Has new public art expelled its last gasp in Boston?

"LAUNCHING A new era of public art in Boston requires two things: leadership and money," you write in your July 17 editorial "Art for our sake."

If only that were true. The real obstacle to new public art is neither of those; it's attitude. Our fine city is still as conservative, parochial, and ruled by its inner Cotton Mather as ever. I'm referring to both officials and the community.

If you want a small, unobtrusive bronze statue of a veteran, a suffragette, a duck, or a memorial to something, maybe. But try to get something contemporary going and, well, (insert your favorite cliché meaning "futile" here). Unless it's a landscape that goes with the sofa, you're in dangerous waters.

The Boston Center for the Arts called the cops after some posters went up on its bulletin boards, and the Kennedy Greenway is suffocating from the canceling-out of efforts along fiefdom lines. Even this newspaper's arts coverage is in the Food section once a week.

But not always. If there's something negative to report, art might get the front page: for example, this month's flap over Gallery XIV and some posters.

The current rash of gallery closings is the picture that's worth a thousand words. (That's made the front page too.)

So I'll stop.

Just try, I dare you. I have.

GREG SHEA
Brookline