In NBC’s Parks and Recreation, the fictional town of Pawnee, Indiana is constructed both out of a satirical pastiche of American towns and the blind and faithful love of the show’s protagonist, Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler). What by all accounts seems to be a rather unsavory place to live (between the raccoon infestations, the bullying local candy industry, and the rampant obesity epidemic) gradually earns the same love and devotion from the audience as it does from the eternally optimistic Knope. One continuing thread throughout the series that connects in many different ways to Knope’s dedication and service to her town is public art: murals done in the Regionalist style pepper City Hall, local monuments are erected and vandalized, and controversy arises around censorship and committee-designed projects.
By analyzing key moments where public art affects the narrative of the show as well as scrutinizing the styles and precedents quoted within the series, this paper will argue that Parks and Recreation reflects contemporary anxieties over locational identity through public art. Who is represented, what is repressed, what is allowed, and who will decide are all questions that recur frequently in contemporary public art controversy, and controversy fuels much of Parks and Recreation’s engagement with public art. Nevertheless, Knope’s favorite place on earth is still the mural of sunflowers in City Hall. This paper uses Parks and Recreation to understand a similarly tenuous relationship between places and public art in the United States.
*While I’ve submitted this under “Art and Visual Culture,” this paper could also be considered for “Television.”
About the presenterAnnie Dell'Aria
Annie Dell’Aria is a PhD candidate in Art History at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Her dissertation investigates the role of the moving image in contemporary public art and her research interests straddle art history and cinema and media studies with an eye towards the public realm. She has published on the relationship between space and design in Battlestar Galactica in UCLA’s Mediascapes. She teaches courses in both art history and media studies at CUNY and The New School.