‘Public art put to the test by censorship

by Julie Bawin, Professor of the History of Contemporary Art at the University of Liège and Director of the Musée d'art contemporain en plein air du Sart Tilman.

By imposing itself on the community as a whole, and thus confronting a plurality of judgements and opinions, the work of public art is, more than any other instituted creation, the object of tension and rejection. From the nineteenth century to the present day, works commissioned for public spaces have been censored both vertically and horizontally, both by the State and its spheres of power and by individuals from civil society. Julie Bawin invites us to take a look at the history of censorship in the public space, with the aim of showing the variability and permanence of the arguments that, from decade to decade, have been put forward to challenge, ban or dismantle works that were intended to meet with the approval of the greatest number of people.

In 2024 Julie Bawin published Art public et Controverses XIXe-XXIe siècle (Paris, CNRS Éditions).