When I saw the headline Tribute paid to Dublin character, by Olivia Kelly in the Irish Times, I feared that one of the few public witnesses to her gospel that I had ever warmed to was dead. Happily, Mary Margaret Dunne is still alive. The article was referring to a living tribute to her organised on Facebook

In my 1994 novel, The Fabulists., Ms Dunne features on the last page, as crowds wait on Lord Edward and Dame streets to cheer the newly-elected President Mary Robinson, due in cavalcade in her 1947 Rolls-Royce. Needless to say, everyone was behind barricades, watched over by the relaxed and good-humoured Guards (Irish police). And then, exactly as the passage describes, came one exception, and the Guards, to their eternal credit, just smiled like everyone else. Mary Robinson had been branded a communist by her more trenchant opponents, but this deeply religious woman created a moment of magic when all enmity seemed forgotten and toleration had displaced it. It was, I believe, a uniquely Irish moment, if such a thing exists.
For those who don’t understand Irish, Dia’s Muire dhuit means God and Mary be with you – ie Mary the Mother of God, not Mary Robinson, though for a fleeting moment the distinction was blurred.

Then there was a murmur of recognition from the crowd as the woman who danced with her cross in O’Connell Street seemed to come from nowhere. As usual, her grey hair was tied back neatly. As usual, she smiled brightly as she brandished the cross. But now she walked with happy abandon, though she never deviated from the white line in the middle of the road. As she showed her cross to the crowds to her left and right she seemed to chant something, and Tess thought it was a religious protest; but as she came nearer and was audible Tess broke into a happy smile. Everyone was smiling, even the guards, who made no attempt to move her.
`Ooh ooh,’ the woman was repeating happily, `a Lady President, Dia’s Muire dhuit. Ooh ooh, a Lady President, Dia’s Muire dhuit.’ And she continued down the road, unmolested, until she was out of sight.
`Isn’t that great?’ Tess said, turning to Mungo, her tears threatening to spill over.
`It is,’ he said. `It’s great.’

You can read the last chapter of The Fabulists here

One Hundred and Thirty Nine Years of Solitude

(CBS Gorey, l854-l993 /past pupil,1967-1971)

I can see now, at the distance
of half a lifetime,
that what I disliked about it
was the absence of women,
their sensual spur to wit
which keeps the intellect entranced.

That’s why Latin was dead:
amo, amas, amat had no object.
Mathematics, too:
it had no pax de deux,
no algebra of the hormones.
Irish was a sex-free zone,
a vital, private part of expression
cut away from a blood-rich tongue.

A Brother told me
that if I read half the books
on science that I did on history
he’d be pleased.
But history had its Lucrezia Borgias,
and English its Louise.

Not for me the Greek ideal
that a man’s intellectual equal
could only be a man,
though I wasn’t aware of this, or of anything.
But some fine teachers had a liking
for intellectual hunger, and passed it on.

Now I can see that like everyone,
I was a product of my time,
as the men who taught me
were products of theirs.
They had a certain certainty
which allayed their fears,
or so it seemed, whereas my conviction
was that nothing was certain –

apart from the beauty of a certain woman.

Perhaps thus a culture evolves,
and amidst such tensions
in small classrooms
a new generation tries to solve
the conundrum of its role,
convinced it will make a better world.

Philip Casey

139 Years of Solitude by Philip Casey is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://blog.philipcasey.com/contact-me/.

The Project

In the European Ghost Literary Project we want to collect a good number of stories based on European folklore, fairy tales, myths and legends, told by the people who know them best. In this way we would like to create a testimonial of European history and culture from Portugal to Russia and from Turkey to Iceland in the form of a book which will emphasize the similarities as well as the diversity between our cultures.

For the writers this would be an excellent opportunity to gain an international audience and attract attention to their writing. Of course we will extend all the usual courtesies of publishing.
The stories can be submitted in English, Spanish, French or German, but if you are more comfortable writing in your native language, please do not hesitate. We have a myriad of translators and native speakers on stand-by.

Should you be interested or just looking for more information, please check out our website European Ghost Literary Project or contact us through infoATeuropeanghostDOTcom.
 
Kind Regards,

Marcel Admiraal
Project Manager
0031 6 412 260 26
infoATeuropeanghostDOTcom

As it happens, a few years back I was asked to adapt an Irish myth for a children’s book of world literature. The book was never published, as far as I know, but it meant that I had a ready-made story, The Land of Youth, to offer Marcel’s project, and it is now on his site under Stories as a creative commons pdf.

As The Land of Youth was written for children, it’s in simple language, but perhaps that is fortuitous as it is now intended for a pan-European audience so hopefully non-native speakers will find it easy to read.

The introduction and notes are too long to publish here, but I’ll post them soon, hopefully.

You can also see Cyclopedia-Ireland, an early version Irish Culture Guide, dating from April 23, 2001.Some versions have this epigraph:

The best thing for being sad is to learn something
-Merlin the Magician

What that says about me, or me then, I’m not sure. As far as I recall I got that quote from an old book, but I can’t be certain.

By 2002, I’d found Cyclopedia-Ireland a bit too much to live up to and had settled for the more modest Irish Culture Guide (2002 version.. This is how Irish Writers Online and Irish Culture Guide look today, in case you haven’t seen them recently!

Needless to say, I’d lost a lot of the above over the years – computer crashes, new computers, or simply overwriting, so it’s great that the Internet Archive Wayback Machine has copies of a lot of it. It’s an imperfect record, with a lot of pages missing, but it’s way better than nothing and a tribute to the foresight of the founders.

And it’s nice to see that Kavanagh’s dictum on poetry holds true for web design – the journey ‘from simplicity to simplicity.’

Yeats’ writings are now in the public domain, it now being seventy years from the end of the year of his death year of 1939. Damien Mulley, whose blog on the subject alerted me, has some interesting suggestions about how they might be used in the digital age.

Speaking of the digital age, David Hewson’s technology articles in the Sunday Times were essential reading for me for about ten years. I really enjoyed his pugnacious style.
He’s now a thriller writer and his website, blog, etc is here, and reviews confirm him as a master stylist.

I re-found him, so to speak on Twitter, @david_hewson, retweeted by literary agent @caroleagent. He’s written a series of entries on book theft. eg Book theft myth no 3: Technology can fix it, (at least I think that’s where you find it. He uses an url shortening service). By book theft he means the digital copying of his work which is then uploaded to torrent sites.

It’s a very interesting question, especially for authors, but I don’t think it’s a simple cut and dried case.

Novelist Paulo Coelho takes the opposite view, for instance.

“Since the dawn of time, human beings have felt the need to share – from food to art. Sharing is part of the human condition.” Paulo Coelho, supporting The Pirate Bay.

Mr Coelho is world famous, and sharing one’s work via bittorrent can actually be very profitable for someone who is as famous as he is.

Publishing his books on The Pirate Bay worked out really well for Coelho. He actually sold tens of thousands of extra books because he shared them on BitTorrent. “I do think that when a reader has the possibility to read some chapters, he or she can always decide to buy the book later,” Coelho said, and he is not alone in that assessment.

Then there’s Cory Doctorow, who actively shares and has done so since his first novel.

His novels are published by Tor Books and HarperCollins UK and simultaneously released on the Internet under Creative Commons licenses that encourage their re-use and sharing, a move that increases his sales by enlisting his readers to help promote his work.

Of course, as well as being an author, he is “the co-editor of the popular weblog Boing Boing (boingboing.net), and a contributor to Wired, Popular Science, Make, the New York Times, and many other newspapers, magazines and websites,” so he had a good base start for a very successful experiment.

For somewhat obscure writers like me it probably works in more mysterious ways. We’re glad if we’re read at all!

But the more important point is that books have been shared – or stolen, according to your point of view – since writing was invented. St Colmcille is famous because he stole a book without a moment’s thought, not having any concept of ownership. The world’s first copyright decision arose from that – after a lot of blood was spilt. The library in Alexandria sought ‘loans’ of books, copied them and gave back the copy. (see Peter Watson’s Ideas: A History)

If it’s a question of the author’s livelihood, what about books that are loaned, or bought second-hand? The author gets no money for that, at least not directly. All he or she can hope for in monetary terms is that if the reader who has read the book on loan, or has bought it second-hand, likes the work, that they will seek out the author’s other work and gladly pay for a new copy. Or at least buy the author a drink.

Of course no writer minds anyone loaning or selling on their books to second-hand bookstores, who often make large profits a few years later if the book is significant, so why, exactly, do we mind when someone passes on a digital copy to others without a profit motive?

It’s now known that the majority of those who download pirated music buy more music than those who don’t download. Does that work for books? No one knows, at least not to my knowledge. We’ll probably find out when more books come in digital form. Of course if pirates resell the book I’d be the first in line to hammer them.

David Hewson obviously won’t see a bump in his royalty cheques because of bittorrents. On the other hand a lot more young people than before probably now know of his work, and if they like it, at least some of them will buy it sometime in the future. I haven’t read thrillers as a rule since my teens (and for the record I’m not young and don’t upload books to bittorrents), but I’ve just bought David Hewson’s Dante’s Numbers: The Seventh Costa Novel ). To prove a point? No, more as a thank you to David Hewson for all those great technology articles. But there is the point that I wouldn’t even have known he was now writing novels were it not for the bittorrenters.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve every sympathy with an author who finds his or her book on a Korean torrent site without their knowledge or consent. It’s an awful feeling. And yes, it’s illegal. And yes, it’s stealing. Just as newspapers lifting information or news from blogs without attribution is stealing, or indeed, large media corporations lifting biographical notes from my Irish Writers Online website without attribution, despite the explicit creative commons licence which asks only for attribution – that’s stealing. Which bolsters David Hewson’s point that it is a cultural phenomenon.

But let’s put this in perspective. Only a comparatively tiny number of people, mostly penniless teenagers, have even heard of the term torrent, let alone know how to use torrent sites. An even tinier number, even though they could afford to buy the book or song, or video, do it because they can, or out of principal. But teenagers grow up, have to earn a living, learn how hard it can be. Give them the chance to download music, books, films at a reasonable price and most of them will.

At the moment, very few people read a book through on a screen. They sample it, to see if they like it. pretty much like browsing through a book in a bookshop. Developments like Enhanced Editions, mentioned by Damien Mulley in his Yeats post, could change all of that, and is probably the way forward for publishing. There’s no doubt about it, a book torrent will have a completely different meaning in a few years, maybe even in the coming year: a torrent of readers will download books – legitimately, because finally, they will be able to do so. One of the reasons book chains are failing is that books which are not obvious best sellers – obvious to them, that is – are given a few weeks’ shelf-life, if that. Old-style bookshops used to have sellers who knew about books. It was a pleasure to browse, or to speak with the bookseller. Now, with noble exceptions such as Books Upstairs here in Dublin, staff typically know about bestsellers only. Mention a great literary writer and… As for poetry – forget it, unless you’re a megastar. So readers will gratefully download the books they want at their leisure, and be delighted to pay a reasonable price. Many of us live in small houses or apartments. I’m lucky enough to live in a small terraced house, but it’s bursting at the seams with books. Moby Dick plus a thousand others on an Android or Nokia/Maemo smart phone with a decent screen? You bet.

What about the infamous Google Book Agreement? Well, that’s a giant corporation and immediately people think of cultural colonisation, with good reason. As for its benefits and drawbacks and whether it’s piratical, it’s far too complex for mere mortals like most authors to figure out. Agents and publishers hopefully understand it better. For my part, I opted out.

I will say this, though. I’m doing a lot of research at the moment, and the limited preview feature on Google Books has been a godsend. Why? Because I can find out whether an expensive book has the information I need. Not only do I buy the book if it has that information (my poor postman is now aware of muscles he never knew he had) but I often use the limited preview to look up a reference in the hard copy on my desk. It’s quicker than trawling through an index, believe it or not.

Meanwhile, you could do worse than browse Philip Davison’s first novel, The Book Thief’s Heartbeat, 1981, which he has made available under a Creative Commons licence.

Pre-eminently human… funny in the way that The Catcher in the Rye was funny. BOOKS IRELAND

Mr Davison has a gentle touch with words that allow them to filter through the mind, leaving a residue of warmth and familiar recognition behind. SUNDAY PRESS

It has a hero who smacks of early Beckett EVENING HERALD

It is obvious that Philip Davison could make any place or circumstance or character that took his fancy equally compelling. He has a sparse and strangely matter-of-fact style of writing that gives full value to every word and act. THE IRISH TIMES

It’s now out of print, but if you’re a book collector, you can buy The Book-Thief’s Heartbeat from Kenny’s for £86.40, which is about €97.50.

So it’s a complex subject in an ever-more complex world. If I have any strong opinion on it it is that Cory Doctorow has the right idea – publish in hardcopy but also encourage digital re-use and sharing in order to promote the book. In other words positively and actively make a virtue out of an inevitability. All the DRM stuff is a pain in the neck for everyone concerned.

Quantum Art

I wish that Julian Voss-Andreae had made some of these sculptures when I was in school. While we can’t really claim that they represent quantum physics concepts accurately, they still would’ve made reading about Bosons and Fermions more pleasant.[Gizmodo]
The artist: Julian Voss-Andreae

Some architecture I like
Kärsämäki Shingle Church in Finland by Lassila Hirvilammi Architects

‘De Valera was a British spy’
Book claims national hero was ‘turned’ after 1916 Irish Independent

Fine erotic writing
The Demure Lemur

Roll Up Notebook

orkin-design.de
Can’t wait. via Treehugger for full description

Alliouagana is the native name for the island of Montserrat which was originally inhabited by Tainos (Arawaks) moving north from South America along the eastern chain of Caribbean islands, and subsequently occupied by the Kaliganu people (Caribs) prior to the arrival of Europeans in 1493.
Caribbean American Research Foundation

I spent a long time reading and thinking about this island when I was writing my novel The Fisher Child, as its middle section is principally set in Montserrat, an island largely dominated by Irish slave plantation owners and their descendants in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries

Columbus, of course, named Montserrat, (ie Sawn, or Jagged Mountain), after the mountain of the same name in Catalonia, which, as it happens, I visited at least once when I lived in Barcelona in the seventies. The Monastery of Montserrat, located near the top of the 4,000-foot mountain, is famous for its statue of the Black Madonna, (La Moreneta). Have a look at Sacred Destinations for its history and pictures.

One of my working methods is to discover the Indian names for the Caribbean islands before they were colonized, and this was how I came across the Alliouagana Festival of the World.

Its featured artists are

Funso Aiyejina | Austin Clarke
Carolyn Cooper | Howard Fergus
Merle Hodge | Marie-Elena John
Hollis Liverpool (Chalkdust)
Earl Lovelace | Rachel Manley
Pauline Melville | Gordon Rohlehr
A-dZiko Simba | Yvonne Weekes
Edgar Nkosi White and others.

See their biographies and photos here
I don’t know why this makes me happy but it does. Perhaps it’s because Montserrat has been so ravaged by its volcano, and to see it now host a literary festival is yet one more testament to the human spirit.

I was delighted to make contact with the wonderful Chair of the litfest Steering Committee, Gracelyn Cassell. Contact her on the Alliouagana Festival of the World website.

I can’t go, but I hope someone who reads this can, or at least support the festival in some way. I’m having trouble uploading the pdf that Ms Cassell sent me but you can see the festival program here

The passage is from a chapter called The Frozen Moment, and his remark about homeopathy is an aside, but nonetheless arresting for that:

Professor Gary Schwartz, who works in Arizona, has pointed out that in any communication between two things, A and B, a network comes into being and a ‘feed-back’ loop is created. A memory of the relationship is formed and ‘emergent properties’ arise. In this way permanent storage of information can occur, and this can circulate indefinitely. It is not in something or out of something but circulates between both. This storage of information outside the brain happens in all kinds of situations, for example, between one person and another, between the heart and the brain, between cells and atoms, between a substance and the fluid in which it is dissolved.
(This may, for the first time, provide a scientific rationale for how homeopathy can work. Sceptics say that by the time full dilution has taken place, nothing of the original substance remains in the fluid in which it was dissolved and therefore the remedy can have no effect. But if a ‘feed-back’ loop between the substance and the fluid has been established, then the potion could be effective.)
- paperback edition, page 285

So there you have it. You’re still entitled to be sceptical.

Doctors who include homeopaths in their team see clearly that it is complementary to their orthodox practice. The two can and do co-exist to the great benefit of sick people. Does homeopathy always work? Probably not. But I can tell you from long and bitter experience that neither do antibiotics.

*image Wikipedia Commons

‘MY HEART IS IN THE EAST’, AN EVENING OF SEPHARDIC AND PERSIAN MUSIC PERFORMED BY THE JUDITH MOK HAMSA ENSEMBLE

Performed by Judith Mok soprano and Javid Afsari Rad santour, with Nick Roth sax, Oleg Ponomarev violin, Cora Venus Lunny viola, Francesco Turissi percussion & keyboard, Simon Jermyn guitars

‘My Heart is in the East, but I am in the West’, wrote the great Spanish Jewish poet, Judah Halevi, who lived in the 11th century. In Spain at that time, Jewish and Arabic cultures flourished alongside each other and cross-fertilised each other. The Jews called Spain ‘Sepharad’. When they were expelled from their beloved Spain in the 15th and 16th centuries, they took with them the romances and ballads of medieval Spain, which would come to be known as Sephardic music. As the Spanish Jews settled in North Africa, Turkey, the Balkans and the Holy Land, this music of loss and longing absorbed all the local musical influences, to produce the incredibly rich variety of Sephardic music we have today. For some years now the Dutch soprano Judith Mok, who is herself partly of Sephardic descent, has been exploring this unique musical heritage.

They will be joined by Javid Afsari Rad, one of the world’s leading exponents of Persian music and its special instrument, the Santour. The Santour is a hammered dulcimer which has been played in Persia for thousands of years, and is the ancestor of our Western piano.

It promises to be a unique evening, bringing together widely different styles of music from Jewish and Islamic cultures, in a spirit of harmony and celebration.

The Judith Mok Hamsa Ensemble is grateful to the Norwegian Embassy and Royal Netherlands Embassy for their generous support.

Additional Resource

www.youtube under Judith Mok
www.judithmok.com
www.myspace.com/judithmokofficialmyspace

Draft Policy for Decommissioning of Public Art

This draft policy document for the Decommissioning of Public Art follows the passing by the SPC for Arts, Culture, Leisure and Youth Affairs and The City Council (in March 2009) of the Policies and Strategies for Managing Public Art. The Policy document follows international best practice as operated in UK, USA and New Zealand in particular.

The document sets out procedures and policies for the management of the City Council’s collection of permanent art and where issues arise relating to condition or location of artworks and their impact on the city. The collection includes works in the City Council Collection but not works in the Dublin City Gallery – The Hugh Lane Collection. The City Council Collection includes artworks donated or on loan to the City as well as ‘permanent’ work commissioned by the City Council (including those under the Per Cent for Art Scheme) on display externally or internally.

The Policy Paper deals with issues relating to decommissioning artworks including; relocation, storage and full deaccession (i.e. removing a work from the City Council’s Collection). Reasons for such proposals include: the reconfiguration of public space; the condition of an artwork; that the context or relevance to a site has changed or complaints regarding the impact that a work is having on a community.

Ruairí Ó Cuív
Public Art Manager

DUBLIN CITY COUNCIL DRAFT POLICY

FOR DECOMMISSIONING PUBLIC ART

CONTENTS

1. Introduction 3

2. Principles 3

3. Decommissioning Options 3
3.1 Relocation 3
3.2Storage 4
3.3Deaccession 4

4. Criteria 4

5.Procedure 5

6. Assessment 5
6.1Initial Assessment 5
6.2Further Assessment 6
6.3Public Art Advisory Group 6
6.4Strategic Policy Committee 6
6.5Final decision 6

7. Records and Documentation 6

8. Future Contracts 6

9. Acknowledgements 7
9.1 Other Research 7

1.Introduction

Dublin City Council has many public artworks in its care. These range from protected structures and works of great historical and artistic importance to works of art commissioned in recent decades.

Occasionally issues arise regarding the condition or location of artworks and their impact on the city, its communities and visitors which involve proposals to move or remove artworks. Reasons for such proposals include: the reconfiguration of public space; the condition of an artwork; that the context or relevance to a site has changed or complaints regarding the impact that a work is having on a community.

This policy paper deals with issues relating to decommissioning artworks including; relocation, storage and full deaccession (i.e. removing a work from the City Council’s Collection). It includes public artworks in the City Council Collection but not works in the Dublin City Gallery – The Hugh Lane Collection or historic artworks which belong to the City Archives. The City Council Collection includes artworks donated or on loan to the City as well as ‘permanent’ work commissioned by the City Council (including those under the Per Cent for Art Scheme) on display externally or internally.

2. Principles

Decommissioning an artwork or monument will not be decided upon on grounds of historic meaning or artistic merit alone. Cities are built on layers of history and part of their importance and meaning stems from this. While political, social or artistic viewpoints can change it is not the role of Dublin City Council to arbitrate in retrospect on their merits, especially in view of the fact that political and artistic trends continuously change.

The decommissioning of an artwork should only take place after a considered process which includes assessment against the stated criteria (Section 4) and by following agreed procedures (Section 5). The process will be governed by respect for artists and communities in which the artwork is located.

3.Decommissioning Options

3.1 Relocation

“To remove the work is to destroy it” – Richard Sera, American artist, made this statement to a public enquiry in 1985, when it was proposed to move his artwork Tilted Arc from Federal Plaza, New York to another location.

The issue of site specificity is of great importance to many artists and they should be consulted regarding proposals to relocate a work. The context be it physical, spatial, historic, social or otherwise is often a factor in the commissioning, artistic concept and placement of artworks. Therefore, consideration has to be given regarding the impact on the appearance or meaning of the artwork in any proposal to relocate a work. In certain cases the relocation of an artwork can enhance its appearance and relevance.

The option of lending a work can also be considered.

3.2 Storage

There are times when there is need to remove works to storage. These can include infrastructure works taking place in the vicinity of the artwork, removal because of damage or as an interim stage to the relocation of a work. The storage of a work should only be considered as an interim measure.

Storage conditions should be such that the work is protected. This will include proper climate conditions (i.e. that the work is not vulnerable to conditions which will cause deterioration), protection from theft, vandalism or accidental damage. The actual placement in storage and further removal of works (or part of works) from storage may only take place in consultation with the Public Art Manager and should be supervised by appropriate expertise.

The status of public artworks in storage for more than five years will be reviewed.

3.3 Deaccession

Deaccession involves removing a work from the City Council’s Collection. This can include the return to the artist, donor or lender or the destruction of the work. The permanent removal and destruction of an artwork should only take place as a last resort. A full process of assessment and consultation will have taken place before such action is undertaken.

4. Criteria

Criteria for the initiation of a review for the removal, relocation or deaccession of artworks include:
5.That the artwork is considered beyond repair or that maintenance and conservation work will undermine the integrity of the artwork or that the cost of such work is considered excessive.
6.That the artwork has serious or dangerous faults in design or workmanship that cause it to be a danger to public health and safety.
7.That the current location of the artwork is no longer suitable or available, that another site compromises the integrity of the artwork or requires incurring excessive expense or that another site is unavailable.
8.That the terms of acquisition can no longer be met.
9.That the loan agreement with the owners of the artwork has expired or that the City Council is no longer able to meet the conditions of the loan agreement.
10.That both the City Council and the artist agree to have the artwork decommissioned.
11.That the City Council has regard to clauses in contracts which allow for the decommissioning of an artwork after a defined period of time or that planning permission has been awarded subject to review after a defined period of time.
12.That the artwork has been unsolicited.
13.That the public artwork has been lost or stolen and formal removal from the Public Art Register is required.
5.Procedure

Proposals to relocate or decommission an artwork may be made by artists, donors, lenders, city councillors, city officials or members of the public
Proposals to relocate or decommission an artwork will be made on the official form, setting out which criteria are met and why the work should be relocated or decommissioned.
All proposals will be made to the Public Art Manager who will present them to the Public Art Advisory Group for consideration.
The Public Art Manager will undertake an initial assessment of the proposal to relocate, store or fully decommission the work.
A further assessment will take place if in the opinion of the Public Art Manager there are grounds for relocation or decommissioning.
The application will be dismissed if in the opinion of the Public Art Advisory Group the proposal to relocate, store or decommission does not meet with any of the decommissioning criteria.
Relevant City Council officials will be consulted (including where relevant the arts officer, planning, heritage, conservation, legal, etc).
Independent expertise (e.g. conservation, valuation, public art, planning, legal, etc) will be consulted for works valued at more than €20,000.
Every reasonable effort will be made to consult with the artist, donor or lender or the legally recognised representative(s) of these parties.
Representatives of local communities will be notified and / or consulted.
The final decision to relocate, store or decommission rests with Dublin City Council.
The Press Office will be informed of proposals to relocate or decommission an artwork.
The review process and action taken will be fully documented and filed in the City Council.
Dublin City Council reserves the right to take immediate and appropriate action to protect public health and safety if the artwork is considered to be a cause of imminent danger. In this case, the work may only be removed to storage.

6. Assessment

6.1Initial Assessment

The Public Art Manager, in consultation with other expertise if required, will undertake an initial assessment. This initial assessment will include:
Assessment of how the application matches the decommissioning criteria.
Whether the artwork is on the Register of Protected Structures.
Review contracts or other legal agreements with artists, donors or lenders relating to the artwork.
Document the artwork (both visual record and condition report).
Examine the context of the commission including artists’ statements.
Assessment and recommendation / proposed action.

6.2 Further Assessment

In the case where the Public Art Manager considers that the application meets one or more of the criteria, he will undertake a further assessment. A report will be prepared which provides the following information:
Consultations and analysis.
Legal issues and obligations.
Valuation of the artwork.
Estimate of the feasibility and costs of conservation, relocation, storage or deaccession.
Recommendation.

6.3 Public Art Advisory Group

The Public Art Advisory Group will consider all applications to have an artwork relocated, stored or deaccessioned and will make a recommendation.
It can make a recommendation based on the information provided by the Public Art Manager or in certain cases request that further assessment be undertaken.
The Public Art Advisory Group can request the attendance of the artist, lender, donor or other relevant experts.
All relevant parties (including the applicant, artist, donor or lender) will be informed of the decision.
In the case of deaccession, an official order will be signed before decommissioning takes place.

6.4 Strategic Policy Committee

All proposals for the decommissioning of public artworks will be presented to the Arts, Culture, Leisure and Youth Affairs Strategic Policy Committee for decision.

6.Records and Documentation

The Public Art Register will be updated to reflect the status / location of the work.
The artwork and the decommissioning process will be fully documented and filed in the City Council.

7. Future Contracts

All future contracts commissioning ‘permanent’ public art will have a clause relating to the decommissioning of artworks. Issues to be included in contracts are life expectancy, review periods and maintenance agreements.

8. Acknowledgements
This document was greatly informed by criteria and procedures in place for the Public Art Scheme in Auckland City Council, New Zealand.
www.aucklandcity.govt.nz/council/documents/artresiting/contents.asp

9.1 Other research

- Visual Artists Ireland, Info Pool, Ireland, www.visualartists.ie/sfr_infopool
- Public Artonline Resources, UK www.publicartonline.org.uk
Public Art by the Book, City of Seattle Mayor’s Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs, 2005
Making Shapes, Public Art in Donegal 2006-2010. Donegal County Council
- Place and Identity, Dún Laoghaire Rathdown, Public Art Programme
- Public Art Policy, Northern Territory Government, Australia
- Swindon’s Public Art Scheme, UK