Wild Park
Wild Park is an essay that explores the varying quality of art in public space. An artwork is not only defined by form and iconography but also by the functions and meanings assigned to it beforehand. In understanding what art can mean for the public domain, Jeroen Boomgaard goes in search of works that succeed in eluding the interests and intentions that encumber a location, and whose escape route describes an unexpected pattern in the air.
Jeroen Boomgaard is an art historian attached to the University of Amsterdam. He has also held the post of lector at the Research Group Art and Public Space of the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam since 2003. This position facilitated the research which was the foundation for this essay. Within the framework of this research Boomgaard published Highrise – Common Ground. Art and the Amsterdam Zuidas Area in 2008.
This is the sixth publication in a series of essays commissioned by the Netherlands Foundation for Visual Arts, Design and Architecture.