New Urban Monuments: Critical Urbanism as Curatorial Practice

Sammanfattning: New Genre Public Art was originally defined by Suzanne Lacy in 1991 as an activist approach to the public; it was a type of public art that was often created outside the institutional structure which brought the artist into direct engagement with the audience, while addressing social and political issues. In 1993, the public art exhibition ’Culture in Action’, curated by Mary Jane Jacob, marked a conceptual shift from static to dynamic public art. The exhibition is considered a landmark event in the development of public art as it was among the first projects to frame communities as the structure and content of its art.During the past decade (2010–2020), urban development has become incorporated as an integral part of the work of the Public Art Agency Sweden, and the agency have established their own curatorial department in order to curate and produce their own public art exhibitions. As Public Art Agency Sweden is a State agency, their work is largely determined by official policies formulated by the Swedish government. This thesis analyzes the contemporary policies of urban public art by conducting an interdisciplinary critical discourse analysis that merges art history, curatorial– and urban studies, in order to trace the influence of discourse to how Public Art Agency Sweden has operated within this intersection during the last decade––ultimately to discuss what the Swedish policies on public art strive to achieve and the risks, ethics and responsibilities of the emerging field of urban, context-based curatorship.