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The mission of Seattle’s public art program, managed by the city’s Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs, is to integrate artworks and the ideas of artists into a variety of public settings.
“The City accepts a responsibility for expanding public experience with visual art. Such art has enabled people in all societies to better understand their communities and individual lives. Artists capable of creating art for public places must be encouraged, and Seattle’s standing as a regional leader in public art enhanced.”
The public art program has used this preamble from the City’s Municipal Code as a guiding principal - that the arts are a means of better understanding our community and ourselves.
In 1973, the City of Seattle established its 1% for Art program through a municipal ordinance that specified that one percent of City of Seattle capital improvement project funds be set aside for the commission, purchase and installation of artworks.
The goal of the public art program is to provide people with a variety of artistic experiences as they go about their daily lives. The city’s public art collection includes nearly 400 permanently sited indoor and outdoor artworks and 2,800 portable artworks in all media exhibited in city-owned buildings. The program commissions large-scale sculpture for prominent public settings, weaves art into our buildings, streetscapes, open space and infrastructure, and displays portable artworks throughout public buildings citywide. The program also commissions artists to create art plans, work as members of design teams, create
temporary works, and work in residence in other city departments.
The Office engages the community and partner agencies in artist selections for public art projects. Since 1998, the Office has placed artists in residence in other city departments as a means of integrating artworks more closely into the framework of new infrastructure development. In 2004, the Office placed Seattle artist Daniel Mihalyo in residence in the Seattle Department of Transportation. The following year, he created an extensive and innovative art plan that outlined the many different ways that artwork can be incorporated in the range of activities that a transportation department undertakes. In addition to the more established 1% for Art projects associated with large infrastructure development, the plan suggested ways that transportation planners and field workers can look for opportunities to include art, whether in the integrated design of an overpass, or in small sidewalk insets inserted during a paving repair. Equally important in all residencies are the positive working relationships the artists build for the program and future artists within other city departments.
Over the years, the public art program has ventured into new commissioning territory, from creating programs to “train” emerging artists by fashioning small projects specifically for them, to developing a series of temporary projects focused on bringing awareness to environmental issues, to hiring five individual filmmakers to address the concept of “water” in unique ways. The program continues to collect portable artworks, now in a systematic way that encompasses the range of
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