PUB quiz: Who said this? "The Per Cent for Art Schemes do not fully represent the breadth of artistic practice and expression in Ireland, neither in the artists selected for commission nor in the works of art realised/purchased."
Too hard? Well, what about this: "Artistic expression has often been pre-edited by considerations of what the public understands, what will be politically acceptable and what will not draw the ire of the media."
Answer: a) a disgruntled artist, crushed and embittered by lack of success or attention or b) a public art report written by representatives of the Department of the Environment, the OPW, the Arts Council, Department of Arts Culture and the Gaeltacht and Temple Bar Properties? And the answer is, of course, (b).
If you felt there was something not quite right about the way public art has been working in Ireland, the Public Art Research Project, from which the above comments are taken, is a document that may confirm some of your worst fears.
The Project was set up in 1994 to review two existing Per Cent for Art schemes, one run by the Department of the Environment and an older one run by the Office of Public Works. Under these schemes, when either of the organisations was involved in a construction project, a percentage of the cost of that project could be used to create a public artwork for the site.
When the report began its work, the intention was to "facilitate more effective promotion of art in the public sector by developing a strategy that furthers the commissioning of art in a variety of sectors .. ." Now that the report has finally come into the public domain, it seems it has gone much further, making wide-ranging criticisms of the way the scheme is operating at present and suggesting several key reforms.
These range from financial reforms, such as the budget for public art projects, to the issue of quality of public art in Ireland - this, the report says, is often unrepresentative of what is going on in visual art: it is also, it believes, of a lower than acceptable standard. There are several explanations for this suggested in the report, some of which are bound to cause a stir within artists' organisations in Ireland.
The report says "arts organisations and professionals have not been able to fully demonstrate their skills in managing commissions. As a result, artistic standards have suffered." Although the language leaves some room for doubt - both as to which organisations are under discussion, and as to whether they possessed the necessary skills or not - the implications of the criticism are clear.
The solution to the quality problems in Irish public art, as the report sees it, is to set up alternative structures. "A national approach to public art should be developed," it suggests. The key suggestion here is that an inter- departmental group, the Public Art Co-ordination Group, should be established. This would be led by the Department of Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht, with members drawn from the Arts Council and government departments with construction budgets. (Under the recommended arrangement, the "arts community" would have access to the co-ordination group through another body to be called the Public Art Advisory Panel)
The first group, the PACG, would "co-ordinate, promote and support initiatives" in government departments, as well as, interestingly, work to enhance the quality of public art "and diversify its range". This objective may be intended to address what is seen as a perception that only "insiders" receive public art commissions. Although the report says the Public Art Research Project Steering group could not "verify if this was the case or not", it could understand that the "limited number of `active' participants" in the field could lead to this perception.
The report has some solid plans for addressing these problems. These recommendations are, in most cases, very much as recently predicted in these pages. The first proposal is that the existing Per Cent for Art schemes should be extended to "all government departments with construction budgets".
As far as financing future public art projects is concerned, the report makes some specific recommendations about the ceilings for projects - this budget ceiling is frequently cited as a bar to creating the right art for the right environment. Various percentages would be available for artworks depending on the size of the construction project, ranging from £20,000 for those costing up to £2 million, to a maximum art budget of £50,000 for projects in excess off 10 million.
AS well as creating works seen as more relevant in scale to the construction projects they accompany, these changes in the funding available might also address another problem with the existing scheme. "To a large degree," according to the report "artists are subsidising the Per Cent schemes through low fees and inadequate budgets".
Alongside this raising of the financial ceiling, the report proposes that it be made possible for funding for projects to be pooled, so that "participants" would be able to "co-fund" a suitable project. It is also suggested that the "golden crumbs" that gather from this pooling - when money is pooled and not drawn down - should be used to fund the Public Art Co-ordination Group.
The report recommends that one section of the Department of the Environment should co-ordinate the operation of the schemes, but that two groups, the PACG and the PAAP, should then take responsibility for a number of more general issues, such as the maintenance of artworks and the providing of information on artworks.
IF there is one issue on which the report should probably have given a stronger lead, it is on the question of what exactly constitutes public art. If artists are currently furiously debating the broadest questions of what exactly public art should be, the report does not, unfortunately, give any strong indication of this. Although the remark concerning the unrepresentative nature of public art in Ireland features near the top of the report's findings, suggestions for directly addressing this problem are found buried deep in a section of "other recommendations".
Developing an open definition of the nature of public art "through pilot schemes and experimental projects", as the report states, is a very broad, very important issue in the field of public art, and one which has been treated in a manner that implies it is not a priority.
