The Mayor’s Commission, She Built New York, and the Vagaries of Public Art Controversies

Professor Harriet Senie’s chief research areas are public art, memorials, memory and material culture, the American landscape tradition (themes of the road in American art and culture), and contemporary pilgrimage practice. She directs the M.A. Museum Studies Program at City College of New York, where she also teaches. She previously served as Associate Director of the Princeton Art Museum and Gallery Director at SUNY, Old Westbury. In 2008, she co-founded with Professor Cher Krause Knight (Emerson University), Public Art Dialogue. The journal, Public Art Dialogue, that she co-edits with Prof. Knight, appears twice annually and is the only peer review journal devoted to public art. She is currently completing a book entitled Memorials to Shattered Myths: Vietnam to 9/11, that analyzes official memorials to events that have shattered myths of national identity: the Vietnam War, the Oklahoma City bombing, the Columbine shootings, and 9/11.

Co-sponsored by the Museum Studies Program