“Public housing residents deserve art that honors their history and tells the stories of their communities, and the tools to make that happen already exist.”
Beginning in the latter half of the 20th century, public art exploded throughout New York City. This cultural shift was boosted in part by the city’s Percent for Art law, which requires 1 percent of the budget for eligible city-funded construction projects to be allocated to public art. As a result, public art has proliferated in civic spaces across the city, and it has become an assumption that they should include art in some form.
Decades earlier, a generation of public art took shape through the New Deal’s Works Progress Administration (WPA). In New York City, Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia championed public art installations in places like public housing. After the WPA ended, affluent New Yorkers and cultural institutions helped sustain this support, at least through the era of the Civil Rights Act.
Despite the trend of investment through WPA and Percent for Art regulations, New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) residents across the city have to fight for cultural programming, such as the public art enjoyed by residents of neighboring communities. The Percent for Art program falls short in public housing, and it’s time for that dichotomy to end and for NYCHA campuses to host works of art that honor the stories, histories, and dreams of the communities that call public housing home…