Rochester Public Art Plan

The City of Rochester, which makes robust investments in public art through various initiatives, sought this plan to establish a common vision, values and processes for how it uses its public art resources to equitably serve communities and artists in the region.

Date | Ongoing
Client | City of Rochester, Office of Planning
Collaborators | Designing Local

Rochester, N.Y., is both an inspirational and a challenging place to create a public art master plan. Rochester had already been operating a robust public art program when it asked Bressi, as a subconsultant to Designing Local, to develop a formal public art master plan as a component of an overall cultural plan. 

What is exciting is the vision the city (and its Arts and Creative Community Committee) brings to the table – public art should reflect the creative and cultural pulse of the city, and should be an integral part of the community’s cultural, social, and economic well-being, and a public art program should operate with a high degree of transparency and accountability. What’s also exciting is the financial and creative resources this struggling city of 200,000 people can bring to the table. 

And what is challenging is developing a plan that threads together the robust efforts already underway – public art in capital projects, a program of temporary activations, and a robust mural program. 

Bressi’s plan focuses largely on creating internal and community structures for implementing the flexible and responsible program that the City and its public art stakeholders imagine. This includes a process for community-initiated temporary artworks, standardized practices for developing projects, and a standardized process for program and collection management.  

The plan also includes a chapter that explores how Rochester’s public realm can be defined – from the literal territory that the city owns, to public realm projects built by the city and institutions, to places of shared value that are remembered or imagined by communities. The plan makes room for public art to enrich all of these ways that people engage with the city.