Funding Public Art with Brick and Mortar: The Success and Failure of “Percent for Art” Laws

February 9, 2015

By Emma Kleiner

Although the thought of East Harlem in 1985 may not immediately spark considerations of aesthetics and community, that was the location and date of the first Percent for Art Project in New York City. In that year, Jorge Luis Rodriguez’s Growth was unveiled there in the East Harlem Artpark, a sculpture dedicated to the intersection of nature and man. Funding for public art works historically came from various sources, including private donors and nonprofit organizations. However, since 1982, New York City’s Percent for Art (PFA) law mandates that one percent of the budget for certain building projects be set aside for public art. Former New York City Mayor Ed Koch, who initiated the law, stated: “For generations to come, it’s a wonderful thing, and I’m very proud of that.” This type of public art law has been mirrored across the nation by many cities and states, and this article analyzes the structure of what makes a successful Percent for Art law. 

New York City’s Percent for Art Program remains one of the strongest in the nation as it strives to bring public art to all corners of the city. Other states, counties, and municipalities around the nation with similar laws include: Chapel Hill, North Carolina; New Haven, Connecticut; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Oro Valley, Arizona. The laws in these cities follow the PFA theme but vary in terms how each program and disbursement is structured and carried out. For example, in some cases, as with the law in New York City, only municipal or City-funded construction projects are mandated to abide by the PFA law, but in other cases, as with the law in Oro Valley, Arizona, public art is compulsory for “all new non-residential and public development projects.” While some public art laws have flourished, like the one in New York City, others have floundered and never gained a strong foothold in the community, like the one in Pittsburgh.

One main feature of a PFA law that affects its ability to succeed is whether the law creates an automatic set-aside for public art or whether the funding must be actively requested. The divide between these types of PFA laws has become particularly apparent in Pittsburgh. The Pittsburgh ordinance, passed in 1977, ceased being enforced about twenty-five years ago, when the city “began including a public-art line item, of about $50,000, in its annual budgets.” Pittsburgh’s PFA law, which requires publicly funded construction projects to set aside 1% of the cost for public art, has gone unenforced for years, and the public started to petition for the law’s enfoncement. One of the main critiques of Pittsburgh’s law is that it became essentially unenforceable because, as reported by the Pittsburgh City Paper in August 2014, the law “requires the department head overseeing a given construction project to actively request artwork for that project — seldom a priority, especially in cash-strapped times.” A possible solution is to make the arts funding automatic, instead of asking for an artwork-funding request that is unlikely to appear in economically difficult times. As a result of Pittsburgh’s PFA law, the community at large has suffered from a deficit of public art and “lost out on thousands, perhaps millions of dollars [worth of art].” The systemic failure of PFA law in Pittsburgh has deprived a city of many public arts projects, and created a situation in which a complete overhaul of the PFA ordinance is necessary in order to enforce any percent for art projects.

In contrast to the situation in Pittsburgh, Oro Valley in Arizona has developed a robust public art law that does not allow developers to shirk the public art requirement. In Oro Valley, the public art law, which has been on the books since 1997, states, “[p]ublic art is a required element for all new non-residential and public development projects.” To aid developers in finding artists and commissioning artwork, Oro Valley’s website contains a public art inventory, which includes the budget for various public art project and the artists’ contact information. The centralization of data has helped Oro Valley’s PFA law to succeed. While making the public art set-aside mandatory in Pittsburgh’s PFA law would be a big step towards enforceability of the law, it would also be necessary to create a database of information about public art in the city. Many developers may have never interacted with public art in the past and may find it daunting to discover and hire an artist. By creating a centralized database with that information, however, developers may be more encouraged in approaching the public art component of their development.

In considering the success and failure of PFA laws, it is critical to be mindful of the many communities that may be impacted by these laws. For example, many Texas universities, including University of Houston, Texas Tech University Systems, University of North Texas, and University of Texas at Austin, have instituted percent for art policies to invigorate the public arts community and cultural landscape on campus. As state legislatures across the country have slashed funding for public universities, oftentimes aimed at cutting the arts and humanities, PFA laws remain a viable way for a public university to inject its campus with an aesthetic component. The strong PFA laws in Texas are stunning examples of how PFA laws can be important for securing public art. The state’s public universities have become some of the most vocal and visual supporters of the law. Several prominent artists have been funded through this program to contribute to the aesthetic landscape of public universities in Texas. James Turrell, who skyrocketed into the public eye over the last few years due to three major retrospective exhibits, recently installed a skyspace at University of Texas at Austin. The universities’ adoption of PFA laws suggest that a strong statewide PFA law that applied to public institutions, including universities, which are chronically underfunded in the arts, could generate the opportunity to for public institutions to grow art collections.

As states, counties, and municipalities struggle to establish strong PFA laws, lawmakers must consider the ultimate enforceability of such laws. The shortcomings of Pittsburgh’s law are good examples of how a PFA law ought to be structured in an enforceable way or risk reaching a tipping point where it is habitually ignored by developers. In contrast, the example provided by Texas demonstrates how the success of a PFA law can bring together different segments of the community to appreciate artwork to which they might not otherwise have access. 

Select Sources:

• Oro Valley public art provisions: http://www.orovalleyaz.gov/sites/default/files/media/files/Planning%20Division/docs/2013/zoning-code-public-art-section-27.3.pdf
• Oro Valley public art slideshow: http://www.orovalleyaz.gov/business/arts-entertainment/public-art-oro-valley
• State percent for art programs links: http://www.nasaa-arts.org/Research/Key-Topics/Public-Art/State-Percent-for-Art-Programs.php
• Wikipedia percent for art links: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percent_for_Art

About the author: Emma Kleiner is a second-year student at Stanford Law School.

Disclaimer: This and all articles are intended as general information, not legal advice, and offer no substitute for seeking representation.