Mary Jane Jacob, Public Art, and Miwon Kwon

"As public art has developed over the last two decades, its emphasis has been on techniques of integration-not just to incorporate art physically into buildings and parks but also to foster social assimiliation."

-Hafthor Yngvason in "One Place After Another" by Miwon Kwon, Page 115


This quote helps to highlight and emphasize the main points given in the lecture by Mary Jane Jacob last night. Jacob shows how the world of participatory art started in the early 1900s when it was realized that museums tended to isolate art, because of how they "reflected a superior cultural status". The main idea of participatory art stems from cutting out the "middle man", which in this case is the museum, and bringing the work of art and the audience directly together. In public art, the artist introduces something new into a culture that may or may not be percieved as art. This requires the participation and communication of the members of the community in order to relate to the themselves, the piece of art, and the environment and helps to shape a meaning for the piece of art. This idea of creating a meaning for a piece of art focuses very little on the aesthetics of the artwork and focuses on uniting the members of the community. Throughout her lecture, Mary Jane Jacob focuses mainly on the recent works of public art being displayed in Charleston, South Carolina. These various works of art are focusing on uniting the black and white communities of the city by trying to bring together the slave and "superior" class cultures that were evident in the early to mid-1800s, at the height of the slave trade.