Art In Public Places Towards Public Art

The aim of this thesis is to compare public art policies between China and South Korea. In the past, the meaning of public art in China and South Korea was simply installing artworks in public spaces. However, this concept gradually changed and developed to put emphasis not only on the artwork itself, but also the publicity of the artwork within a social realm. With the passing of The National City Sculpture Planning Group and Arts Decorations for Buildings’ Law, Chinese and South Korean public art policies witnessed unprecedented developments in the early1980s. This paper mainly presents the impact of these laws towards Chinese and South Korean public art policies.The thesis is divided into three parts. The first chapter demonstrates the role of government in the development of public art policies, explaining the details of the two laws passed, and comparing the main policies’history, background, and development. In addition, this paper seeks to provide strategies for improvement connected directly to the cultural circumstances of China and South Korea, drawing upon successful examples from western public art policies that have been influenced to formulate the public art policies of China and South Korea today.In the second chapter, this paper will focus on the development of public art between China and South Korea, within three historical periods. The first part Indicates the developments from the late1950s. Starting with government led public art policy. What’s more, this study also examines the introduction of related policies in the1980s, and further researches the developments based on notion of western public art in the2000s.Lastly, in the last chapter this study suggests future development directions to find ways of improvement through realizing internal and external problems of public art policies in China and South Korea.