The Story of Public Art
MAPS – Museum of Art in Public Spaces, Køge, Denmark, 2025-2029
Featuring Auto on the Edge: Doing Time Revisited (1994/2025)
MAPS—Museum of Art in Public Spaces presents its largest international exhibition to date, The Story of Public Art. The Story of Public Art explores what artists do in public spaces and tells the story of groundbreaking artistic experiments in public spaces from the 1960s to the present. The show features over 120 artists from more than 40 countries in an organic and dynamic exhibition format that will evolve throughout its four-year duration, branching out into public spaces in different formations over time.
The Story of Public Art is the story of manifestations, situations, and temporary, fleeting forms. It is about movements, attitudes, and energies rather than monuments, statues, and public commissions. The show presents artworks that have become landmarks for future generations and have changed our perception of identity, power structures, biopolitics, desire, labor, social relations, nature, and reality—exploring the tensions and connections between art and life.
The exhibition includes "Auto on the Edge of Time" which was a series of installations and projects that explored the effects of domestic violence as experienced by women, children and families throughout the United States. The wrecked cars were transformed into sculptural testimonials on themes of escape, abuse, control, support, healing, and memorializing.
The poem originally inscribed on railroad ties is now printed on aluminum plates, describing a woman who went underground to escape violence, bringing visibility to experiences often hidden from view.
Curated by Dr. Charlotte Sprogøe.
Images by Jan Søndergaard. Courtesy of MAPS – Museum of Art in Public Spaces.