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                    About Public Art Melbourne

                    BIrd images on screens outdoors
                    Installation view of Julian Opie’s work 'Australian birds' 2020, at NGV International, Melbourne.
                    (c) Julian Opie
                    Photo: Tom Ross
                    Honouring our city’s commitment to nurturing and enabling artists and curators, Public Art Melbourne offers a platform for artists to realise their ideas for city sites, to interpret its places, invent new experiences and make the city crackle with possibilities for visitors, workers and residents.

                    Public art can be a permanent feature of the cityscape; or fleeting, there one day, gone the next. It can be a thing to look at or an experience.

                    Public Art Melbourne commissions art in the public realm, opening up city spaces to artists to create encounters with the unexpected for the people of Melbourne. Once commissioned, permanent public artworks enter the City’s Collection.  

                    Whatever form it takes, public art is there to make life more interesting and more wonderful.

                    Public Art Melbourne Ideas

                    Art by its nature is independent, courageous and experimental. It needs audiences and takes time and resources that are not always easy to find. Through Public Art Melbourne Ideas, the City of Melbourne provides financial and development support for artists to test and evolve new works, nurturing artists through programs like Test Sites and Public Art Melbourne Lab. 

                    Read more about Public Art Melbourne Ideas.

                    Public Art Melbourne Projects

                    Public art relies on investment, planning and partnerships to make work of enduring quality. By converting creative vision into tangible results, Public Art Melbourne helps city artists, planners, enablers and investors work together on various special projects to build and enhance Melbourne’s public art scene. 

                    Read more about Public Art Melbourne Projects.

                    Art for everyone

                    Public art is for everyone. It starts lively conversations about its meanings and its merits, and ignites new ways for people to relate to the world and each other.

                    We welcome and expect these debates and responses. Our aim is to move, inform, inspire or amuse people to bring on new ways of seeing or being. We want public art in Melbourne – just like Melbourne weather – to become part of everyday conversation.

                    Why Public Art Melbourne?

                    Streets, parks and public spaces exist in between the buildings where people live, work, eat and shop. By bringing life to those spaces in between, the City of Melbourne aims to enrich the experience of people who pass through them. With a lively public art program, the municipality offers larger opportunities to explore and realise our full human potential.

                    Contact us

                    Telephone number
                    03 9658 965803 9658 9658
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