El arte público como espacio educativo: Producción, mediación y recepción en el País Vasco y Navarra

Abstract

Many cities and regions have now begun to pay more attention to their public spaces since, in an attempt to improve their cultural image, local institutions have erected works of art in them. The Autonomous Regions of the Basque Country and Navarre are examples of this increased interest in public art. Although democracy helped alleviate some of the after-effects of the policies enacted by Franco's dictatorship, few art-oriented cultural policies have been implemented in these two regions with the aim of establishing a political-cultural project model capable of enabling the full, well-rounded development of the human per­sonality. In a culturally critical moment such as the one we are currently in, my aim is to address the chal­lenge of rethinking cultural mediation and the uses and roles that public art should play in individual training and education. To this end, the paper analyses some of the most emblematic projects instigated by some of the administrations in the Autonomous Regions of the Basque Country and Navarre, and studies the rela­tionships which are generated between those participating in the public sculpture framework: producers, mediators and receivers. The first part of the paper examines some specific examples in which artists and policy-makers have played a key role in planning and generating public art projects with the aim of fulfilling an educational, training-based and or outreach function. The second part, in contrast, proposes a series of guidelines aimed at optimising the way in which art is displayed and viewed in public areas.