church art, including public art, wavers nervously between a comforting traditionalism and an attempt to be of the moment—somehow. (The cringe-inducing attempts of religious authorities to “reach the youth” by, say, text messages from … Read More