Commissioned for MoMA’s 1969 exhibition Painting for City Walls, this seldom-seen artist proposal was one of the first to acknowledge the contribution of urban art interventions to the social transformation of the city. Artists had begun to create gigantic murals on blank walls in Manhattan, and MoMA curator Arthur Drexler, then the head of the Department of Architecture and Design at the Museum, welcomed proposals that would provide what he called “community improvement in a broader sense.” Crum’s striking graphic interventions in Project for a Painted Wall, New York City combine the influence of the wall drawings of Minimalist and Conceptual artists such as Sol LeWitt with that of the emerging culture of street art, suggesting a sense of optimism for the redevelopment and revitalization of the SoHo neighborhood of New York City. Crum and like-minded artists believed that collaboration between artists and urban communities would be the basis for a regeneration of the city through public art.
Gallery label from 9 + 1 Ways of Being Political: 50 Years of Political Stances in Architecture and Urban Design, September 12, 2012–March 25, 2013.
