Items22The creator’s order
  1. 1Diego RiveraDiego RiveraBorn 8 Dec 1886Rivera and the Mexican muralists put art on the walls of ministries, schools and markets so that people who never entered a gallery would meet their own history every day. His frescoes in the Ministry of Education and the National Palace in Mexico City, painted with teams of plasterers and…0i
  2. 2Isamu NoguchiIsamu NoguchiBorn 17 Nov 1904Noguchi spent decades arguing that sculpture should be something children could climb on. New York's parks department rejected his Play Mountain of 1933 and most of his later playground designs, but the idea survived in Playscapes in Atlanta's Piedmont Park, finished in 1976 and still in use, and…0i
  3. 3George WyllieGeorge WyllieBorn 31 Dec 1921A former customs officer who took up sculpture in middle age, Wyllie used Glasgow itself as his stage. In 1987 his Straw Locomotive hung from the Finnieston Crane, the giant that once loaded Clyde-built engines for export, and was then ceremonially burned; in 1989 his huge Paper Boat sailed down…0i
  4. 4Niki de Saint PhalleNiki de Saint PhalleBorn 29 Oct 1930Saint Phalle's huge, joyful Nanas, voluptuous women in bright polyester and mosaic, made public space feel playful and female. Her Stravinsky Fountain beside the Pompidou Centre, made in 1983 with her husband Jean Tinguely's clanking black machines, is a place where Parisians eat lunch and children…0i
  5. 5Agnes DenesAgnes DenesBorn 31 May 1931In the summer of 1982 Denes and volunteers cleared rubble and planted two acres of wheat on the Battery Park City landfill in Lower Manhattan, two blocks from Wall Street, then harvested nearly 1,000 pounds of grain in August. Wheatfield, A Confrontation made a building site into a farm that office…0
  6. 6Christo and Jeanne-ClaudeChristo and Jeanne-ClaudeChristo and Jeanne-Claude's temporary projects changed how millions moved through familiar places for a fortnight. The Gates of 2005 put 7,503 saffron fabric gates along the paths of New York's Central Park; The Floating Piers of 2016 let 1.2 million people walk on water across Italy's Lake Iseo.…0i
  7. 7Richard SerraRichard SerraBorn 2 Nov 1938Serra is here as the most famous cautionary tale. Tilted Arc, a 37-metre curved wall of weathering steel installed across Federal Plaza in Manhattan in 1981, was meant to make office workers feel the space anew; many said it simply blocked their way and their lunch spot. After public hearings it…0i
  8. 8Mierle Laderman UkelesMierle Laderman UkelesSince 1977 Ukeles has been the unsalaried artist in residence at New York City's Department of Sanitation, and her subject is the maintenance that keeps public space usable. For Touch Sanitation, from 1979 to 1980, she shook hands with every one of the department's roughly 8,500 workers across the…0
  9. 9Suzanne LacySuzanne LacyLacy makes public space for conversations that rarely happen there. The Crystal Quilt, staged in 1987 in the atrium of the IDS Center in Minneapolis, seated 430 women over 60 at tables on a vast quilt-patterned floor, talking about ageing while the public watched from the balconies; she spent two…0
  10. 10Judy BacaJudy BacaBorn 20 Sept 1946The Great Wall of Los Angeles runs for about half a mile along the concrete flood channel of the Tujunga Wash, and Baca painted it over five summers from 1976 to 1983 with more than 400 young people, many referred from the juvenile justice system, alongside historians and community members. Its…0i