Fall 2026 Newsletter
Dear PAD colleagues,
These certainly are eventful times for public art, with high profile controversies, threats, and court battles at the top of news headlines on a shockingly regular basis. On the bright side, we no longer have to make the case that public art matters.
In recent months, Public Art Dialogue has joined efforts to prevent the executive branch of the United States government from censoring, suppressing, removing, and commissioning public art without the opportunity for inclusive comment and careful analysis by experts and invested parties. We stand both with preservation experts protecting our nation’s artistic and historic heritage, as well as the families of deceased veterans who are voicing their opposition to the imposition of a monumental arch at the entrance to burial grounds they hold sacred. More on that below.
In the meantime, life also continues as usual, and we are happy to announce PAD’s session topics, participants, and papers both for SECAC this fall, and CAA this spring. We hope to see you there. Our process for choosing the 2026 recipient of PAD’s Founder’s Award is underway. Please submit a nominee using this quick link. We welcome a new membership coordinator, and as always invite you to help us spread the word on our social media sites. Please read on!
CURRENT EVENTS IN BRIEF
In late August, the John F. Kennedy Center removed Joel Shapiro’s sculpture Blue (2019) which had been installed on the Center’s grounds in 2019. In a video released by the Kennedy Center at the time of its installation, Shapiro said his sculpture is “about action and risk and performance and energy … a celebration of possibility.” Though the fate of the Kennedy Center’s art collection is uncertain and its former curator, Joseph Palermo, was fired in March, the removal of the sculpture nonetheless jolted locals who have been on edge about further unannounced changes at the performance venue’s closed campus. David Rubenstein, who had been Chairman of the Kennedy Center’s board until Trump took over that role in February 2025, has since purchased Blue, which he intends to display in the Sculpture Garden of the National Gallery of Art. On September 11th, Trump also proposed to erect a 30-foot-tall sculpture of George Washington to replace José de Rivera’s abstract sculpture, Infinity (1967) outside the National Museum of American History. In a Truth Social post, he said Rivera’s Infinity “tells visitors nothing about America, inspires no one, and honors none of our Great American Heroes.” The speed with which Trump’s administration erected 21 new Revolutionary War themed sculptures in Freedom Plaza, paid for by ten million dollars from the National Park Service, should be a wake up call for anyone who has doubts that Trump is engaged in a full-fledged culture war in the nation’s capital. In other Washington news, Interior Secretary Doug Burglum announced earlier this month that excavation plans are moving forward at the site of President Trump’s 250-foot-tall triumphal arch.
ADVOCACY UPDATES
In recent months, Public Art Dialogue has joined forces with organizations including Living New Deal and Cultural Heritage Partners to demand preservation of our cultural assets, and to defend robust participation and careful decision-making regarding art owned by the United States government (literally ‘we the people’). These efforts include obtaining consulting party status regarding the fate of the Wilbur J. Cohen Federal Building in Washington, D.C., the ‘Sistine Chapel’ of the New Deal.
More recently, we added our names in support of legislation that will preserve opportunities for robust public comment that have been threatened by proposed changes to usual regulatory process put forward by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget. In doing so, PAD joined more than 700 organizations and Tribal Nations representing more than 7 million Americans in adding their names to an open letter in support of Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, which guarantees robust opportunities for exactly the kind of public art dialogue our organization was founded to support. You can add your organization’s name and/or share the open letter and growing list of signatories here: Open Letter to Congress and Coalition Signatories. Cultural Heritage Partners has also prepared a simple toolkit explaining how to reach out to your congressional and other representatives to support this legislation: Help Us Save Section 106 — District Meeting Toolkit. Please help spread the word and preserve our right to speak out and be heard.
SECAC: THE SOUTHEASTERN COLLEGE ART CONFERENCE
October 21-26, 2026
Winston-Salem, SC.
The topic for our session at SECAC this year is Textiles as Public Art: Making the Private Political. We are pleased to host the following speakers:
Worker Bees: Florida Farmworkers Memorial Quilt and Mural, Luca Molnar, Stetson University
The Monumental as the Many: Sonya Clark’s Transitory and Participatory Interventions into Monuments and Monument-Making, Béatrice Duchastel de Montrouge, Temple University
Quilted Citations: Bisa Butler’s Textiles as Black Diasporic Archives, Mary Karcher, University of Missouri
Al-Kafiye: Pattern, Resistance, and the Politics of Visibility, Hala Malak, The New School
CAA: THE COLLEGE ART ASSOCIATION ANNUAL CONFERENCE
February 3-6, 2027
New York City
Public Art Dialogue's 2026 CAA session is Public Art and Pedagogy. Here are the papers and speakers:
Difficult Publics, Difficult Art: Publicly Funded Art, Democracy, and Pedagogy in Contemporary Scandinavia, Sara Callahan, Malmo University
Public Art as Negotiation: Teaching Students to Analyze Power, Compromise, and Collective Decision-Making in Commemorative Practice, Kim Miller, Wheaton College
Teaching to Learn and Learning to Teach: Listening and Leading in Public Art Pedagogy, Kasia Ozga, Univiversity of North Carolina, Greensboro
Staying in Place: Campus Public Art Research and Student Sense of Belonging,Mya B. Dosch, California State University, Sacramento
2027 FOUNDERS’ AWARD
Please submit suggestions for the Annual Founder’s Award, which is presented each year at CAA. Please use this form to submit the names of artists, collectives, and/or organizations for the 2027 Founder’s Award.
MEMBERSHIP COORDINATOR
We are pleased to introduce Julia Wintner as our new co-Membership Coordinator. Julia is Director of the Bradbury Art Museum at Arkansas State University in Jonesboro, Arkansas, where she has been working to strengthen the role of public art on campus by developing plans for new outdoor sculpture installations and other campus-wide public art initiatives.
And so many thanks to Davida Fernandez-Barkan, who has held this position for quite some time. Davida also was instrumental in managing membership during the shift to the new website.
SOCIAL MEDIA
Reminder that you can reach out to our social media manager Jennifer Wingate at jenniferwingate99@gmail.com to share information. If you don’t already, please follow us and reply wherever you are on social media: LinkedIn / Bluesky / Facebook / Instagram