Glossary of Terms
Advisory Committee
See Selection Panel
CaFÉ™
CaFÉ™, an acronym for "Call for Entry," is a Web-based service now being used by some commissioning organizations to manage calls for artists. The service is operated by WESTAF, the Western States Arts Federation.
Call for artists
A call for artists is a formal request, by a commissioning organization, for proposals or qualifications from artists who may be interested in producing a work of art for a specific public art project
Commissioning Organization
A commissioning organization or commissioning agency is the sponsor of a public art competition. A commissioning organization may be a public entity, such as a city or town; a quasi-public entity, such as an airport or stadium authority; or a private entity, such as a museum or hospital.
Decommissioning (Deaccessioning)
Decommissioning is the term used for permanent removal of a work of art from a public art installation or collection.
Design review board
Since most public art will be sited in a public place, review and approval by local government boards and commissions is usually required. One such board is a design review board, which is charged with determining whether additions to the built environment, such as a work of public art, will be aesthetically in line with the standards of the community. A design review board is the most likely to include members who have training or an interest in aesthetic issues.
Boards with a design-review responsibility are not always called design review boards, though a board's name, "architectural board of review," for example, will usually be indicative of its design-review function. In most jurisdictions, planning or zoning board approval will also be required, and, in some jurisdictions, the planning or zoning board will also be the body charged with reviewing a public art project on its aesthetic merits.
Questions about a particular review board are best directed to the person who staffs the board, usually an employee of the local jurisdiction. The commissioning organization will be able to assist with this process. Direct contact with board members is not recommended.
Direct selection
Direct selection is an artist-selection process in which an artist is chosen to provide or produce a public artwork without a competitive selection process. This is not the typical approach to selecting public art. Examples of situations in which it may occur include one in which a specific work of art has been identified in advance for an installation or one in which only one artist is seen as having the skills, abilities, and interests needed for a specific public art project.
Easement
An easement is a legal agreement that grants specified rights of access to private property by a party or parties other than the property owner. A simple example of an easement would be a residential driveway accessible only from a neighbor's driveway, as in the accompanying diagram.
In the diagram, which depicts three houses on small lots, House 2's garage is accessible only by way of House 3's driveway. For House 2's garage to be useful, a legal access agreement with the owner of House 3 is necessary. The legal access agreement would be called an easement.
Note that the apron between the sidewalk and the street is not included in the easement area. This is because, in most cases, an apron is in the public right-of-way and thus not on private property.
A difference between an easement and an informal agreement is that the easement would remain in effect even if one or both of the properties changed hands or if the neighbors began feuding with each other.
Fabrication
Fabrication, as the term relates to public art, is the process of construction or assembly of the physical artwork either on or off the site where the artwork will be sited.
Invitational competition
An invitational competition is an artist-selection process that involves a limited number of artists who are invited to submit proposals for a specific public art project, based on the skills, interests, or other pertinent characteristics of the artists.
JPEG
JPEG, an acronym for "Joint Photographic Experts Group," is the name of the compression-and-decompression format most commonly used for the storage and transmission of photographs on the World Wide Web. The JPEG file format uses "lossy" data compression. This means that, when a file is saved (and therefore compressed) in a JPEG format and then decompressed, the resultant file will not be exactly the same as the original file before compression. In situations where the JPEG format is appropriate, the difference between the original and the facsimile will be slight, and the facsimile will be a useful reproduction of the original. The advantage to lossy (as compared to "lossless") compression is that file sizes can be kept much smaller. JPEG files generally use the .jpg file extension.
Jurisdiction, local
For the purposes of public art, a local jurisdiction generally refers to a unit of local government, such as a county, parish, regional municipality, city, town, village, borough, or township. The local jurisdiction may a commissioning organization or may be relevant only in terms of its regulations governing public art. Local government arrangements vary significantly from state to state and province to province.
Jury
See "selection panel."
Limited competition
A limited competition is an artist-selection process that is open to all artists with certain characteristics or qualifications. For example, a competition may be limited to artists living in a certain geographic area or working in a specific medium.
Local jurisdiction
See "jurisdiction, local."
Maintenance plan
A maintenance plan lays out a strategy for routine and long-term maintenance of a work of public art. A maintenance plan should include such details as projected annual energy usage and costs, routine maintenance requirements including specific requirements for protection of the artwork during routine maintenance operations and weather-related activities, such as snow removal, and longer-term maintenance requirements.
Maquette
A maquette is a preliminary three-dimensional model of a proposed work of art, usually much smaller in scale than the finished artwork would be.
Open competition
An open competition is a selection process open to anyone who has the artistic skills and abilities described in a public art project's call for artists.
Planning or zoning board
Most local jurisdictions have appointed boards or commissions with land use planning and land use regulation responsibilities. Boards with responsibilities oriented to land use planning go by names such as "planning commission" or "planning board." Boards more oriented to land use regulation are likely to have names such as "zoning board" or "board of zoning appeals." The distinction between the two board types is not clearly defined, and the way responsibilities are split between them varies from one jurisdiction to another. In some jurisdictions, a single board or commission combines the responsibilities of the two general types described above.
Most public artwork will be reviewed by a planning or zoning board. Separate review by a design review board may also be required.
The exact responsibilities of a planning or zoning board are determined by the local jurisdiction the board serves or by a higher level of government, such as a state or province, that controls the existence and nature of the local jurisdictions within its boundaries. Generally, the planning or zoning board will be reviewing the artwork for its compatibility with pre-determined standards as may be set out in a local jurisdiction's comprehensive land use plan.
In some instances, a public artwork may require a conditional use permit (which could also be called a contingent use permit or special exception). A conditional use permit is sometimes required for a certain use of land, such as for public art, that would only be permitted if the person proposing the use can show that certain conditions have been or will be met.
Less often, a public artwork will require a variance. This means that the party proposing the artwork must obtain permission to use land in a way that would not normally be permitted in the location where the artwork is proposed.
Once the required review and approval is received from a planning or zoning board, many jurisdictions require that the approval be signed off on by the jurisdiction's primary governing body—a city council, for example.
Dealing with local government bodies may seem daunting, but a commissioning organization should be equipped to assist artists with obtaining needed approvals from the local jurisdiction.
Public domain or public realm
The public realm is made up of areas belonging to the community at large and not in private ownership, including areas, such as a wastewater treatment plant, that are never or not usually open to the public.
Public right-of-way
The public right-of-way is the publicly owned or publicly controlled land area that carries a city's street and sidewalk networks, in contrast to the privately or publicly owned property that abuts the right-of-way.
If the requirements set out in a public art project's call for artists require that art be placed only in the public right-of-way, artists should understand this to mean that the public artwork generated for the project may not be placed on private property. Since the public right-of-way is a subset of publicly owned land (that is, not inclusive of all lands in public ownership), such a requirement may also mean that the artwork may not be placed on public property unless the public property is also within the public right-of-way.
Artists should inquire with the commissioning organization before making any assumptions in this regard
Artists should also note that the public right-of-way boundaries are not consistent from one setting to another. For example, in one neighborhood, the public sidewalk may be included entirely in the public right-of-way, while in another the sidewalk may be partially or entirely outside the right-of-way. Where this is the case, public access to the sidewalk may be permitted under the terms of a formal easement or through an informal, sometimes unwritten agreement.
When public right-of-way is no longer needed by the jurisdiction that controls it, it can be sold off or turned over to the owners of abutting properties. When land is removed from the public right-of-way, the portion of the right-of-way affected is said to have been "vacated." The legislative act of removing land from a public right-of-way is called a "vacation."
Request for proposals (RFP)
A request for proposals, which would usually be referred to as an RFP, is a request for a site-specific proposal for a public artwork. The RFP may request that an artist submit a preliminary design of the public artwork, or it may request that the artist propose a specific process for arriving at the final design.
The level of detail required in a proposal will depend on the characteristics of the public art project. For example, a public art project that is open to a wide range of artist's interpretations or solutions and which has a large budget would generally require initial proposals to be at a less-refined concept stage, rather than at an advanced stage in the design process.
On the other hand, in a public art project calling for something more specific, such as an artistic treatment of a single wall in a public building, an artist may be expected to submit a proposal in a more advanced stage of design.
In most cases, the level of detail required will be made clear in the call for artists.
Request for qualifications (RFQ)
A request for qualifications, which would usually be referred to as an RFQ, is a request for information about an artist's skills and qualifications. Generally, an RFQ will ask an artist to explain how the artist's skills and qualifications would be suitable for the specific public art project in question.
Purposes of issuing an RFQ include assembling a list of artists who may be qualified to submit a proposal for a specific public art project and determining which artists' skills, abilities, and interests may warrant their being requested to submit a more developed proposal for the art project.
Right-of-way
See "public right-of-way."
Selection panel
Selection panels are advisory bodies assembled to make recommendations regarding the choice of an artist or artwork for a public art project.
Artists should be aware that selection panels are usually made up of people with a variety of professional and personal experiences and interests. While some panel members are likely to be artists themselves, design professionals, or people with ties of some kind to the art world, it is also likely that some panel members will know very little about art. Community representatives and public officials are examples of the kinds of people who may be on selection panels and who may not be knowledgeable about art. In putting together written information for a public art project submission, an artist should keep in mind the likely diversity of the selection panel.
It is also important to understand that a selection panel is usually advisory in nature and thus does not usually make the final decision in a public art selection process. Despite this being so, a selection panel's decision will prevail in most cases.
