Katriina Campitelli: What a Public Art Curator Actually Does

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Katriina Campitelli is a Toronto-based public art curator with Finnish and Italian roots who has spent over five years commissioning permanent and temporary public art across Canada. She started during the pandemic by creating a projection mapping festival when galleries shut down, and hasn't stopped since. This is a conversation from the other side of the public art table: what do public art curators actually do, what they are looking for and what many artists get wrong.

Katriina's work spans permanent commissions to ephemeral festivals, sculpture gardens and community engagement programs.

This episode is essential listening for any artist thinking about making the jump into public art. But it's equally fascinating for anyone who's ever walked past a sculpture and wondered how it got there.

What we cover:

• The percent-for-art funding model and why most permanent public art is tied to infrastructure budgets

• What a public art curator actually does start to finish

• Why the only way to learn public art is to make public art and why that's a genuine problem given that public art cannot fail

• The Drunk Frat Boy test: what your work needs before it can be installed in a public space

• The giant chrome cow that led to two years of community backlash