News

The nation’s first organization devoted to public art, Philadelphia’s Association for Public Art (aPA, formerly the Fairmount Park Art Association), announces the launch of free open digital access to more than a hundred years of art, civic and institutional history on its website.

Something of a public art movement has taken hold in this country in the 40 years since Penny Balkin Bach joined the Association for Public Art (aPA) in 1980. Bach has played a major role in the maturation of the field. Most critically, early on she posed questions about public art and community that today echo ever louder as issues surrounding public monuments spill over into the mainstream.

Re-issued in 2022 to celebrate the Association for Public Art’s 150th Anniversary, you can now purchase t-shirts and a tote bag with Barbara Kruger’s artwork Untitled (When I hear the word culture I take out my checkbook). This 1985 artwork by Kruger was first featured on a t-shirt given to attendees as part of our organization’s Public Art in America ’87 conference held in Philadelphia. The conference was the first national, interdisciplinary forum to examine public art in its broadest context through the perspectives of politics, urban design, cultural anthropology, and the social sciences.

Now in its 40th year, our conservation program is one of the longest continuously operating programs of its kind in the country. Here’s a look at some of the work we did this season, including the deinstallation of Mark di Suvero’s iconic red-orange “Iroquois” sculpture for major restoration.

In May, the Association for Public Art is temporarily removing Mark di Suvero’s massive Iroquois from its home on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway for conservation restoration. Disassembling the sculpture will take a full day of work from a team of professionals, including conservators, welders, and riggers.

Artists are invited to submit their qualifications by May 1, 2022 for an opportunity to create a proposal. The goals of the commission are to display a strong likeness of Marian Anderson, capture the powerful and gifted spirit of the contralto as well as her energy as a civil rights trailblazer and her dignity in the face of injustice.