Still, that wasn’t my question. If the exact same project with the same budget and the same artist were installed in a wealthier area, would you still consider it “tone deaf and oblivious”?

The city that both I and this artist I live in also has an unusually high number of derelict buildings, mostly as a result of its bizarre history. While not all of them are in poor neighborhoods, every single one of them has become a canvas for urban artists over the years, from ambitious muralists to teenage taggers. Many of them have been repurposed as locations for photo and film shoots, the products of which are quite often literal commodities. While some of those living adjacent to such places regard them as blights, I see nothing indicating that they are being exploited, or “served up for consumption,” by the artists who have taken advantage of the abandoned spaces.

In fact, I’d wager a guess that if this installation were the work of an anonymous extralegal street artist like Banksy, rather than an institutionally-funded European, it would be broadly celebrated here for its bold, transformative beauty (or whatever hyperbole you want to insert there). But by juxtaposing its existence with entirely unrelated issues surrounding poverty, the bloggers have manufactured an outrage that has little connection to reality.

And to define the entire all the people of a neighborhood solely by the persistence of poverty there is far more patronizing than the artwork in question.

The fact that it doesn’t provide a tangible benefit to the people of the neighborhood does not mean that it is a net loss to them.

Saying it’s a solved problem in sociology and economics… I’m just not seeing the evidence.

I guess you could make the populist argument that publicly funded art institutions should prioritize acquiring the work of locals, rather than that of foreigners. But how is it any less “out of touch” for Philadelphia’s Museum of Art to feature works from 102 countries, taking up valuable wall space that could have been used to elevate struggling Pennsylvania artists? Should Opera Philadelphia forgo its Verdi and Mozart to feature more local composers?

The prevailing view is that cultural capital – while impossible to quantify – adds value to a city, and that art is intrinsically cosmopolitan, rather than bound to whatever populism and localism dictate at the moment.

It seems to me that life would feel slightly less bleak with pleasant things to look at everyday. It should take a backseat to actually improving people’s lives (food, healthcare, housing ALL need to be made more affordable, preferably by raising the minimum wage), but it certainly helps from an emotional perspective.