Public art
Artwork in the public realm: murals, sculptures, installations, and monuments anyone can experience without a ticket, usually commissioned for a shared space.
The defining quality of public art isn't the medium. It's the audience. A gallery decides who walks in; a plaza doesn't. That openness is what makes public art collections such a strong civic asset, and also what makes them easy to lose track of: works accumulate across decades, departments, and donors, and nobody's job is to keep the whole picture.
Most cities hold far more public art than residents realize. Making the collection visible (mapped, photographed, and told as a set of stories) is usually the single most valuable move a city or arts organization can make with work it already owns.