Public Art
Posts about public art, memorials, and spaces set apart
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US Public Memory, Rhetoric, and the National Mall
A walk down the US National Mall reveals a lot about these United States of America. An iconic feature of the capital city, the public national park is bordered by monuments, memorials, museums, and government buildings that share stories of our nation’s history. US Public Memory, Rhetoric, and the National Mall, a new book from…
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Mice on Main – Greenville, SC
In many cities, hunts for mice on the streets are tasks left to cats, health inspectors, and pest control personnel. Not so in Greenville, SC. Everyone is expected invited to search the city’s main street for the mice that are ever-present and underfoot. The nine bronze mice were a senior project envisioned by Jim Ryan in 2000 during…
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Paradigm Pathway – Greenville, SC
It’s described by some as a whimsical Dr. Seuss floral and by others as an industrial mash-up in metal. In May 2012, the statue was installed on the banks of the Reedy River in downtown Greenville (SC) to mixed reviews. Whereas many residents enjoyed the addition of public art to the pedestrian bridge, some onlookers thought…
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Voicing a Campus Icon
Where do information design theory, digital media, and community engagment intersect? One location is on the Queens University of Charlotte campus inside a fountain in the middle of a major courtyard. That’s the home of @QueensDiana. At the National Communication Association annual conference in New Orleans, Louisiana, I presented a paper on the hyperlocal community engagement enhanced…
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9/11 Remembered in Memorials
On the morning of September 11, 2001, I was sitting in a classroom on the first day of the term at Furman University. I had just finished the first course of my senior year – “Freedom in the Western Tradition” – and was settling into my second of the day – “Islam.” The irony of…
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“Out of the Mountain of Despair, a Stone of Hope”
As I entered the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial in Washington, DC this week, I marched through the mountain of despair. Looking through the gap, all I saw was the east, the water, the promise of life greater than myself. I can only imagine that this was the designer’s intent: that we would walk through the mountain…
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Diana, Queen of the Inanimate Twitterverse
Amidst elements that threaten to oxidize, cleanse, sear and scar, the bronze statue of Young Diana nobly stands, keeping watch over those who pass her by. Cast by renowned sculptor Anna Hyatt Huntington in 1924, the bronze was a gift to the university from the artist herself in 1940. This year, Diana celebrates her seventieth…
J.A.McArthur 