The Public Administration of Public Art: Situated Practices in Swedish Municipalities

Even though states support and administer public art programs all over the world, the public administration of public art is a close to non-existent topic in the public administration research literature. This article provides some first steps towards a scholarly engagement with public art in the field of public administration through a practice-centred grounded theory-inspired investigation into the situated everyday practices of public administration of public art in Swedish municipalities. The results evince that difficult challenges regarding artistic integrity, democratic influence and political accountability rarely emerge in pure form, but rather tend to appear on the stage of administrative everyday work entangled in mundane bureaucratic processes relating to public procurement laws, accounting rules and budgeting routines. It is therefore important to investigate the administration of public art as an ongoing world of practice in which action is always contextually and situationally specific.