Commission
In 1979 the Art-in-Architecture program decided to commission a work of public art to grace the open space in front of a planned addition to the Jacob Javits Federal Building in Manhattan. An outdoor sculpture would be designed for the plaza adjacent to a federal-office complex. Richard Serra was selected as the artist by the U.S. General Services Administration administrator, after having been recommended by a National Endowments for the Arts panel of art experts. Serra was already a notable artist at the time, with much admiration from the art world. The contract for the commission included a release in which Serra gave the work to GSA, making it property of the United States..
Read more about this topic: Tilted Arc
Famous quotes containing the word commission:
“The Church seems to totter to its fall, almost all life extinct. On this occasion, any complaisance would be criminal which told you, whose hope and commission it is to preach the faith of Christ, that the faith of Christ is preached.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Yesterday the Electoral Commission decided not to go behind the papers filed with the Vice-President in the case of Florida.... I read the arguments in the Congressional Record and can’t see how lawyers can differ on the question. But the decision is by a strictly party vote—eight Republicans against seven Democrats! It shows the strength of party ties.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime.”
—Thomas Paine (1737–1809)