What’s Happened To Public Sculpture?

“Outdoor art isn’t what it used to be. Once it honored heroic individuals and upheld values that whole populations could embrace.” (Think of the Statue of Liberty, or the Grand Army Plazas in Manhattan and Brooklyn.) “Today, excepting memorials like the Vietnam veterans wall, outdoor art serves rather to divert, amuse and comfort. … The big problem for outdoor art is the absence of any consensus of values in our pluralistic, multicultural society. It’s hard to imagine a public sculpture of a hero today that would not be regarded by one faction or another as partisan.”