Abstract
The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) was established in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government to support arts in the United States. Art in Public Places (APP) program which NEA launched in 1967 and continued through 1992 gave birth to the term “public art” in a contemporary sense. From the first grant for Alexander Calder's sculpture La Grande Vitesse to Sculpture Chicago's artists-citizens collaborative project Culture in Action, numbers of innovative public art projects received the APP grants. This study shows that the program had constantly expanded the idea of public art.
