John Passmore Case Study

I believe that the public’s rejection of Serra’s sculpture was justified. The public rejected the sculpture because they thought it was ugly and disrupted the plaza. The sculpture was funded by government money and was installed in a public area. It was owned and commissioned by a government agency, the General Services Administration (GSA). The public had the right to voice its dissent and the GSA had the right to remove the sculpture. The public thought that the Tilted Arc disrupted the plaza in several ways. According to John Passmore, “The main public criticism was that the sculpture had a generally disruptive nature; its scale and location bifurcated the plaza, obstructing views and making it difficult for pedestrians and office workers to commute between buildings.” Some people brought up the fact that the sculpture interfered with the artistic work of the plaza designers (Passmore). Jennifer Mundy writes that the office workers immediately saw the sculpture as “ugly, …show more content…
Passmore writes that the GSA commissioned Richard Serra to create and install the sculpture, and they paid him $175,000 for the service. This means that they owned the sculpture. When the public started to despise the sculpture, the GSA organized a panel to hold publics hearings about the work (Mundy). After the panel voted to remove the piece, Serra sued and the courts upheld the GSA’s decision, correctly noting that the GSA owned the Tilted Arc and could do whatever they wanted to do with it (Mundy). Serra didn’t own the sculpture, so it didn’t really matter what he thought should happen to it. His wishes that the sculpture not be relocated somewhere else have been followed. Other organizations have been reluctant to have the Tilted Arc installed at their locations because they don’t want to go against the wishes of the artist