Great story on the public art tribulations of a small town in North Carolina that wanted to commemorate Martin Luther King's speech there with a memorial."But, either way, the work of art meant something to almost everyone. For the town council that meant trouble."
The story is originally from the Guardian, but I found it on a South African newspaper website.
Martin Gayford in the Telegraph thinks that the problem with public sculpture these days is that it is just not big enough. It's still stuck in a human-related scale that dates back to 16th century Italy. After all, "the modern city is not a trim, Renaissance sort of place. It is huge, sprawling and chaotic. In that context an abstraction outside a corporate tower looks no more impressive than a cufflink."
He's inspired by two recent works in the Turbine Hall of the Tate Modern, The Weather Project by Olafur Eliasson and Anish Kapoor's Marsyas.
UK Telco Orange sponsored an interesting public art project, of projecting images on public buildings, including Buckingham Palace. A sort of super Christmas light-up, but alas some of the images make some people uncomfortable. Guardian story, reprinted in Art Daily.