I think the purpose of public art is to inform society about an issue and have the art inspire productive discussion about the issue. Public art can be controversial, and maybe it even should be controversial in order to spark rich conversation. The problem with Walter Beach Humphrey’s mural at Dartmouth college was that it was NOT a true expression of public art. It hung in a room where a small subset of the general society was allowed to go, white and privileged upperclassman males, and its content was tailored for this audience. Considering this intention, its no surprise that the mural has extremeley offensive sexist and racist undertones. Lets now consider the Orozco murals to which the Hovey Murals were produced in response to. The Orozco murals are true public art since they are open to anyone from the general public. They are also a thoughtful contrast of the ancient and modern worlds and an exploration of the effects of modernity, whereas the Hovey murals had no real progressive purpose other than to depict the supposed “ideals” of Dartmouth from the biased opinion of Humphrey.

Despite, the offensive content of the Hovey murals, I still don’t think they should be torn down or completely open to the public without some sort of context. This brings me to what I believe the second purpose of public art is- to teach. Although the Hovey murals are FAR from an accurate representation of the current ideals of Dartmouth, they demonstrate how far we’ve come as a school. Although they stop being public art when we lock them up, by doing so we acknowledge that is a part of our school’s history we are not proud of and are actively trying to reconcile.

Public art will undoubtably continue to be controversial as long as their are different demographics of a society with different ideals and resulting opinions. However, the controversy public art inspires is not bad as long as it inspires respectful dialogue, which can lead to lasting change.