An Oct. 19 public talk at Cornell University will ask who gets to judge art and architecture that shape shared spaces: experts, elected leaders or the people who use those spaces.
Art historian and critic Brian Allen will speak at 5:30 p.m. in Statler Hall, Room 291, according to Cornell's College of Arts and Sciences. The program, titled “Who Decides What's Good? Art, Architecture, and Democracy,” is free and open to the public. It will also be livestreamed, with registration available through Cornell's event announcement.
Allen plans to compare traditional measures of artistic quality — including beauty, craftsmanship, originality and a work's relationship to artistic tradition — with newer debates over an artist's identity and a work's social or political significance. The question becomes especially consequential for civic buildings, public displays and projects funded with public money, the college said.
His examples will include exhibitions he has praised and criticized, current disputes over civic architecture in Washington and disagreements about government's role in the arts. He will consider what should happen when professional expertise, public preferences and democratic authority point toward different choices.
The talk is sponsored by Cornell's Program on Freedom and Free Societies and co-sponsored by its government and architecture departments. Michael Fontaine, the program's director and a classics professor, said Allen brings experience as a critic, curator, museum director and participant in politics to the question.
Allen has led the museum division of the New York Historical Society and the Addison Gallery of American Art, and has worked as a curator at the Clark Art Institute. He has written on 19th-century American art and other subjects and is an art critic for National Review. Earlier in his career, he practiced law and served as chief of staff to the president pro tempore of the Connecticut General Assembly.
Attendees can go to Statler Hall for the in-person program or use the college's event page to find the livestream registration link before Oct. 19.
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