Text 1

Good art often challenges and disrupts social and aesthetic norms, but the creation of public art—paintings, sculptures, and performance pieces displayed in non-museum or nontheatrical public settings—typically requires broad agreement among artists, civic officials, and community members about the works’ message and artistic goals. Public art that fails to appease everyone by being sufficiently aesthetically and conceptually bland almost inevitably provokes backlash.

Text 2

Public art is commonly displayed in spaces intended for purposes other than meaningful aesthetic engagement. Some critics of public art therefore note that norm-defying pieces that aren’t effectively integrated within their surroundings in a manner that primes passersby to appreciate the pieces’ merits (as is often the case) tend to be regarded more unfavorably than similarly provocative art encountered in museums is.