In November, I did a tour for a group of human geography undergraduates from the University of Central Lancashire, which I have now turned into a publication. The tour aimed to offer a brief introduction to the historical context and development of public art, and some of the debates, concerns and issues surrounding it, asking questions such as ‘What is public art?’ and ‘What form does it take?’.

The tour took as its starting point the post-war era, widely regarded a time artworks began to step down from the gallery plinth to be installed in public places and buildings, though many of them used the same form and materials, and relied on the same assumed distance between artwork and viewer, and framework of interpretation, as artworks which might be seen in a traditional institutional setting. It concluded in the present-day. The resulting guide moves from a presentation of object-based artworks…