From Museums to Cities: How Urban Art Transforms Landscapes

They can be irreverent like Maurizio Cattelan‘s L.O.V.E. (commonly known as The Finger) in front of the Milan Stock Exchange; colorful like Koons’ sculptures in Bilbao; grandiose like Anish Kapoor’s Cloud Gate in Chicago. Different creations born from a shared ambition: to become expressions of urban art by stepping out of museums and engaging directly with people. A symbol of the cultural migration that art has experienced over the past fifty years.

This is the essence of public, site-specific works, the result of the sensitivity of artists but also of companies and public administrations that began to envision art and its expressions as elements of urban renewal and opportunities to enrich the territory. Thus, from the very first experiences, the effects of this migration from museum halls to city squares have been profound, contributing on one hand to strengthening the identities of the places where these works have been created, and on the other, to becoming symbols of the cities that host them.

“Liberty, Hatred, Vengeance, Eternity.” This is the meaning behind the acronym L.O.V.E., the name of Maurizio Cattelan‘s sculpture (4.60 meters tall), made of Carrara marble and placed at the center of Piazza Affari in front of Palazzo Mezzanotte, headquarters of the Milan Stock Exchange. The Finger, as the work is commonly called, depicts the middle finger of a hand raised while the other fingers are amputated. For many, Maurizio Cattelan’s creation represents a fascist salute turned into an irreverent gesture that should both draw inspiration from the architecture of the Fascist era of Palazzo Mezzanotte and reflect the world of finance and its greed.

Inaugurated on September 24, 2010, this work was initially supposed to remain in the square for just a week, but due to its ability to integrate into the context from the very first days, discussions started about its permanent placement, so much so that the artist wrote a letter to the then Councilor for Culture of the Municipality of Milan reaffirming that “the project was created for Piazza Affari and must remain there.”

Just like in Milan, in Chicago, the idea of enriching an iconic city landmark, Millennium Park, came from the meeting of public administration’s will and the interest of a collective of artists. In 1999, a contest was launched for 30 artists to imagine a work that could be integrated into the park and capable of representing the city’s vital spirit. In the end, the project by Indian-born, British-naturalized artist Anish Kapoor was selected, titled Cloud Gate, but widely known as The Bean. This enormous, curved, mercury-like droplet-shaped sphere reflects and distorts the image of Chicago’s skyline. The Bean, inaugurated in 2006, became one of the city’s symbols and one of its main tourist attractions.

Behind the creation of these artistic works lies the belief that contemporary urban art is for everyone, a message that many artists have wanted to communicate by choosing streets, parks, and squares as exhibition spaces. Site-specific works are, in fact, designed for a specific environmental, cultural, and social context; they are born from a dialogue with these places and their communities, becoming active participants in the process of transforming the urban landscape.

In 2016, Rome was the protagonist of one of the most ambitious site-specific projects of recent years when South African artist William Kentridge created a 550-meter-long mural along the riverbanks of the Tiber. Titled Triumphs and Laments, it features 80 figures, each 10 meters tall, drawn from Roman mythology. No use of paint or varnish, just selective removal (via water cleaning) of the biological patina accumulated on the travertine embankments over the years.

This creation, which became Kentridge’s largest public work, completely disappeared over five years, just as the artist had intended. “Triumphs and Laments was never meant to be an eternal monument,” Kentridge explained, “its disappearance is part of its meaning about the disappearance of memory. But the hope is that other memories will take its place.”

And now, Rome’s memories, combined with the allure of its past and the desire for the future, are taking shape in another ambitious public urban art project: the Murales project, supported by the consortium of companies led by Webuild and Vianini Lavori, which is constructing the city’s Metro Line C. In Piazza Venezia, at the symbolic construction site of this massive project, six international artists will alternate until 2026, showcasing large-scale works on the industrial silos at the site, measuring 10 meters high, 64 meters long, and covering an area of 640 square meters.

The Murales project was inaugurated on December 16 2024 with the first work Costellazioni di Roma by artist Pietro Ruffo, and since then, Piazza Venezia has become a large open-air museum, with the construction site turning into a local attraction to admire the new works that, just like the metro, promise to change the city’s face.