Yesterday's campus events surrounding the unveiling of the Cesar Chavez statue were very exciting. The red United Farm Workers flag flew on the Main Mall while senators, state representatives, the US Undersecretary of Education honored Chavez's legacy and called for a continued struggled toward racial equality, workers' rights, and social justice. Like the Martin Luther King, Jr. statue on the East Mall, the Chavez statue and the Barbara Jordan statue (set for unveiling in Spring 2009) were the result of student-initiated campaigns and were financed by student fees. While yesterday's event was exciting and inspiring--what a pleasure to walk across the South Mall quad and hear speeches about social justice!--I am slightly unsettled by what looks like an institutional and media co-opting of a fairly radical student initiative. Don't get me wrong: I'm thrilled to have the monument and what it represents on West Mall. I'm thrilled to have significant public demonstration on campus about social justice issues. But why must the representation of diversity on campus (and the affirmation of openness, racial equality, and social justice that accompanies these representations) have to come from students? And be financed by students? Regardless of my personal qualms, however, there are lots of issues here for the pedagogical picking: representation and ideology, the social significance of public art, the process of making art "public" (proposals, funding, relationship to institutions, etc), and how public art represents and addresses various publics.

I was especially interested in these events given the weekend's art news: a Monet slashed at the Musee d'Orsay in France, and half of a Andreas Serrano show vandalized in Sweden. (The event in France is one of a series of recent incidents of art desecration/vandalism/thievery.) These are great opportunities for talking about art and the public, what art represents, and why it invites/incites violence.