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Art in Public Places: A Panel Discussion

Panel discussion presented in conjunction with Ned Kahn: Negev Wheel, on view Jul 28, 2016–Jan 8, 2017 at The Contemporary Jewish Museum.

FOR-SITE Executive Director Cheryl Haines, Artist Brian Goggin, Former San Francisco Supervisor Matt Gonzalez, and Director of the San Francisco Arts Commission Public Art Program Susan Pontious discuss their favorite public works of art and the complexities of placing art in public. Panel is moderated by Barbara Goldstein.

Recorded Dec 15, 2016.

about the speakers

Barbara Goldstein, moderator, is an independent consultant focusing on creative placemaking and public art planning. She is the former Public Art Director for the City of San Jose Office of Cultural Affairs and editor of Public Art by the Book, a primer published by Americans for the Arts and the University of Washington Press. Barbara has directed the public art programs in Seattle and Los Angeles, worked as a cultural planner, architectural and art critic, editor and publisher. She has lectured and participated in workshops on public art in the United States, Japan, China, Taiwan, Korea, Canada the Netherlands and Abu Dhabi.

Brian Goggin has been creating sculpture, public artwork, and museum and gallery installations utilizing non-traditional locations and varied materials. In 1997 he created Defenestration—an NEA funded site-specific sculptural mural on a dilapidated building in San Francisco. In November of 2008 he unveiled Language of the Birds, at the intersection of Montgomery and Columbus in North Beach. Goggin has many other public art sculptures around the Bay Area. He studied Literature, and Fine Art at Cambridge University in England, and San Francisco State.

Matt Gonzalez is the chief attorney in the San Francisco public defender's office. He's a former politician who served a term on the Board of Supervisors and has published numerous essays on subjects ranging from art, politics, government, elections, and poetry. For over a decade he has made wood and paper collage artworks which he has exhibited at Dolby Chadwick Gallery, Park Life, Guerrero Gallery, and Adobe Books.

For more than 25 years, Cheryl Haines has developed site-specific exhibitions and public programs that have exposed new audiences to contemporary art and advanced discourse on art about place. In 2003, Haines established the FOR-SITE Foundation to foster the creation, presentation, and public understanding of place- based art through artist residencies, arts education, and commissions in outdoor, historic, and cultural sites.

Susan Pontious has served as the Executive Director of Public Art Works, an independent nonprofit agency that sponsored temporary and permanent public art projects in Marin County, and on the Public Art Advisory Boards for the City of Oakland and Alameda County. She also served on the Advisory Board for the Bedford Gallery and currently serves on the Advisory Board for the Public Art Program in Walnut Creek and as a National Peer in Art for the General Services Administration, a federal agency.