Avant-garde or democracy? Transformations and Dilemmas of the U.S. public art programme in the 1970s

ABSTRACTThe “Works of Art in Public Places” programme was established by the National Endowment for the Arts right after its creation in 1965. It first subsidized modernist sculptures from well-known artists. But in the 1970s, it began to support more recent and experimental trends, breaking with modernism, which was then criticized for producing an art disconnected from its social environment. Therefore, public officials attributed to postmodernist site-specific artworks the power to reintegrate art into social life and thus to disseminate it to a wider audience. This aesthetic was favoured less for its observable effects than because it made it possible to (superficially) resolve a fundamental contradiction faced by any arts policy in a liberal-democratic regime, between the recognition of the autonomy of the artist and the will to improve access to the arts.KEYWORDS: National Endowment for the artsdemocratization of artpublic artsite-specific artpostmodernismBrian O’Doherty Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 In Bourdieu’s sense of the term. See Gisèle Sapiro (Citation2019). See also Victoria D. Alexander (Citation2018).2 I will rely here mainly (in addition to more occasional references to the field theory of Bourdieu) on the conceptual framework for the sociology of culture proposed by Jean-Claude Passeron: see (Citation2006).3 A fair number of studies has been dedicated to the history of the National Endowment for the Arts and I will refer to several of them in the following pages. However, these studies rarely analyze the type of works and artists supported by the NEA’s programmes, or they do so in a normative way, to denounce or defend their artistic value, thus taking part in the many controversies that have marked the agency’s troubled history.4 Examples of the puritan condemnation of art in the 17th century can be found in Burns and Davis (Citation2009, pp. 9–14)5 Burns & Davis (ed.), op. cit., 359–367.6 As an 1871 Congressional report on the arts regrets: “The prejudice excited against these pictures [of John Trumbull] had a damaging effect on American Art. It served to defeat all attempts to afford its government patronage, or even to call in the aid of American artists to decorate the Capitol.” Cited by Gérard Selbach (Citation2007).7 Ibid., 150.8 See on this Gary Larson (Citation2017).9 Ibid., 15-18; Mary McCombie (Citation1992, pp. 84–113).10 These were the first four WAPP commands (ibid., 252-254). I indicate in brackets the date of the commission and the date of completion of the work.11 In the words of Giles Scott-Smith (Citation2016).12 Reacting to this revisionist historiography, several authors sought in the 1990s to reassess the subversive dimension of Abstract Expressionism and to give a more nuanced image of its ideological uses in Cold War America. See Erika Doss (Citation1995), David Craven (Citation1999), Jachec (Citation2000).13 For a transnational analysis on this subject, see Pierre-Michel Menger (Citation2011).14 Letter from René d’Harnoncourt to Roger Stevens, November 4, 1965, René d’Harnoncourt Papers in the Museum of Modern Art Archives, Series VII, File 200.15 Ibid.16 “Council” here refers to the National Council on the Arts (NCA), a supervisory body of the NEA (more on this below). Minutes of the NCA meeting, February 12, 1966, National Archives, National Foundation on the Arts and Humanities (RG 288), National Council on the Arts, Records of Meetings, Box 1. In the following notes, the records of meetings of the NCA and the administrative files of NEA Chairperson Nancy Hanks (held in the same record group 288) are respectively abbreviated to NA-M and NA-NH, followed by the number of the box where the cited document is kept.17 I use here the terminology of Passeron: a “legitimist” cultural strategy involves a “project of conversion to high culture”, while a “populist” strategy consists in a “project of rehabilitation of popular culture” (op. cit., 452-454). This is what other authors describe as the “elitist-populist debate” (Margaret Wyszomirski (Citation1982)) or as an opposition between “democratization of culture” and “cultural democracy” (Raymonde Moulin (Citation1992, pp. 90–92)).18 “Projects Recommended for Funding. Works of Art in Public Places”, January 1970, NA-M/4.19 Memorandum from Brian O’Doherty to Nancy Hanks, July 21, 1972, cited in McCombie, op. cit., 136.20 Memorandum from Brian O’Doherty to Nancy Hanks, November 22, 1971, cited in ibid., 149.21 “Comments by Brian O’Doherty on Minneapolis Sculpture”, October 15, 1970, NA-NH/11.22 “It has been the Endowment’s concern to avoid […] the imposition of taste that subverts the dialogue between artists and community through which the role of public art in our society can be clarified. Perhaps the greatest single key to community acceptance of art works is the avoidance of the argument based on privileged understanding, i.e., ‘I know more than you and therefore you should accept this.’” (Brian O’Doherty (Citation1974, May-June)).23 “When Nancy Hanks became chairman of the Arts Endowment in 1969, […] There was a changed public attitude, a viable public art, an art community with (after the protests of the ‘60s) an awakened social conscience” (ibid.)24 Official guidelines were finally established in 1973 (McCombie, op. cit., 73).25 Memorandum from Brian O’Doherty to Nancy Hanks, “About Visual Arts Panels”, March 24, 1970, NA-NH/11.26 This seems to be confirmed by Brian O’Doherty’s own words: “That [the WAPP] was the most difficult of all programmes. Because there you have a work of avant-garde art, placed in a community who are, shall we say, innocent of what it means. So, the way I got out of that […] I would have the local people appoint a panelist, and I would appoint two panelists of the National Endowment. The three would get together. And then I would appoint very often somebody who was drawn up from the art community to chair the meeting and the applications would be made. It worked fairly well. And they were also to prepare that audience for what’s coming because they don’t know.” (Interview with the author, May 17, 2018).27 Cited by McCombie, op. cit., 121-122.28 He gave a witty report of the whole story to Nancy Hanks in a memorandum: “The Wichita Story with a Footnote on St. Louis for Light Reading When in Europe”, August 11, 1970, NA-NH/11.29 Minutes of the NCA meeting, May 3-5, 1974, NA-M/12.30 Minutes of the NCA meeting, September 3-5, 1974, NA-M/12.31 “As I learned at parochial School in my home village, the Irish should always be happy when doing missionary work – so all’s well” (Memorandum to Nancy Hanks, November 22, 1971, cited in McCombie, op. cit., 150-151). O’Doherty was born in Ireland.32 “But because it’s Mississippi and because this could be a good educational experience for them if it works out, I think we should keep smiling and smiling even though it hurts. But there’s nothing worse than putting the baby-bottle in the mouths of opinionated, incompetent, and unknowledgeable people” (Memorandum from Brian O’Doherty to Nancy Hanks, May 15, 1972, “Re: Jackson, Miss. Sculpture Project”, The Getty Research Institute, Irving Sandler Papers, Box 52).33 O’Doherty reaffirmed the priority given to artistic quality over the democratization of art in an interview I conducted with him: “NH: How did you see the purpose of the Visual Arts Program then? Was it […] [to] populariz[e] contemporary art? BOD: Within limits. Within the issue of quality.” (May 17, 2018).34 “One difficulty is many cities’ preference for local artists whose work is sometimes not of sufficient quality.” (Minutes of the NCA Meeting, May 1-4, 1975, NA-M/13).35 “The area of public art remains one of the most problematic for successful funding. […] The emergence of a viable public art for the seventies is eroded […], not infrequently by a negative public response and by a faultless tropism for the banal. Among the values of this Arts Endowment program are its setting of standards, and its educational process.” (“WAPP Fiscal 75”, May 1975, NA-M/14).36 “All the Endowment panel members ended up plugging solidly for Oldenburg. The Michigan panel tended to resist this” (Memorandum from Brian O’Doherty to Nancy Hanks, May 30, 1972 “Works of Art in Public Places Panel meeting at Lansing, Michigan, on Saturday May 27th”, The Getty Research Institute, Irving Sandler Papers, Box 52).37 Memorandum to Nancy Hanks, November 22, 1971, cited in McCombie, op. cit., 150.38 Memorandum to Nancy Hanks, “WAPP in Mississippi”, June 16, 1972, The Getty Research Institute, Irving Sandler Papers, Box 52).39 “The social imperatives which prompted Inner City wall paintings have mostly been directed to other channels, and so called ‘fine’ artists […] working the area are few in number. The esthetics of the wall painting genre are, in 1973, called into question by the record of performance. […] The panel recommended that the Inner City murals should: a) when of sufficient quality, be referred to the Works of Art in Public Places program […] b) when of sufficient social, educational or local interest be referred to the appropriate city or state program” (“VA Fiscal 1973, Recommended. Works of Art in Public Places”, May 1973, NA-M/10).40 In other words, two options that correspond, respectively, to a populist strategy and a legitimist one (see footnote 29).41 O’Doherty, “Public Art and the Government”, op. cit., 44.42 Kwon dates from 1975 the first efforts to promote site-specific artworks (Citation2002a, p. 57).43 Kwon, “Sitings of Public Art”, op. cit., 286.44 Cited in ibid., 295.45 Like all NEA programmes directors, he was also assisted by several peer panels, composed of artists, art critics, and curators (see Michael Brenson (Citation2001, pp. 39–78)).46 This is how McCombie describes the new trends favoured by the WAPP in the 1970s: an “art that tends to be functional, architectonic, interactive, and responsive to social needs” (op. cit., 226).47 Ibid., 171-181; Harney, op. cit., 76-78.48 McCombie, op. cit., 172.49 If postmodernism was assimilated in the United States to the end of the avant-garde, in the sense that this term had taken in formalist art criticism (most notably in Clement Greenberg’s texts), Andreas Huyssen has shown on the contrary how postmodernism, at least at its beginnings in the 1960s–1970s, reconnected with the disruptive and subversive impulse of historical avant-gardes (Citation1984); see on this subject Nicolas Heimendinger (Citation2022).50 Passeron, op. cit., 449–450.51 Pierre-Michel Menger offers an interesting analysis of this analogy – which he calls the “syllogism” of the avant-garde – in (Citation2001). Pierre Bourdieu also addresses the “homology” between artistic and political revolution in (Citation2013, p. 213).52 An influential illustration of this position can be found in Peter Bürger’s (Citation1984).53 Vestheim op. cit., 536. See also Roger Blomgren (Citation2012, November).Additional informationFundingThis work was supported by the Centre d'étude des arts contemporains, Université de Lille and Terra Foundation for American Art.