New Haven is home to more than 500 works of publicly accessible art throughout the City, with the City itself owning about half of this number. The City-owned collection includes monuments and murals, Percent-for-Art projects, Mayoral portraits, Federal Art Project works of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and many miscellaneous works difficult to categorize. Many monuments are housed in the City’s expansive park system. In addition, Yale University, the State of Connecticut, the Federal government and numerous private owners own hundreds more works of public art that contribute to the City’s ambience, and support the historical and cultural vitality in the Elm City.
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The Department of Arts, Culture and Tourism is a participant in two national databases that document and highlight the expansive and varied public art collections in cities across the United States. The Public Art Archive (mobile version also available at m.publicartarchive.org), a storehouse of information which is the first publicly accessible national public art database to utilize digital technologies and follow professional standards in art history and collections management. New Haven, along with Denver and Las Vegas, are the first participants in this project, which will become a valuable resource to document public art in America.
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Additionally, the City's public art collection can also be viewed at CultureNOW/Museum without Walls. This searchable mapping system was begun by a collaborative of architects, urban planners and art lovers to highlight downtown Manhattan's cultural resources after the losses of 9/11. The website has since grown to integrate public art and architecture from across the United States, and is expanding across the globe. CultureNOW is also available as an iPhone app with an Android app in development.
Lastly, the Department of Arts, Culture and Tourism has also submitted its mural collection to directed public website called the Mural Locator, which places New Haven's murals in the context of an art form that has been in existence for millennia, and continues to impart didactic, political and cultural messages across the globe.
