“Audacious and appalling when it’s aimed at a museum masterpiece, the vandalizing of freely accessible, open-air artworks carries its own set of meanings and effects. Community murals, public sculpture and other forms of outdoor art are clearly more vulnerable than a museum’s protected holdings. But public pieces also tap notions of shared ownership and mutual interest (or mutual distaste) to raise an ongoing, open-ended mingling of reactions, feelings and reconsiderations. The public space belongs to everyone and no one. Art that is placed there engages and enacts that idea.”